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s a home-based day care provider, I am often asked for my best advice to help ease the “goodbye drama” that sometimes happens when a parent leaves his or her child at day care. For new parents, this is a big concern. Will my child cry? Will my child suffer? Will my child understand?

My answer is always the same, “It depends on your child’s age and it may actually be harder on you than on them.” Of course, this doesn’t mean your child won’t cry or cling onto you or sometimes even melt down for a moment, but it does mean that this transition from parent to child care provider or teacher is usually fleeting and absolutely dramatized.

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When I needed to find a daycare and a preschool for my girls, I spent days on Google, on the phone, and then visiting child care providers. I visited 16 centers before settling for the one that felt right for us. In this post I will share 10 tips that I hope will help you in your search for finding great and affordable child care.

1. Start your child care search early, as far as a year in advance, especially if you live in a concentrated urban area like Washington D.C. or San Francisco. This is even more important if you will be looking for an infant. It’s usually more difficult to find space for an infant than for a 3 or 4 year old because of the teacher-to-child ratio: for infants, you must have 1 teacher for 3-4 infants (depending on the State) but for a 4 year olds, it’s around 10.

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