Opinions Wanted!!

[Mommy of 2]

I have been in childcare for about four years now and I am currently looking into starting my own early learning center in my hometown in Kentucky! I wish to have feedback from parents and guardians on what they think of a center that caters to children from infancy to two years of age. (kind of like a nursery school) The center will be Christian and will implement curriculum that will help children develop social, emotion, physical, and mental skills that gives them a solid foundation for preschool and kindergarten.
How this varies from traditional daycare, is the fact that the center will only care for children 2 years old and under. Please tell me what you think! Criticism welcome!

[lblanke]

I like the idea of it, but I probably would not sign up for it myself because I don't really like a lot of change and would not want my child to have to transition twice. I think the biggest challenges parents would face would 1) parents who like a place generally want to stay until school age and not have their kid transition at age 2 and 2) parents with 2 or more kids who are different ages will have to have 2 places for child care, which is a pain in the neck.

[Thriftylady]

I like the idea of it, but I probably would not sign up for it myself because I don't really like a lot of change and would not want my child to have to transition twice. I think the biggest challenges parents would face would 1) parents who like a place generally want to stay until school age and not have their kid transition at age 2 and 2) parents with 2 or more kids who are different ages will have to have 2 places for child care, which is a pain in the neck.

As a childcare provider and parent I agree with above. Once a child has been with the same caregiver for two years, it can be hard to just "move on" to another caregiver. As a childcare provider, I will tell you that bringing in a two year old it takes time to get to know them, them to get to know you and everyone (provider, child, parents) fell comfortable with each other.

On the other hand the one thing you would have going for you it is hard to find infant care, as many providers fill those spots with siblings of already enrolled children. One thing you would have going against you is you can typically take less children if all are infants and the second thing against you is most parents won't want to drop a toddler off at care provider A and infant off at care provider B. Mornings are tough for everyone, and everyone is looking to make them easier.

[Febby]

I don't know which part of Kentucky you're in, but in my area, infant is relatively easy to find. Everyone here is after preschool and pre-k slots!

If you're opening a center, ratios are lower for younger children than older children, so you'll have more staff than if you enrolled older children. Infants have a ratio of 1:5, toddlers (one year olds) have a ratio of 1:6, and two year olds have a ratio of 1:10. Maximum group size is double ratio. So a room could only have 10 infants in it, 12 toddlers, or 20 two year olds. And that's without STARS being a factor.

And, keep in mind, that infants and toddlers cannot be combined with "preschool" (ages 2-5) children for more than one hour total per day in centers (both type I and type II). That includes rest times and outside times. So, you would always have to have those two groups separated, even if enrollment was low.

Also, something that a lot of smaller centers struggle with, infant and toddler rooms cannot be part of the "general traffic" of a center. What that ends up meaning, is that parents/etc. should not have to walk through an infant/toddler room in order to get to another room. You can have doors between rooms, as long as you don't have to use that door in order to get to the other room.