Day care providers

Searching for day care providers is one of the most difficult tasks parents of young children face. Especially if your child is an infant or young toddler and cannot speak for himself yet, you have to do a lot of research to find day care providers who will keep your children safe and care for them properly.

Before I returned to work after having my son, I interviewed several day care providers, and each had a different style and approach to caring for children. And before I actually began the process, I thought that I would only want to hire someone with views about raising children that were identical to my own. But once I went out and started meeting with people, I realized that it was more important that they be genuinely interested in children, and especially my son.

One woman at a home daycare center didn’t even speak to my son when we went to visit her. My husband and I both introduced ourselves and she walked away before we had a chance to introduce my son. That was the first red flag of many that were raised during that visit, and ultimately I got the feeling that the woman really didn’t care very much about the children and was more concerned with talking about the rules and regulations we would need to follow.

At another center, the workers came across like they were trying too hard. It’s hard to explain what it was about the way they were behaving that turned me off, but it seemed like their cheer was forced and not genuine. I know that people who care for young children cannot possibly be that bubbly all the time, especially day care providers who are around children all the time. They were like these children-loving cheer robots who scared me a little bit with their enthusiasm. Then I thought that maybe it is me who has the problem because I am simply unable to think of daycare providers as being happy, well-adjusted and constantly cheerful individuals. As a mother, I go through quite a bit of pain throughout the day, and it’s because I am raising a toddler. And anyone who lives with a toddler knows that life is not always rainbows and sunshine.

I finally found a place where the people were not miserable nor were they overly cheerful. They were somewhere in the middle and came across as realistic, friendly and mindful that my son is a person and not just another little ball of cash running around all day. It took a long time, but the search for day care providers was over and we finally had a place we could drop my son off at every day and know he would be well cared for.