Choosing Child Care: Safety, Quality and Costs – Ep. 95

Danette, we like to end our show with what we call a parenting prescription.

So for a parent who's overwhelmed by this decision and worried about choosing the quote unquote wrong childcare situation, what's the one piece of advice that you'd want them to walk away with?

I always had for my families the website direct to our Child Care Aware for Washington State.

And there's a Child Care Aware in every state.

So you can go to the national website and find yours.

And a whole third of their website is for parents.

How do you choose what situation might be right for you and what should you consider? Like you talked about, Edith.

Nanny, small in-home care.

relative, childcare center, all of those.

And then they also have a wonderful checklist that the pediatricians who understand early care and education were able to collaborate with them about.

And I've put that complicated email address on a reference for you to share with your listeners and watchers.

But you can print off sheets that's a childcare checklist, no matter what situation you're kind of looking at.

And use that to kind of go through and reassure yourself and help you sort among your choices.

And before we leave, my gosh, we are ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that childcare, especially for the younger kids.

is astronomically expensive.

And how do you access that? How do you pay for the quality you know your child deserves? And Child Care Aware also often can link you to your state's resources for those subsidies and or finding you that situation that may be in your price range because they keep a good catalog of all the situations in your area.

So they help you find it, they help you understand what you should look for, and they help you test it with their checklists.

So definitely go to Child Care Aware.

The AAP also has these things in nice, beautiful monographs on healthychildren.org. And I put those on that resource as well to kind of go through and help families find that situation or understand how important health and safety is.

infectious diseases, all of that.

Yeah.

And we will put those in the show notes.

And we're so, so grateful for all the information you've given us on the show, as well as those additional resources.

So thank you so much, Dr. Danette Classy, for joining us today.

You bet.

Danette, we like to end our show with what we call a parenting prescription.

So for a parent who's overwhelmed by this decision and worried about choosing the quote unquote wrong childcare situation, what's the one piece of advice that you'd want them to walk away with?

I always had for my families the website direct to our Child Care Aware for Washington State.

And there's a Child Care Aware in every state.

So you can go to the national website and find yours.

And a whole third of their website is for parents.

How do you choose what situation might be right for you and what should you consider? Like you talked about, Edith.

Nanny, small in-home care.

relative, childcare center, all of those.

And then they also have a wonderful checklist that the pediatricians who understand early care and education were able to collaborate with them about.

And I've put that complicated email address on a reference for you to share with your listeners and watchers.

But you can print off sheets that's a childcare checklist, no matter what situation you're kind of looking at.

And use that to kind of go through and reassure yourself and help you sort among your choices.

And before we leave, my gosh, we are ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that childcare, especially for the younger kids.

is astronomically expensive.

And how do you access that? How do you pay for the quality you know your child deserves? And Child Care Aware also often can link you to your state's resources for those subsidies and or finding you that situation that may be in your price range because they keep a good catalog of all the situations in your area.

So they help you find it, they help you understand what you should look for, and they help you test it with their checklists.

So definitely go to Child Care Aware.

The AAP also has these things in nice, beautiful monographs on healthychildren.org. And I put those on that resource as well to kind of go through and help families find that situation or understand how important health and safety is.

infectious diseases, all of that.

Yeah.

And we will put those in the show notes.

And we're so, so grateful for all the information you've given us on the show, as well as those additional resources.

So thank you so much, Dr. Danette Classy, for joining us today.

You bet.