The first “don’t” of home daycare is don’t take on every family that calls looking for care for their children. I know is it tempting when you are first starting or you have a vacancy that you really need to fill to accept children from any and every call that comes in. What you need to remember is that you will have to spend many hours a day with these children and you will have to deal with the parents on a daily basis. You absolutely must have a face-to-face interview with every family (including children) before you agree to take them on. This will allow you to get a feel for the children’s behavior and the personality of the parents. If you have reservations after meeting them, you should probably turn them down so it doesn’t lead to a difficult situation later on. It is necessary to actually like and enjoy the children and families you work with in order to run a successful home daycare.
The second thing you should NOT do in starting and running your childcare business is do not allow parents to run the show! This is your business and you are in charge. If you let them some parents will try to dictate everything from your daily schedule to the format of your contract! Only you can decide how to best structure your business and you need to be firm with parents about this. It is certainly going to happen (trust me) that parents will make special requests. It is up to you to decide which ones to honor and which to refuse. Don’t worry about losing clients because you can’t or won’t honor a request they have made. The way you run your business should complement your personality, lifestyle, and the needs of your family. So you need to make business decisions with those things in mind. If a parent chooses to go elsewhere for care because you can’t or won’t honor a special request, then it is probably best that they do.
A Third no-no in running a successful childcare business is structuring every minute of the day. Most children come to daycare looking to have fun. I have found that the children prefer large chunks of time set aside for unstructured playtime. They want to be able to choose which toys to use and what activity to do. The best thing for you to do is provide them with a wide variety of activities and toys and allow them to make choices of what to do and when. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have a daily schedule. You need to provide a consistent schedule so children know what to expect. But within that schedule allow at least a couple of large time chunks for unstructured playtime.
The final thing you shouldn’t do is you should NOT let your home daycare run your life. This is very important! If you are able, it is best to have a designated daycare area. That leaves the rest of your house to be, well, your home. If you can’t designate a daycare area, you need to be firm with the children you care for regarding rules for clean-up and areas in which they are allowed to play. If you have children of your own it is essential that they don’t feel that everything of theirs is also used for daycare. Let your children choose a few special items that cannot be used by the daycare. Also, make sure your daycare children clean up everything before they go. Otherwise you and your family spend your family time doing daycare clean-up. Be firm with parents regarding pickup time and write a stiff financial penalty into your contract for late pickup. You need to end your daycare day at the same time each day, just like you would in a 9-5 job. Don’t let daycare take over your home or your family time.
Home childcare can be a rewarding profession or it can be a nightmare. By keeping in mind and following through with these four ways NOT to run a home daycare, it is much more likely that you will create a successful and fulfilling business.
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