Need mommy help, please

[Reba03]

Hello!  I am a nursery coordinator for infants and toddlers 0- 35 months old.  I want to serve parents and their children as well as can be.  I am looking for input.  Copy and paste this text in a your reply please.
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When you are deciding on a place of childcare, how would you rate the importance of the following scale of 1-5.  1 being low importance, 5 high.

cleanliness
accessibility
safety
staff appearance
posted emergency procedures (CPR posters, local emergency numbers, etc)
ratio of children to caregivers
availability of toys, books, activiies
healthy snacks/ food


When you enter a church nursery or day care how much impact does the decor have? (1-low, 3-moderate, 5-high importance)

If you are referenced to a daycare from a friend/ family or know one of the staff members does this greatly impact your likelyhood or trusting them verses a facility you know little about other than appearances?

What are your biggest complaints about church nurseries?

Biggest complaints about daycare/ babysitting facilities?

Thank you so much for your time.  It is my goal to give parents peace as they entrust us with their most precious ones. That they may feel just as good leaving their children with us as they do about taking them home.

[Luckybear05]

Apr. 7, 2008 at 9:53 AM

no "stranger" will watch my kids. I have 4 people I trust to watch my kids and yes it makes wanting to go out difficult but I dont trust people not to harm my children.  If my mother and dad, his mother, and my sister cant watch them we change plans for it to be a family outing.

 

[figaro8895]

Apr. 7, 2008 at 10:31 AM

I couldn't respond on the original post, but wanted to share some thoughts about choosing daycare based on my experience. Due to expense, I chose in-home childcare for a while. My first caregiver was excellent, but was pregnant and had a toddler, so eventually with doctor appointments and the baby, I had to find someone new. I had many volunteers and referrals and went through a number of them. My experience with "babysitters" is, hopefully, out of the ordinary. My daughter and I still joke about her string of crazy babysitters. There was the woman who took excellent care of my daughter in many ways, but her house was filthy (I was desparate at this point), the teenage girl who really wanted to babysit, but left my daughter with her older sister (who had children) regularly, the divorced woman who wanted another baby... mine, the woman who hit my daughter on the head with a notebook, etc. What I discovered is that people who know you will frequently overstep their boundaries when it comes to your child, and it makes it very difficult to set down rules (I was young too). Also, their personal issues of all varieties will interfere with the security and stability of regular childcare. Eventually I found an affordable daycare. There were a few things that sold me on this place:

The director and teachers that I met just came off as so caring and capable. The older children were in a separate building from the infants and toddlers. They had planned activities to address a child's physical and intellectual growth. The place didn't have an overwhelming amount of decorations but was clean and had bright or soothing colors. Safety was a priority. My daughter stayed at this daycare for a long time. I was so relieved to have reliable daycare where I knew my daughter was being properly cared for.

I knew I made the right choice when... the biting stage was handled with minimal drama yet concern for health and safety, I got daily reports on my daughter's activities and moods, I got a letter stating that the lunch I sent did not contain all necessary food groups (this is when I learned corn was a grain not a vegetable), my daughter was happy to be dropped off, etc.

Of your list, cleanliness, safety, and staff-to-children ratio are probably the top of my list. As for a referral, well, my parenting style has always been a little different than others... what is important to other people is not necessarily as important to me. I think it's good to work with a place someone knows, but I would caution people to make sure the referring person is on the same wavelength as a parent and can address your specific concerns.

I worked at a church and helped with communications from the nursery and day school. I couldn't figure out how a program that was half a day and did not include at least one weekday was sufficient coverage for a working mother. I guess the point was to give the SAHMs a break.

I became disenchanted with the daycare after the director started having some personal problems that spilled over into the facility. She seemed distracted and stressed, and I felt I could no longer communicate openly and freely. Just seemed like a shift in what was important and my child wasn't on that list.