Child Care
Your child deserves quality education from the start! The quality of child care has a direct impact on a child’s ability to learn, to build healthy relationships, and to become the best they can be.
Your child’s earliest experiences affect her brain development and lay the foundation for her future success. The most important of these experiences are provided by your parenting and the nurturing home environment you create, but other kinds of experiences, such as child care, can also influence her development. The use of child care (care outside a child’s home by a non-relative) has become increasingly common in the past twenty-five years. Such care is often essential for families where both parents work outside the home, and many other families choose to place their children in child care in an effort to better prepare them for school.
The decision to place your child in someone else’s care can be a cause for anxiety. As a parent, you may wonder about the effects that being cared for outside the family environment may have on your child. Additionally, the wide range of choices in type and quality of care can be confusing. There is good news for concerned parents: Careful research shows that parents have little reason to worry that Child Care will have negative effects. Even for very young children and children who spend relatively long hours in child care, the home environment continues to be the most important influence on development.
Types of Child Care
Child care can be divided into center-based care and home-based care. Child care homes generally care for a smaller number of children in the provider’s home, while centers serve a larger group in a non-home setting. When parents choose home-based care, it is usually for children under three. Because center-based care typically includes a greater emphasis on education, parents tend to prefer this type for older children.