Seven Questions To Ask Your Child After Daycare

You have done the research. You have toured the facilities. You have chosen your daycare. Your child has attended for a few weeks. How do you know how things are going? Simply asking your child how their day was is not enough. You will need more information than "it was fine" to determine whether or not that center is the correct one for your child. Here are seven better questions you can ask every day.

1. Who did you play with today? The other children at the daycare are almost as important as the staff. Your child will play with them for hours and you want your child to be treated nicely. As you ask this every day, learn the names of the children. If you notice your child moving on from certain friends, double check to make sure nothing happened that you need to be aware of. If they say "I don't know" you can be more specific and ask things like who sat next to them at snack time. 

2. What is something good that happened? This will clue you in on the good things that are happening at the daycare center. You can interchange "good' with other words like interesting, weird, funny, silly, fun, etc. 

3. What is something bad that happened? Follow up with this question since it will help you know what is going on behind the scenes a bit. Most of the time it will be something small, but if something big comes up, contact the staff of the daycare center.

4. Who is your favorite staff member and what do they do when you are there? Find out who your child clicks with and what the staff are doing throughout the day. 

5. If you got to be a member of the staff, what would you do? Sometimes asking about specific people won't get you much information. This question requires a little creativity and may encourage your child to think a little harder about what is going on. 

6. When were you bored today? Every daycare will have some downtime and your child needs to learn to entertain themselves to some degree. However, if your child is always bored you may need to find out what activities are really going on throughout the day. You can also ask your child what their favorite part of the day is. 

7. What rules do they have? This question will help you know whether or not your child understands the rules. If your child is resisting them, it might be because they don't understand what is expected of them. That is a problem easily fixed. If your child feels the rules are unfair, dig deeper to see what is going on. Perhaps the daycare is too strict for your child and your family. 

Remember to avoid questions that have a simple "yes" or "no" response. Open-ended questions will give better results, though you will still have to do a little digging. You can also tell your child which questions you will ask after daycare and let them know that they can get a reward if they can answer them. Doing this will help you know what is going on and it will help your child know that you care. For more advice on helping your child get the most out of daycare, contact a company like Cottonwood Montessori.


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