Appropriate Age for Your Baby to Go to Daycare

Appropriate Age for Your Baby to Go to Daycare

May 01, 2021

Centers involved in offering infant daycare accept babies six weeks or older. Besides considering when to begin daycare for your child, it is essential to learn about the different options available and the pros and cons of each. You may want to look for some things when interviewing daycare candidates from infant daycare in Cypress. You may even consider beginning the process of interviewing candidates even before your baby is born to secure a prime daycare spot.

When Can Children Start Daycare?

Personal decisions depending on many factors, determine when your baby can start daycare. They are:

  • The duration of your parental leave.
  • The ability of your partner to obtain leave.
  • Your financial responsibilities.
  • Whether you have family members who can care for your child.

Babies can start daycare at six weeks, but many experts admit waiting for a more extended period is better. The waiting time allows you to establish a secure attachment with your child. It is also beneficial to complete the umbilical cord’s healing besides figuring out feeding and sleeping patterns before adjusting to a new life altogether.

Many daycare centers do not accept babies under six weeks because they cannot manage the special needs of babies born prematurely or with unique medical concerns. However, there are ways to ensure newborns receive excellent care while you are at work. You can consider in-home care providers from Montessori schools in Cypress, TX, family members, nannies, et cetera.

Types of Daycare Centers to Consider

Several choices are available when choosing a daycare center for your baby. You must understand centers providing care to groups of children are reluctant to accept babies under six weeks, while some daycare centers even take younger babies.

Let us look at the options available to you.

Child-Care Centers

Child-care centers supervise and care for children at their facility in groups of infants and children often divided by age. Child-care centers are an optimally formalized child-care option because they have fixed pickup and drop-off times, regulations about whether parents can leave sick children at daycare, and extra fees for some services. Furthermore, some child-care centers only provide full-time care.

Family Child Care Homes

Family child care homes are also known as in-home daycare with settings similar to a child-care center because your baby will be in a group setting. However, the care they receive at the provider’s is less structured than a child-care center. You may prefer this arrangement because the structure is homelike to child-care centers.

Babies thrive in situations when they get one-on-one care from a single caregiver making in-home care ideal when confronting a challenging situation. Caregivers in in-home care respond to baby’s needs faster because of the smaller number of babies every caregiver handles.

Nannies

Your infant receives care in your home from nannies. They can either be live-in nannies or arrive daily or on an as-needed basis. Nannies provide your child more one-on-one attention and personalized activities according to your preferences.

Unfortunately, hiring nannies is perhaps the most expensive method of arranging care for your infant. You pay more for the personalized attention your child receives. You can consider sharing nannies with another parent to care for both children in one of your homes. The sharing allows you to cut down the costs by half if you manage to find someone willing to share nannies with your child.

The Age of Your Child

Your child’s age and responsibilities are essential determinants choosing a daycare for the baby besides other duties mentioned above. If you can afford the services of a nanny by yourself, you can begin daycare at any time before six weeks.

The present circumstances have brought people unprecedented challenges, with the Covid-19 pandemic compelling many parents to work from home. Working from home enables parents to avoid commuting to and from the workplace, providing them more time at home. However, it also brings upon them the responsibility of managing work and babies simultaneously. Many parents of newborns are not accustomed to this situation and may find it better to consider daycare for their babies sooner than expected.

The best age for a child to go into daycare is six weeks and above. However, if the situation demands it and parents have the resources, they can look for one of the options mentioned in this blog for their baby.

 

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