Those who have children know exactly how much they mean to them. You would do anything for your child as long as it would make them happy in the end. You are always worried about them and want nothing but the best for them.
One of the best places you can start to ensure your child has a bright future is to know the basics of healthy child care and to know what to look for in a child care provider. It is important that you realize how many hours your child may spend with this child care provider and how much of an impact they may have on them.
Let us say that you use the child care provider while you go to work and you work eight hours a day for five days a week. That comes out to forty hours a week that your child will be in someone else’s care and that is why it is important that you look for a provider that will provide your child with the best care and example. The following chapter will go over the basics of what you should look for in a child care provider and what you should stay away from.
The Basics
As mentioned before, there are some basic things that are essential for your child’s well-being as well as their development that are important to look for when searching for a child care provider. The following are some examples of the basic things your child needs from a child care provider.
Love and warmth
Love and warmth is extremely important in any child’s early stages of life. Your child needs to feel like the world is a joyful place and you should keep them away from things such as hostility and anger for as long as possible. When trying to find a child care provider, whether it be in-home care or at a facility, you must make sure that your child will be in a loving environment. When it comes to child care at a day care you should examine the attitudes of the workers as well as the other children there. If other children there are able to act out and are not redirected this may not be a place you want your child to receive care.
Your child’s senses need to be nourished
In the early years of your, child their brain is like a sponge. Everything around them is absorbed, not only actions, when their senses in environments as well. Their sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing are all essential parts of their development. That is why it is so important to make sure that your child’s senses will be nourished. You want to find a child care provider that can offer a clean and quite area for your child. You should also look for a provider that offers areas with stimulating objects for the child to play with as well as stimulating art and pictures on the walls.
Your child needs opportunities to express their artistic side
Expressing creativity and exploring their artistic side is extremely important for your child. It is important that you find a child care provider that offers and encourages ways for your child do be artistic and creative. Finger painting is a great way to stimulate a child’s creative mind and so is coloring. Basically, you want to avoid child care providers that have the children spend all day watching cartoons or movies.
Positive adult role models to imitate
Children look upon the adults in their life to learn how they are supposed to behave in society. For example, if you swear around a child enough you will find that they are soon saying the same words. That is because adults are their role models and their guides for life. You should find a child care provider that offers professional adult staff that always behave in an appropriate manner while at work. You should find a place that you can look at the people caring for your and appreciate the example they are setting.
Laughter, happiness and joy
It is important to find a child care provider that is not overly serious. They should be able to joke and make your child laugh and encourage happiness and joy in the child. However, at the same time you need to make sure that the child care provider can be firm at the same time when it is needed and redirect behavior when needed.
Imaginative and educational play
It is important to ask your child care provider what type of play time there will be for your child. You want to try and find a provider that offers imaginative and educational play time. It is important that your child play with toys that stimulate imagination as well as motor skills. In other words, you do not want to use a child care provider who will have your child play with video games for play time.
There are many more things that you should consider when trying to find a child care provider. These were just a few examples of some of the basic things you need to consider before making a decision.
What is your budget?
I’m sure that as a parent you are well aware of how expensive it can be to care for your child. Well guess what, if you are looking for a child care provider you should prepare yourself for yet another bill, the only difference is that child care is usually paid weekly. The following chapter will go over the basics on setting a budget for child care, an average on the costs, as well as some ideas on how you can save money to help with your child care budget.
Figure out the expenses
As a parent I am sure that you have already had many headaches in the past that resulted from trying to balance budgets and trying to figure out how to take money from one budget and put it into another. Well the cold hard truth is that child care is not cheap, especially if you want your child to be cared for by a reputable provider.
One of the smartest things you can do before you even begin looking for a child care provider is to sit down and figure out exactly what you have to spend each month on child care, or in other words create a budget. If you create a budget before you begin looking for a child care provider you can avoid being crushed by finding the provider of your dreams and then finding out you cannot afford their services.
Excerpted from the book Child Care Provider Plan.
This excerpt has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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