Creating Criteria For Choosing A Child Care Provider
If you have to leave your children so you can work, you will want to make sure that your children receive at least the same quality of care that you would provide if you were present to take care of your children. In order to ensure that you choose a child care provider that you feel like you can partner with, you should develop a list of criteria that you can use to help you make distinctions between one provider and others. Keep these criteria in mind when you visit potential providers, then use the same criteria to review what you learned from your visit. This will help you to make an informed decision.
How Do Adults Interact with Children
When you visit a care center, you should pay careful attention to how the care providers interact with children. They should pick up and hold children, talk to them in tender tones, and otherwise demonstrate that they enjoy working with children. Simply having adults on the premises who can ensure your child's safety is not the same as having adults who will love your child and interact in positive ways with them.
Child-to-Adult Ratio
Children require human interaction in order to develop properly. For example, infants who hear language from live speakers who they interact with are able to learn language better than infants who are exposed to language learning audio for the same amount of time. Thus, ensuring that your child gets as much interaction with adults as possible is important in making sure your child is safe and has the necessary interaction to develop at a natural rate.
Turnover Rate
As important as interactions with adults are, the bonds that children create with their care providers are equally, if not more, important. If your child goes to a care center where the aids that work with children tend not to stay very long, your child may struggle to make a bond, and without a bond with a caring adult, your child may not enjoy or benefit from going to a care center.
Child-Care Philosophy
Not everyone shares the same ideas about rearing children. Thus, you should develop a series of questions that you can ask to ensure that the child care center you choose will teach your child in a way that agrees with the teaching you plan to provide at home.
These are just a few criteria that you should consider adopting when you begin looking at care providers. The most important thing is to not just leave your choice up to your first impression or recommendations from neighbors. If you can't be on hand to care for your child, then making sure you find a child care provider you can trust is the next best thing.