Daycare Tips for Working Moms FROM Working Moms
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Here’s a fun topic: what are your best daycare tips for working moms? What are the things that only friends will tell you about daycare (such as dress your child as cute as possible); what have you learned the hard way by the way of daycare tips?
We’ve talked a lot about childcare over the years, including the general pros and cons of different childcare arrangements, backup childcare strategies and how to find childcare for a sick kid. We’ve talked about nannies (the logistics of a nanny share, how detailed to be for a nanny job listing), shared tips on how to manage au pairs, and daycares (including daycare waiting lists, the cost of daycare, whether a great daycare is near home or near work, safety policies at daycare). We’ve even talked about how to level up your childcare when money is no object, working moms’ tips on using grandparents for childcare, and the pros and cons of granny as nanny.
A Big Daycare Tip: Dress Your Kid Cutely
When readers were discussing baby clothing and daycare a while ago (I think in the post where I noted that one of my mom efficiency tricks is to dress my babies in footed sleepers for the first year), a trend emerged.
Among working moms who send their kiddos to daycare, a lot of people noted that they purposely dressed their child cutely (headbands! overalls! tiny outfits!) for daycare, in part because they hoped the clothes would help give the child a personality for daycare workers to relate to.
A lot of commenters reacted against this idea that you have to spend MORE money, time, and effort at a time in your life when none of those things is really in ready supply — but it makes sense to me.
This is also the kind of thing that isn’t going to be in a welcome packet from your daycare — only passed down among friends and other women. So I thought we’d discuss today — what are your best tips for daycare (other than regarding daycare waiting lists)?
Readers, Share YOUR Daycare Tips for Working Moms!
Some specific questions for readers:
- What’s the #1 thing you appreciated about your daycare after you were in it — but didn’t know to look for during the interview process?
- What’s the best tip you’ve gotten from another mom about daycare?
- What are your specific tips for: the infant room, the toddler room, the preschool room?
All right ladies, over to you — what are your best daycare tips for working moms? (that no one else will tell parents)?
Psst: here are our general thoughts on pros and cons for different kinds of childcare.
Pictured: Family Portrait, originally uploaded to Flickr by Arturo Sotillo.
2019 image updates via Stencil.
As a dad, and having my wife working also…daycare has become a gigantic expense rivaling our rent. These are good tips for both of us. We take our daycare search seriously.
I normally dress our 11mo old daughter “cute” for daycare because ALL her clothes are cute (my MIL loves to shop for her…), and while I noticed she was dressed a little snazzier than her classmates, I didn’t set out on this path with any intent other than covering her body. But then I read this, and that very afternoon when I went to collect her, I walked in to find her taking a nap on the owner of the school (also a teacher), and while we sat and chatted, she remarked on how cute my daughter always looks, and that it reminded her of how she used to dress her daughters. So…. maybe there’s something to this after all!
We hated the cute outfits that included accessories. Headbands, cute shoes and frilly socks were just another object to keep track of. If you want your daycare provider to love you, sure dress the kiddo up cute, but keep it sensible, something that no one is going to feel guilty about if it gets messy or lost and skip accessories. Btw, headbands are choking hazards. We used to a) ask that ppl leave then home and b) if ppl didn’t we put all of the accessories Into the child’s cubby until pick up time.
I would say the #1 thing I have appreciated is the twice-yearly parent-teacher conferences. My daughter is only 2.5, but I have really the care the teachers have taken in charting her developing development and giving me more formal updates outside of pm pick up.
I’m actually another dissident on dressing cute for daycre. My daughter gets SO diry in the summer. Our daycare does not have rubber ground material like most of the new playgrounds in the area, so cheap-o play clothes it is! We save the nicer stuff for weekends and visiting friends and family.
A big thing for me when I was touring was if the daycares offer paid vacation and health benefits for the teachers. I think this relates directly to teacher retention and a happier work staff. Daycare teachers already make so little, they deserve the benefits.
this discussion is very timely as I am sending my son who is turning 7 month old to daycare next week. Although I am not new to the daycare arrangement as my daughter has been going to the same daycare for the past two years, sending two kids to daycare ( and getting both ready in less than an hour in the morning) still seems daunting. As many noted here, we prefer daycares to nannies for the same reasons (more structured environment, standard compliance and more oversight/help). That being said, does anyone care to share her experiences as to how a young 7 month will handle at daycare? I am a bit uncomfortable with my son being so young..he will need more naps than other older babies, and we have to pack our own food for him etc. do any of you mommies pack homemade baby food for your infants(other than sweet potatoes, avocados & bananas), ? if so, what are the best food that freezes well and de-freeze easily and nicely – I’d like to cook a patch of food and pureed them in advance (maybe on the weekend). any tips?
