May is Child Care Month – celebrate a child-care provider! (Photo credit: BC Gov Photos)
Not long ago I was talking with a new mom who is heading back to work a few hours each week. She’s an awesome mother and has been struggling with how to do “this parenting thing just right.” She shared that she had found the right day care provider but was still worried. “What if she doesn’t want to do things the way I want them done?”
No matter how wonderful your child care provider may be, there will be times you don’t understand one another 100%. Even if you’ve managed to hire Mary Poppins, you may, at times, disagree or not understand the other’s choices.
So how can you be certain that and your child’s other care providers remain more compatible than not?
Ask.
When it comes to our little ones, sometimes everything we know about calm, assertive communication goes right out the window. Work-life balance can bring out the “tired-guilty-I-want-to-be-two-places-at-once-monster” in the best of us!
Whether your childcare provider is a family member, a friend or manages a licensed day care facility you’ll have plenty of opportunities to work on your communication skills.
Here are three tips that may make it easier for you:
- Start with a positive. Choose something you like about the relationship, the care your child gets or any of the communications that seem 100% clear.
- Explain your concern simply and directly. “It’s really important that we keep nap time consistent, yet when I got home the other day she slept almost an hour longer than usual.”
- Ask for an explanation: “If something happened and she went down later than usual I need to know that. It helps me know if she is going through something that requires more sleep.”
