I've got a spreadsheet for that
Adding in comments or questions I would ask now
- Who will be his primary caregiver? (our daycare assigns "primary" caregivers in each classroom)
- What is the infant to child ratio (and ask about upper age levels if planning to keep child there)? ideal for infants is 1:3, typical/state requirements in my state are 1:4
- How is discipline handled? Do you use redirection? Timeouts? Any kind of physical action?
- Napping/feeding schedule? Is it actually scheduled or on-demand by the baby?
- How are room transitions handled? (is it by specific age, developmental point, in groups? Ideal would be moving in groups because they've hit a specific developmental point vs. auto-moving a 6 months or 12 months. Think like two babies who've been together moving to a toddler room at the same time because they are both now walking)
- Ok if we are always changing who picks up/drops off?
- Does car seat stay at daycare?
- How do you track feeding/sleep/diapers and relay that to the parents? (through an app, end of day check-out sheet?)
- What do we need to provide as far as diapers, wipes, diaper cream, food, etc.?
- For feeding - do we bring bottles partitioned out per feeding or one big bottle? Can we provide frozen milk? What happens to expired breastmilk or formula? Note here, it's very common for babies to not finish a bottle. If sending breastmilk, you probably want them to keep it for you so you can give at night or something. We'd have wasted so much milk if they tossed everything not finished in one feeding.
- When moving to purees/solids, what and how do we bring food (prepped and portioned or jars of puree, etc.)
- Ours provides breakfast, lunch, and snack - we supplement with fruit to get him more variety. It saves so much time to not have to pack food for him every day
- Ask to see a sample menu and ask how often it changes
- Policy for a parent to come and do a feeding/visit during the day? (if it's not open door policy for parents, go elsewhere)
- What to send as far as toys, blankets, loveys, pacifiers?
- Keep diaper bag at daycare?
- How many extra outfits to provide?
- Policy for taking infants outside (especially winter or inclement weather?) ours had a "we take them outside every day without fail" policy that made me nervous. Turns out the little babies don't go out in winter/poor weather
- Are daycare teachers allowed to babysit privately outside of daycare hours for parents?
- What is the policy/usage on 'baby containment" devices, ie you don't want them leaving your kid in a high chair/bouncer all day. Ours doesn't even have those outside of cribs and high chairs for sleeping/eating
- What is your curriculum?
- What is your turnover rate and how long have the current infant teachers been here?
- What do you do for teacher development/ongoing training? Basically you want to see that they care about the teachers and don't just view them as replaceable babysitters
- Ask to go in or view an infant room and see how the babies interact with the teachers. Do the teachers appear caring, engaged, responsive? Do the babies look happy, curious, cared for? Gut feel is a big thing, imo. Even if things look good on paper but you still don't feel right, try somewhere else.
- Drop off time/penalty for going over on time
- Vaccination requirements? IE, do they let unvaccinated kids in
- Sick policy - what gets your kid sent home and for how long - pink eye? Vomiting? Diarrhea? Colds? What requires a doctor's note to come back? Start saving your sick time now cause babies blow through it. They should have a policy guide that gives more detail on all of this if this is a center or even bigger in-home, definitely ask for a copy.
That's probably a pretty good start
Actually, I have more. Back to the gut feel - we visited two very similar centers and I had a much better feeling about the one we picked than the second - though it would have been a bit cheaper but was basically identical otherwise. I just looked up the safety violation type stuff and ours is mostly license type stuff in the past year. Things like intake forms not updated, teacher certificates needing to be updated, childcare ratios exceeded at beginning/end of day, approval form for medicine going for longer than the expiration of the provided medicine. You're going to have some of that with any place - fyi.
The one we didn't go with mostly due to my gut?
Here are some of the violations since the time our baby started daycare:
Glad we chose who we did. If you are in Iowa, think the similar website for you is:
https://secureapp.dhs.state.ia.us/dhs_titan_public/ChildCare/ComplianceReport