Definitely second the joys of a daycare that provides lunch and snacks.
Also second being the first to signup for things when sign up sheets go up.
One thing I worried about when enrolling my daughter in daycare was who would be our “in case of emergency” person since we didn’t know anyone who would have access to a car seat. Turns out, our daycare center has extra car seats on hand so if anyone ever had to pick up your kid, they wouldn’t have to worry about having a car seat. Not a make or break thing, but definitely something that has come in handy. Which is to say, don’t be afraid to talk to the folks at the school about your concerns or questions. They see a lot of first time parents and how they respond to your questions can tell you a lot about what kind of environment they are trying to create both for the parents and the kids.
One of the best thing I’ve done is to convince one of my really good friends to enroll her kid in the same school. First of all, we get a referral bonus, but also we have someone to be our “in case of emergency”person who will be going to the school anyway. So if we are just running five minutes late, we can ask our friend to sign our daughter out. That way I do not incur the late fee and my friend doesn’t mind letting our girls play on the playground until I get there. Also, sometimes it’s hard to make time to see friends, but now that our girls are at the same school, we often volunteer for school functions together and some days we will drop our girls off at school early and go for a walk and chat in the mornings. Even if you don’t have a friend to convince, find out if anyone at your daycare lives in your neighborhood and make new friends. It really helps to have a good parent friend at the school.
I read this tip somewhere – When you stock your kid’s cubby with all the extras, put in clothes that are slighly too small or that you don’t particularly care for as her second set of clothes. I like that that way I can tell when I pick her up if she has had an accident and also I’m not sad that my favorite onesie is not getting worn because it is in the emergency pile.
Oh, another tip/trick for moms with infants – see if the infant room has a freezer where you can leave breastmilk, for emergencies or those “oh crap, walked out the door without the cooler this morning” days. Our infant room had a full sized fridge, and let me leave a shoebox sized box of milk bags there, so I didn’t have to pull them out on Mondays – just restock the box every few weeks. It also freed up more room in our freezer at home.
Also, if you aren’t the primary contact for emergencies, write a big note on the emergency forms that says: “in case of emergency, call in this order” and then list what numbers to call (for instance, for us it is: DH cell, DH office, my cell, my mother’s cell, MIL’s office, my office, etc in that order) because I work an hour away and am rarely at my desk, while my husband almost always has a cell phone on his hip and is usually within 15 minutes of daycare at any time. Far too many places still default to mothers as the first point of contact, when in our case I am the most unreachable of all the emergency contacts, and once you got a hold of me I still couldn’t get there in less than an hour.
Things I didn’t know in advance but wish I had:
– The more items provided, the better. Our current daycare provides wipes and food and it’s great. I hated packing lunch every day for my older child when she was a toddler.
– If you plan to breastfeed, you need to ask how many breastfed babies they’ve had. With #1, none of her providers were familiar with the differences between breastfed and formula-fed babies, and it was so discouraging.
– You may not know what kind of environment you’ll want for your child when you’re still pregnant. Don’t be afraid to change daycare providers if your priorities change once you actually have the baby. I skewed much more attachment parenting than I expected to, and I wish I’d acted more quickly once I realized that my first daycare choice wasn’t a good fit.
In my opinion, art projects and academics and “school” stuff are all fine, but what I really want for my kid are: loving providers, a great outdoor space and a pleasant and soothing indoor space. Emphasis on reading and play over curriculum and assessments. Infants don’t need a “curriculum” – they need love.
