For a large chunk of my life, I assumed I would be a full-time, stay at home mom.  My staying home even part-time isn’t a good option for us right now for several reasons: (1) we’re still paying off two sets of law school loans; (2)  I committed to a full-time job with a judge for 2 years prior to me getting pregnant, and (3) I would want to go back to work after our kids were in school, and I feel like in this field it’s difficult to come back from a large chunk of time away from doing anything related to the legal field.  Despite  knowing that it’s best for our family for me to work full-time, thinking about choosing a daycare turned me into an emotional hot mess.  Just the thought of choosing who to entrust my little ones to was heartbreaking.  Thankfully, we eventually found one that made me as happy as I could possibly be about letting someone else take care of our boys.

We knew almost immediately that we would do center daycare.  A good nanny in our area is much more expensive than the best daycares and finding one to take care of twins at a reasonable price seemed even more unlikely. We don’t have many friends here with kiddos, so we didn’t consider in-home care because we would really have wanted to get a recommendation from someone who had used that caregiver.  Plus, again, finding in-home care with room for two infants would add another challenge.  That left us looking exclusively at centers.

First, we did internet searches for daycares and looked at websites and sought out recommendation from our very few friends here who have kids.  This brought our list down to five places that we wanted to call for more information.  After calling, one got eliminated because it’s run by a local university and the daycare is closed for all university breaks, between sessions and for one of the summer sessions (6 weeks).  Even though this daycare gets great reviews, we felt like finding that much backup daycare would be too much for us since neither of our parents live close by.

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Before going to the remaining 4 daycare facilities, I compiled a list of questions to take with us.  I scoured the archives of the Hellobee blog and boards and found several informative posts on what to ask on daycare visits.  I also did some google searches to see what non-Hellobee sources had to say.  In the end, I compiled this list of questions to serve as a guide for our visits:

Security/Staff:

  1. What is the building security like?
  2. Are all employees given background checks?  Do you repeat background checks at any specific intervals?
  3. Who can pick up our children?  What is the procedure for that?
  4. What if someone else needs to pick them up at the last minute?
  5. Do you require staff to have infant CPR/first aid training?
  6. What education requirements do you have for your teachers?
  7. What is your teacher turnover rate?

Classroom:

  1. Teacher/infant ratio?
  2. Can we drop in whenever we want?
  3. Curriculum? Do teachers turn in lesson plans?
  4. What activities are done with the infants?
  5. Do infants get outdoor time?
  6. How much one-on-one time do infants get?
  7. Is there a place to store pumped milk?  How are bottles warmed up?  Are they held during feeding?
  8. How do you deal with babies transitioning into solids?
  9. What is a typical schedule in the infant room?  Is the infant schedule set by the parents or the daycare?
  10. Does each baby have a designated crib & cubby?  Can we bring things to put above crib, i.e. mobile, sleep sheep, etc?  Are they allowed to have anything in the crib?
  11. What method of discipline do your teachers use for older children?
  12. What would you do if our child was inconsolably crying?
  13. Are kids moved up classes based on development or a set age?
  14. What do we provide & what do you provide?
  15. How is information communicated to parents both about daily activities, behavior & developmental updates, etc?
  16. What is your child turnover rate like?

General Policies:

  1. Cost for two infants?
  2. Do we pay for sick/vacation days?
  3. What is the deposit?
  4. How would we determine a start date since we’re unsure of when the twins will be born?
  5. Hours?  What is the late pick-up policy?
  6. Do you have an immunization policy?
  7. What is your sick policy?  Do you call when they seem to be feeling bad but aren’t actually running a fever, vomiting, etc.?
  8. What is the medication policy?  Do we need to get prescriptions for Tylenol, etc.?
  9. Religious affiliation?  How is religion incorporated into curriculum?
  10. What are your emergency procedures?
  11. Would you have some of your parents call us to discuss their experience?

As a practical aside, I didn’t want to just read down a list of questions at each visit and be that parent, but I did want something written I could take with me and glance at to see if I had forgotten anything major.  I definitely didn’t ask or learn the answer to every single question, but I was really glad to have it.  Generally, during the tours, the person would end up addressing most of our questions or we would ask as they showed us different areas that related to a particular question.  At the end, I would glance over my list and see if I missed anything major that I wanted to ask.

What questions did you ask on daycare visits/nanny interviews?