Child Care Selection Guide
Childcare decision making is deeply personal and can be emotionally and logistically challenging. There isn’t a one-size-fits all solution, and your needs and perspectives can change over time. But you can improve the decision-making process by planning a realistic timeline, identifying your values, and following a process for finding and evaluating options.
Timeline
Your personal timeline might not look like others, and every family has a unique set of restrictions and resources to fill the early first weeks and months of childcare needs. You may be juggling your parental leave, your partner’s leave, your PTO, paid family leave (if in NY state), flexible work schedules, part-time schedules, office and religious holidays, and many more inputs to maximize, or minimize your time at home.
Many nannies are not available and “on the market” until 4-6 weeks of their availability starting. While on the other hand, daycares in the area can have months-long waiting lists. Full-time childcare providers are usually easier to find than part-time, but with time and effort, anything is possible. Don’t get too caught up in those details yet, instead, begin with your ideal timeline and scenario for care, without the restriction of “what’s possible”.
Values
Building out a deep sense of what you value in a caregiver, will be the foundation on which you make your decisions. Here is a brief version of an exercise for how to articulate your values.
Working together with your partner, if you have one, list out all the things you want from your childcare. No item is too big or too small. Don’t over think it. (Ideally do this digitally where you can edit easily, or on paper you can cut up to move things around). As you slow down on your brainstorming list, go back and ask each other some additional questions like these:
What do you want your child to learn? How do you want them to feel? Is it important for a certain language or culture to be part of the care? Are there other aspects of your home life that could be managed by someone else? What expectation do you have for your childcare arrangement to abate those needs?
You’ll then rank order and establish the items that are truly essential versus nice to have. Working together, we can ensure your list is exhaustive and realistic, and can start to narrow in on what type of childcare is likely to be a good fit for your family.
Childcare types
Using your values as your guide, you may be able to immediate select the childcare type that is the best fit for you. Here are some common childcare types:
Nanny (live out)
Au Pair or a live-in nanny
Day care center
In-home day care
Extended family or friends
Nanny-share (two families share one nanny's time)
Workplayce or another alternative arrangement
Roster of babysitters to come on a flexible schedule
There are many pros and cons to every option, and the items on your list of essentials that you value should be driving the evaluation. You may not necessarily know how your essentials line up against these child care types. So, to help support that discussion I can provide some summaries of the pros and cons of each type.
Once you’ve narrowed in on one or two types of childcare, then it’s time to start working on finding specific child care providers/centers in order to have a further reaction.
Finding Options
There are lots of resources for where to find childcare. Looking for centers is fairly straightforward. But if needed, I have aggregated a list of child care centers, preschools, and nursery schools that can be used to your advantage. Finding a great nanny can be frustratingly still word-of-mouth, but Facebook groups tend to be quite active, and you can always turn to care.com and sittercity.com as well as paid agencies for help. Be open to sharing your search widely, you never know who in your building or at work is looking to find a great new family for a nanny they don’t need anymore.
Evaluating Options
Finding childcare is an art and a science… You’ve used your head and your logic mind quite a bit in this process, now we want to turn to our emotional side, going with our gut to get to the final answer. After seeing a few options, you will most certainly go back to your list of values and realize there is a something you didn’t realize mattered until you were faced with it. That’s okay!
When evaluating day care centers, there are some official evaluation guidelines which I’ve been trained to use and can share. I can also visit centers with you. When interviewing a nanny, start with your list of essentials during your first meeting, and I can provide a list of questions and help develop nanny contracts. We can also talk through the implications for 3K, PreK, nursery school, and crazily enough, elementary school, when discussing your early childcare selection. Of course, financial considerations are a key part of this step, we’ll talk through those details and I’ll share the local prices of specific schools and other childcare options.
Often having a structure to the process can be quite helpful, and hopefully this provides you with some initial productive steps. At the end of the day, your choice must feel right to you.