Improving Your Child's Preschool Experience

While most parents would love to be able to stay at home to raise their children, for most it's just not possible. In this day and age, many parents must have both incomes in order to live comfortably. In this case, you need to find a good daycare center for your child in the years between when your maternity or paternity leave is over and when your child heads to school.

How do you vet a daycare center to better protect your child? Here are a few ways to keep in mind.

Check the Daycare's Certification

When you are looking for a new daycare center for your child, you should always ensure that they are reputable and safe by looking for their certification. All reliable and safe daycare centers should be licensed and have their certification on display on their wall somewhere you can see it. If they don't have it on display, ask to see it.

If you live in a state that doesn't require daycare centers to be licensed, then contact the child services department in your state or city to see what requirements they need to meet to operate safely.

Do They Do Background Checks on Staff?

In order to keep your child safe at a daycare center, you should know how the center does background checks on their staff. Do they do a police record search? Do they check references and contact previous places of employment? Does the center check for any early childhood education the potential employee has had?

You want to make sure that the center is ensuring that only the most trusted people are working there and caring for your child.

Is the Center Inspected?

You could do your research on any daycare center you are interested in and check to see if they receive regular state inspections or not. If you are looking at in-home centers, it's possible they are under the radar of the state inspectors and don't regularly get checked out. It's better to know that the center you entrust your child to is getting regular state inspections.

Does the Staff Get Training?

While most daycare staff receive some sort of college education before working with children, many daycares offer training on-the-job or extra training that schools might not teach as well. You could find out if the centers you are looking at do any training, for example, in how to detect allergies and what to do if a child has any, first aid courses, and how to deal with temper tantrums or discipline.

If the daycare offers their staff additional training than what they might have already received, it shows they want to prepare their employees to handle for any type of situation that might arise. For more information, check out places like Carousel Of Learning Pre-School & Nursery.