We are on our third childcare facility (daycare in old city, daycare in new city, and now preschool in new city). The daycare in our current city provided breakfast, lunch and two snacks and it was so amazing. At our preschool, we have to bring lunch and it makes mornings so much more frantic. At our first daycare, my favorite time saving hack was to bring in the whole week’s worth of gear every Monday so that I only had to grab bottles in the morning. After my kid transitioned to eating mostly solid food, we would bring in a week’s worth of food on Mondays to save time (and avoid the inevitable “oh, sh!t!” moment when we would show up at daycare with no food for him. I appreciate that my current preschool offers private music lessons and sports during aftercare, so we don’t have to figure out ways to schlep my son to those activities or squeeze them in to our limited family time. I didn’t think about this when choosing a preschool but am happy with how it worked out.
I also made a point of picking out a preschool with summer camp for most of the summer. Obviously much easier than finding 12 weeks of full time camp.
I was a little nervous about corporate daycare but they were great during the last government shut down (they did contingency planning and dispatched all the kids to centers that remained open) and use an organic caterer. The director sends out regular updates by email and every month we receive a monthly update on the theme of the month and supplementary activities we can do at home.
I had “mommy” cards made up with our son’s name and my and my husband’s contact info to hand to other parents so we can arrange playdates on the weekends.
Random thoughts … fill out your daily sheet with as much information as you can (name, DOB, parents’ contact info, etc.) and make your own copies so that all you have to do each day is fill in the date and whatever other daily information they want.
For holiday gifts, I give a gift card to the staff for a local restaurant so they can pick a day and order lunch on us. I usually calculate about $10/person who works in the classroom, and add in another $10 for tip.
I also periodically brought in treats for the staff, including the bookkeeper and manager (who don’t regularly work in a classroom and don’t always get those little perks!) Sadly, this has gone by the wayside since having two kids, but it was very well received when I did.
When looking for a daycare, ask your friends/coworkers with young children. If you’re looking at a place and they haven’t heard of it, ask them to ask their friends and so on. It’s good to read reviews on internet sites and forums but I don’t know if we would have found the center we ended up using if we had just relied on internet searches. The online reviews for it are hit or miss- on one of the parenting forums, some anonymous user complains about not seeing a teacher wash her hands once and about one time someone let her in the door without the code (even though it was another parent, not an employee, which could happen almost anywhere). There were also positive reviews, but there is a tendency to give more weight to negative reviews online. However, coworkers who sent their kids there absolutely raved about it, they just gushed about how wonderful it was and how lovely and warm the teachers are. That made a huge impression on me and so far (3 days in) I am really pleased.
Also, tour a lot of different places. It sucks to make the time for it, but it really helps you when you have a lot of options to compare.
This post was so timely! I went back to work on Monday and it’s been rough adjusting (waking up at 5 a.m. and a 2 hour commute each way now).
If you are looking at licensed or certified care (not a nanny), find out if your state agency publishes inspections or reports for each facility. If they do, monitor those reports. In my state (Wisconsin), the program is called YoungStar and I check this regularly to see the results of our center’s latest inspection and to keep up with others in the area. YoungStar was invaluable in selecting a daycare center we felt comfortable with.
I preferred a center over in-home care primarily because of thee adult-to-child ratio. While my infant was in a room with 7 others her age and 2 teachers, I appreciated that there was always more than one adult in the room. Our center also has webcams for parent access , and that made me feel safer leaving my kids when they were brand-new babies. I didn’t watch obsessively, but I might log in for 5 minutes here and there, especially around nap time when I wanted to be certain my baby was sleeping in a crib, on her back and with no blankets.
Also, label all of your kid’s clothes! Once they hit the potty training stage and accidents happen, it can be pretty awkward to realize your kid is wearing someone else’s undies because they weren’t labeled clearly.
Having food provided at daycare is a must for me. I ruled out several daycares in my new neighborhood because they don’t provide food each day.
While I liked our old montessori school/daycare a lot, we ran in to some issues with combining the age groups in the mornings and evenings during the “extended hours.” The older kids (4-6 years old) were combined with my son, who had just turned 3. He told us that the older kids picked on him and made fun of him a lot. We talked to his teacher and eventually the director, and while they promised to keep an eye on it, there’s only so much you can do when kids with different age groups are combined.
Like we discussed earlier, keep a few prints of recent family photos on hand. You never know when you’re going to get an “art” project that will need pictures. I also keep glue sticks, markers, and other craft supplies around now. I also keep a stash of gift cards and blank note cards for teachers’ gifts.