The Best Daycare Hacks: 20 Ways to Save Your Sanity As a Working Mom
Sending your kid to daycare isn’t always easy. The lost socks, the biting, the random events at 2 pm on Thursday. The goal: just make it as easy as possible on yourself. There’s no prize for being the most hardcore mom in your child’s preschool. So put away your pride, stand tall and use the 20 BEST daycare hacks I’ve learned from sending my kids to daycare for six years (and counting).
These tips will help you stay on the teacher’s good side, ease the daily transitions and keep track of all (ok, most) of your kid’s stuff.
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Always sign up for the paper plates, napkins or juice boxes
When a holiday is coming, keep an eye out for the party signup sheet. Your goal: be one of the first few lucky parents who can volunteer to bring juice boxes, plates, napkins or utensils. These items are all important to the party and very easy to get. You don’t have to worry about them being nut-free. They’ll keep for days or weeks. You can put them in your grocery order on Monday and they’ll be just fine by Friday. And if you forget (who hasn’t?) you can get these items at any drugstore on the route between your office and daycare.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Daycare Hack #1: Always sign up to bring juice boxes, plates, napkins or utensils to the class party. They’re easy to buy anywhere and don’t go bad! ” quote=”Daycare Hack #1: Always sign up to bring juice boxes, plates, napkins or utensils to the class party.”]
Be the First to Sign Up for Parent Teacher Conferences
The random 11 am parent-teacher conference is THE WORST. While you’re scanning the area for party sign-up sheets, also look for parent-teacher conference sign-ups. Do your best to snag the slot that aligns with the time you usually drop your kid off. It will add just 15 minutes to your daily drop-off routine instead of totally disrupting your day!
Labels With Your Last Name Only make Hand-me-downs Less Confusing
Recently, my younger child had bike day at her school. The helmet I sent used to belong to big sister, so it has big sister’s name on it – not the name of my younger daughter. This confused her teachers and she ended up having to wait until I arrived to sort it all out. If I had it to do over again, I’d just get a bunch of labels with our last name only! That way, there wouldn’t have been quite so much confusion – in theory – over hand-me-downs. The NameBubbles labels that we use are incredibly tenacious.
Ask to be Pushed Out the Door When Drop-Off is Tough
The “push out the door” method is the most effective technique for dealing with drop-off jitters gracefully. When your child isn’t feeling it and doesn’t want you to leave, ask him to push you out the door. Make a big production of falling forward when you get pushed. Lay it on thick. Your child will be giggling so much that they’ll forget to be sad. I’ve used this technique about eleventy billion times and it has never, ever failed.
Send a Picture For Separation Anxiety
Also on the topic of separation anxiety, my kids like to take an item to school to remind them of mom and dad. The problem with actual items is that they usually get lost sooner or later. Instead, we started drawing ridiculous stick-figure pictures of our family on small pieces of paper (index cards are great). The kids can put the picture in a pocket or backpack and carry it around all day at school. The best part – if the picture gets lost, it’s not an important work of great artistic genius! You can just draw another stick figure family the next day.
It’s OK to send them in pajamas!
You’re having one of those mornings. Your kid thinks you have all day to debate the finer points of toddler fashion. Forget it. Grab some clothes and shoes, and bring your kid to school in her pajamas. I promise it won’t be the first time the teachers have seen this, and it won’t be the last.
Printable Amazon Cards Make Awesome Last-Minute Teacher gifts
You want to thank your child’s teachers when you have a chance! We usually send something around the holidays, for teacher appreciation week, and when the child moves to the next class. The absolutely BEST last-minute present is a printable gift card from Amazon. You can actually put your kid’s picture on an Amazon gift card and print it at the office. Keep small note cards and envelopes in your desk for occasions like this. Write a heartfelt note, include the Amazon gift card with a cute picture of your child and you cannot go wrong!
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Daycare Hack #7: For last-minute teacher gifts, upload a picture of your kid to an Amazon Gift Card and print it out at the office. Add a heartfelt note and you are all set in about 5 minutes! ” quote=”Daycare Hack #7: For last-minute teacher gifts, upload a picture of your kid to an Amazon Gift Card and print it out at the office. “]
Sharpies + Colorful Tape are Great for Labeling
If you don’t want to deal with personalized labels, keep some colorful tape and permanent markers on hand for labeling things. My younger daughter’s infant room assigned each child a color and gave us a roll of painter’s tape to label all of their things. It’s a genius idea that we still use today.
