A difficult decision as a parent is selecting a child care centre for your little one. There are multiple options available for care like a nanny, home day care or a child care centre. There are pros and cons to each one of those. It really depends on the parent what they would like for their child. One important fact to keep in mind while making this very important decision that will shape your child’s future is “The emotional and physical health, social skills and the cognitive-linguistic capacities that emerge in the early years are important prerequisites for success in school and later in the workplace and community.”- InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development – Harvard University. So the one thing to keep in mind is that you select care in an environment that is stimulating for a child and helps them develop their social, cognitive, fine motor, and language skills.
Table 1 below gives you the pros and cons of the three types of care for children.
Seeing all the pros and cons above if as a parent you can afford it the best option for your child is to select a child care centre for your child which will provide the learning opportunity that they need to grow and develop. So the next question is, How do you select a centre?
Table 2 below gives the broad items that the government regulates for child care centres on 4 important aspects of the facility, teachers, programming, policies and procedures and the facility itself.
So the factors in the table above need to be adhered to by all child care centres in order to operate. The questions that would help a parent actually select a particular centre are described in four broad categories of cost- since it has to fit the family budget, facility – since you as a parent need to like the overall look and feel of the facility, teachers- their qualifications, and programming- so what is your child learning every day.