Life can be hectic, especially for parents of one or more children. Sometimes you need to have time without the kids for whatever reason; maybe it’s for work, maybe you have an event to attend that children wouldn’t be welcome at, or maybe you just want a break, and that’s perfectly understandable. But before trusting someone else with your children it’s a good idea to do your research, after all, you don’t want to live your children somewhere where they’d be unsafe, or in unhealthy conditions. That’s why we’ve put together a list of a few things to keep in mind when choosing childcare in Darwin to ensure that your child gets the best treatment they can.
Tips for hiring childcare
Do your research
Before hiring someone to watch your child, it’s best to do some research on the potential caregiver to make sure they’ll give your child the care they need. One of the most important things to check is how they interact with children. Consider going to a location where you can hire childcare officials ahead of time to see how the staff interacts with children, or let a potential caregiver have a supervised meeting with you and your children to get an idea of how they behave. There are a few things you want to check for when doing your research on potential caregivers.
- What are they doing? You want a caregiver who will directly engage with your children after all direct contact is very important for developing children. A caregiver should be directly engaging the children, playing on the floor with them, letting babies rest on their leg, direct physical contact and one on one attention are very good for children.
- What are their policies? You don’t want to have to deal with there being a disconnect between your parenting style and your caregiver’s parenting style, so you should talk to them ahead of time about their parenting policies. Ask about things like scoldings, time-outs, television, food, and any other details you want to be done a certain way, and make sure to ask in a neutral way which can’t lead the caregiver into giving a specific answer to tell you what you want to hear.
- Ask around. If other parents in the area have worked with this caregiver or company before, just ask them about it. Accounts of how a potential caregiver behaves from people who have personally worked with them are great ways of judging your compatibility with a potential caregiver.
- Pick someone long-term. Assuming you aren’t just hiring someone for a one time job, it’s a good idea to make sure a caregiver can stick with your child long-term if need be. Consistency is good for growing children, so having a good caregiver that occasionally watches them over a long time is good for their development. First, you need to make sure that the caregiver works for you and your children because if they aren’t going to work out in the short-term, they definitely won’t work long-term. The tips above have already covered techniques to find a suitable caregiver, so assuming you’ve already found someone who works for you and your kids you’ll need to move on to make sure they can commit to the long-term. Simply ask them about long-term, ask them to commit to watching your child when need be for a long period of time, like a year, and if they accept you’ll know they are good for the long-term.
Those techniques will all help you find someone to help care for your child whenever childcare is needed. Now go find Darwins leading childcare centres for your child so you can finally have some alone time to get done what needs to be done.