Put All of the Closure Days on Your Calendar
Put the entire year’s off days into your calendar well in advance and set reminders. Otherwise, their random teacher workdays will sneak up on you and you’ll be scrambling for coverage the night before.
Needs Change
The type of childcare you want for a tiny baby will be different than what you want for a preschooler. Children grow so much before the age of 5 that their needs change almost constantly. That’s OK! When you’re choosing childcare for your infant, my advice is not to worry too much about the preschool program. If you can stay at the same place throughout your child’s daycare career that’s great. If not, that OK too.
When my kids were babies, I wanted a quiet, nurturing environment. I didn’t carry about the curriculum or how many preschoolers were reading. All I wanted was someone to hold my baby and be patient when she wouldn’t sleep or was the slowwwest bottle drinker on earth.
As they got older, suddenly the playground equipment mattered a lot more! I cared more about the type of programs they had. My daughter switched daycare a few times when we moved, which worked well because it allowed us to reassess her needs each time!
Close to Home is Ideal
When at all possible, pick a daycare that’s close to home. This makes it much easier to split the load evenly between both parents. When mom or dad is traveling or has a late meeting, the other isn’t scrambling to drive across town for pickup.
I also suggest finding medical providers close to home and daycare. That way you’re not driving back and forth a million times! If your child’s dentist is near your office, you’re driving back and forth four times. That’s a big waste of time! If the dentist is near daycare, you eliminate two trips.
Label Bottles Efficiently
I think I could write a whole book on this topic, but I’ll spare you. Here are the highlights:
- Keep a permanent name label on the bottle and the cap.
- In case you missed it, always label the cap.
- If your state requires a breastmilk label, get a stretchy rubber band label. That way you can put it on when you send breastmilk but it’s easy to remove if you send formula.
- If you’re pumping, note the date the milk was pumped in addition to today’s date. That way you can track which milk needs to be consumed quickly or frozen and which can be saved for the next day.
- I also labelled bottles #1, #2, #3 to make sure that older milk was consumed first. That way, I never NEVER had to throw away breastmilk. Not happening.
- If you combined multiple pumped dates, use the earliest.
Rely on the teachers and admins
Childcare providers have worked with a lot of children. They’re a great resource to reassure you or to help you identify a real developmental issue. Even if you have six kids, you have fewer data points than they do. Find providers you trust and go to them with concerns and questions. They know your child and they know children in general.
Find backup care before you need it
Do yourself a favor now and research backup care. Your child will get sick on the day you’re traveling to a client site and your husband has a big presentation. Bright Horizons offers backup care, and they’re located in cities across the United States. You can also research babysitting and nanny agencies, some of which offer emergency backup care from vetted childcare providers.
This is kind of like an emergency fund – start building it well before you need it and you’ll alleviate a ton of the stress of working parenthood.
Some teachers will babysit
Many teachers are up for babysitting after hours! This is a great arrangment because you know the teacher knows your child and has had required first aid, CPR and child development training. For me, the trust factor is huge. You will likely pay a premium for a daycare provider, but sometimes it’s worth it. Just make sure that your childcare facility allows this – some do and some don’t!
Find a place with food
If you’re not a stickler for free-range organic food, do yourself a huge favor and find a daycare that provides food. Life changing. We’ve been to a few that did provide food and a few that didn’t and nothing did more for my happiness than not having to worry about food. The freedom of arriving at daycare with only my child is heavenly. No bottles, no lunches, just the kid! The best.
If you don’t trust them, move
You will never get anything done at work if you don’t trust your daycare provider. If you find yourself unable to trust them after a month or so, it’s OK to move on. Your baby won’t remember switching. This is for your peace of mind. When my daughter was a baby, I wish I really didn’t like her first daycare. We ended up switching because we moved and they were much nicer. I was glad we moved because I probably wouldn’t have switched so soon otherwise.
Appreciate it
Appreciate daycare. As annoying as it may seem sometimes, as hard as it can be – it’s so much nicer than elementary school. There are great things about kids getting older, but sometimes I find myself longing for the good old days of 7 am to 6 pm daycare. No random holidays. No inexplicable early release days. No summer vacations to deal with. Trust me, you have it good with little kids. I know it’s hard to know that in the moment!
Be the Mom In the Know
Now that you know the best daycare hacks, you’ll be the best prepared mom on the block. These tips will save you countless time, energy and frustration! Try one out today.
