Kia ora te whānau
I have a young daughter, my partner is looking to go back to work. In an ideal world, she’d be a stay at home mum till our youngest goes to school but financial pressures mean we cannot do that.
I know daycares are regulated but I’m still really not at ease about the idea of leaving my baby with strangers all day.
Has anyone else faced this? What did you do to vet the places you looked at? Is there a rating scale I can look at for daycares? Do they get audited?
I just want my girl to be safe
My wife is a qualified professional ECE teacher. The vast majority of teachers and staff there are genuinely there with your child’s best interests at the top of their minds.
The owners/management of the centers however are after your enrollment/money.
Visit the centers your are considering while they are open, if anything makes you uneasy with it don’t go with that one. Especially if the facilities or the staff seem a little off. Trust your gut. See where the sleep room is, inspect the toilets etc.
If possible talk to the actual teachers and get their take on things: ask them what they do in their breaks, where they take them. If it sounds like that don’t actually get non-contact breaks then your child isn’t going to be getting the attention they are supposed to.
ECE is great for children, they play, make friends, and it really helps their social development. The hardest part is, as you say, leaving your child with “strangers” but they don’t stay strangers!
Centers get audited by ERO the same as schools do. The reports are publication available from the ERO’s website.
We visited the kindy during a normal day; we wanted to see how the teachers interacted with the kids and what facilities the kids had available.
We settled on a local Steiner kindy; the staff are all qualified in both ECE and Steiner education. Great people, quite home like; the kids get to help out in the kitchen if they want, rolling the bread buns to be baked or preparing the lunch. Or they just run around and play, dig holes or make up games and stories.
I would advise visiting whilst there is a normal session on.
We did try an ‘in home care’ place before the kindy and we were not happy with it; we lasted around 6 months there. I think it is a bit hit and miss, you could get an awesome one or a mediocre one. I don’t think there are many actual bad ones.
both my brother and his wife are ECE teachers, they have to much of the same stuff as all primary schools (infact another two of our close friend group are primary teachers).
Visit a couple in your area and get the vibes.
When we lived in town we elected to not go to either of the ECE centers that my brother or his wife worked at, could create issues. But we did go to one that they did recommend. When we moved to the ‘village’ we were down to just a single choice (at the time). In a very small town/village we still see some of the ECE staff and some still remember our girls from 4/5 years ago.
If you can find that sort of community in a ECE centre then it is well worth it.
If you have the time for it, ask some daycares about bringing your daughter in for a few hours. You stay and watch and see how she fits in.
If you can, try out a few places like this and see which you are most comfortable with. Not every parent will have the time or inclination to spend this long looking at each, but most centres should be happy with it and would have seen it before. It’s pretty natural to be worried about sending kids to daycare and a good centre will help you feel better about it.
Also remember you don’t have to go from nothing to full time. It will depend on the centre (because part time kids make ratios harder) but most centres will be used to kids doing 20 hours because of the 20 free hours the government provides.
