Why Checking Daycare References is a Good Idea

Oh, boy does being a parent bring a lot of choices your way. On top of having to provide for and care for your child, you’re constantly put into situations where you need to make sure that you’re making the best possible choice. This can be tricky, and that’s exactly why you should be taking a look at daycare references. 

Whether you’re looking for daycare Northville MI or daycare in Truth or Consequences, AZ, you deserve to know exactly how you can get the best possible daycare experience for your child. They deserve to have a good time in daycare, and you deserve to know that they’re in good hands.

But what exactly are daycare references? How does one check them? If you’re new to doing this kind of thing, odds are you’re more than a little bit confused about what you should be doing here if you want to make sure that you’re doing it right.

We’ve decided to write this article specifically to help people just like you make sure that they’re handling this situation to the best of their ability. By making sure that you take your time and do this right, you can be sure that you’ll give your child the best possible chance for their future. 

What Are Daycare References? 

If you’re new to this whole “finding a good daycare” thing, you may or may not understand exactly what a daycare reference is. That’s totally ok, we’ve all gotta start somewhere. Fortunately, this topic actually happens to be pretty simple to explain. 

Daycare references are a lot like the references that you have to give to jobs when you apply for them. These usually include things like:

• Testimonials from parents that have used this particular service.
• Reviews of their service.
• Any professional references from other daycares or the school district. 

These can come in a lot of different forms, but we’ll be covering that in more detail later on. The most important thing to know is that daycare references can give you a good amount of detail about how other parents have felt about this program. 

Sometimes you can even get references from the school district, which is fantastic because school districts want to be sure that everyone enrolled is going to get ahead. It helps make their district look better if a lot of people came out of it that are doing well in life. 

Why Are Daycare References Important?

Parents have a lot of things that they have to do for their children and for themselves, which means that in a lot of cases they don’t have a lot of free time. Because of this, they have to be selective about what they actually spend that time on. 

On an average day, parents (or guardians, we understand that some situations aren’t quite so traditional. That’s what makes us all so unique!) will have to:

• Clean their house.
• Go to work.
• Make sure their child is fed and cleaned.
• Figure out daycare situations.
• Balance their checkbook.
• Cook food for themselves and their children.

The list on some days can go on and on and on. You’re busy when you’re a parent, so that begs the question “is it really worth my time to look at references for daycare places? Can’t I just pick one that looks good and move on?”

Looking at references is actually very important, and that’s because you can’t really know for sure how good a certain daycare is unless you see what other parents have said about it. There are a lot of things that you could just not know about without these kinds of references.

Of course, if a daycare facility is caught doing something especially heinous, it will appear on the news and you’ll easily be able to find it. If they were caught doing something bad enough they might even be closed down permanently for it.

But, what about the smaller transgressions that aren’t newsworthy? Imagine sending your child to a daycare center to find out later that the people running the daycare center have terrible customer service. That’s just about the best-case scenario for a bad daycare center.

Worse cases can have employees that are mean to children, but not to the point that they get in trouble, or they could even not be actually teaching your children anything. That kind of defeats the purpose of enrolling your child into a daycare program in the first place. 

Most parents seek out daycare because daycare centers are able to provide what’s commonly referred to as “educational enrichment” and without even providing that much a daycare definitely isn’t worth whatever they’re charging. Most parents agree that a good daycare program should help prepare their children for the academic career they have ahead of them.

If you just pick a daycare based on what looks good, you won’t be able to see if the daycare you’re looking at is going to have any major issues. This is incredibly important if you want to make this the easiest process possible without having to waste more time on it than you need to. 

Checking the references of a daycare center is a lot more time-efficient than crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. Not checking the references first can lead you into an uphill battle for ensuring that your child is getting what they need.

Sometimes it could even result in you having to start this process over from the beginning, which isn’t much better and will end up eating up a lot of your time. Just look over the references and you can be sure that you’re making a good choice with much less hassle. 

How to Find Daycare References

Now that we’ve made it through most of the article, we think that it’s important to make sure that our readers understand exactly how they can go about getting this information. It’s actually really easy to do, you just need to have an idea of what you’re doing. 

Here are the easiest ways to accomplish this:

Check online.

A lot of people like writing reviews about their experiences with businesses. You can easily find these reviews on websites like:

• • • The daycare’s website.
    • Facebook.
    • Yelp.
    • LinkedIn.
    • Google.
    • Childcare.gov

Ask the daycare for their references.

Some places just don’t have a big online presence, and for those places, you might just have to ask them directly for their references. Most daycares that have their references in physical form are happy to provide this information to you.

Ask your parent friends.

Other parents would know which daycares are good and bad, so you can definitely get recommendations from them. This one is especially useful if you know parents of kids that are already past daycare age. 

There are a lot of places where you could find information about daycares, and the references for specific daycares are just about everywhere if you know how to look for them. All it really takes is an internet connection and a basic understanding of how the internet works to do so. 

Why is Daycare Important Anyway? 

Some of you have probably read this entire article and wondered what the point of sending your child to daycare is in the first place. It’s understandable, not every parent has been exposed to a whole lot of information about daycares.

Most child psychologists agree that sending your child to a good daycare program can help them out in a lot of ways for the rest of their academic career. This is because daycare centers are able to give your child a headstart on learning. 

This head start isn’t just for learning things like math and English, but also for things like social skills. It also gives your child the ability to build up their immune system at the same time. All of these things are fantastic for growing minds. 

On top of all of the benefits children have for daycares, it also gives you as a parent an opportunity to do all the things that you need to do with your day without having to worry about if your child is being properly taken care of. 

Because of the benefits that daycare provides both for the child and for the parent, it makes sense that so many experts tout daycare centers as something that should be used by every parent. It’s not often that you can find things that help both you and your child. 

Get The Best Daycare Possible

When it comes to picking out a good daycare, you have to make sure that you’re doing the research. Without that critical step, you could end up with something that’s less than great for your child, and that’s a waste of your money and your child’s time. 

Fortunately, the internet has made this task a lot easier. All you need to do is look and you can find all sorts of references for daycare centers so you can be sure that you’ll get everything that you and your child will need from a specifical program.