Are Your Child Ready for Daycare at Baby Centre?

What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever made? For moms, choosing the right age for daycare is definitely not an easy decision. While it is true that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ age, there are a number of pros and cons of starting your child at any age. However, it’s always your choice to whether keep your child home with you except for two or three afternoons a week when you teach or to put him in morning care, where he would have lunch there but would come home to nap.

So What Is The Best Age to Place One’s Child in Daycare at the Baby Centre? 

Starting your child at a baby centre is a personal decision and most of the time, it depends on factors such as your ability to take leave, financial stability or whether you have other available childcare options, such as relatives. For some parents, the right age for children to start nursery is determined by when they need or want to return to work after parental leave. For others, the right age comes much later and is based on helping your child socialise and further develop before starting formal education. You will also need to think about the best time to place your child in care and what sort of care will best suit your child as they grow older. 

Is It Ever Too Early for Daycare at the Baby Centre?

The best age to start preschool is largely dependent on the school your child attends and how your child responds to being separated from you. Some study state that starting your child in daycare too young may actually increase infant stress levels. In fact, most daycare centres will not take babies under 6 weeks of age, and many facilities are not equipped to handle the special needs of infants born prematurely or with special medical concerns.​

And if you are wondering about the minimum age for child care, it varies from centre to centre in Malaysia. Some of the baby centres allow babies as young as a few months old, but some centres only suitable for toddlers and older children only. Therefore, you need to find a daycare baby centre that is best suited to your child’s age and other requirements.

Is It Safe to Put My Baby at the Daycare Baby Centre?

Moms are supposed to take care of their baby but nevertheless, most nuclear families have working parents. In such a situation, it becomes difficult to stay at home and take care of the child, and the only option that parents are left with is to send their child to daycare baby centre. Even though some children do start nursery between 6 months to 1 year old, there is still a great debate about whether or not this is safe. The debate is intense, and previous generations of parents are sometimes more sceptical of entering children under the age of two into daycare baby centre.

It is often difficult to trust people with your child. Hence it is fundamental to check whether the centre is certified per state standards, has manageable group sizes, keeps transparent care and discipline policies, and allows parents to check in on kids easily. Besides, some people believe that daycare centres are best suited for children above 2 years old but whatever your decision might be, it’s important to keep your child’s safety as a priority.

Do Baby Centre Benefits My Tots?

Even though the daycare baby centre may not be ideal in bringing up your child, but it has huge benefits in long-run. In fact, getting the best baby centre enable your tots to engage and expose to a positive attitude while helping them to set a foundation for their future. Babies are able to learn to interact with others and getting one-on-one attention as well as being responsive. Furthermore, babies often need time to develop an attachment and trust in their caregivers which is a very important part of childhood development. As they start to explore the world around them, babies also need a clean and safe environment where many baby centres provide such an environment. On the other hand,  sending children to daycare can give moms more free time, which can reduce some of the stress in their lives. Moms will not have to worry whether their child is gaining all these benefits in daycare, such as better behaviour and emotional well-being.

When Do I Start To Look for Baby Centre?

Many moms hesitated on when to look for daycare providers during pregnancy. The fact that many high-quality childcare centres fill up quickly and have waiting lists is often a headache to moms. In such case, you can start scouting out daycares early before heading back to work. Through this, you can deal with any childcare problems before you are also taking care of a newborn, recovering from birth, and dealing with the emotions of returning to work.

Hence, the baby centre often can be more reliable than other forms of childcare. For example, if your child’s key worker is ill or on holiday, another staff member will simply step in instead of moms taking time off work. Alongside, the baby centre can help to nurture a child’s curiosity, early learning centre teachers use the child’s own interests and ideas to create activities that foster curiosity. It can’t be denied that children have an amazing ability to learn, especially between birth and five years old, and they do it by watching, listening and doing. Nevertheless, no matter what age you enrol your child in the baby centre, the first few days, and maybe even weeks, might be difficult. It’s important to focus on the fact that you and your child will get through it and going to daycare will eventually become the norm. As such, choosing to send your child to baby centre and return to work is another big decision. Even though it could be a painful experiment, but moms often hope to help their child to get some social interaction and expose to such an environment at the early stage.