Thinking of opening a daycare? One of the more difficult tasks will be setting the parents expectations on how the day to day rules pan out. It is very much an “art” and you have to work with each parent separately, based on their personality.

Setting expectations and laying out your rules is critical to your long term success. You have to be firm yet sensitive not to create tension. You will see the parent’s everyday and having a good ongoing relationship is key. Remember that this is your daycare, your house, your business so don’t be shy when it comes time to laying down the law. You have to be firm and okay with hurting people’s feelings once in a while.

For example, late pickups, late checks and rules with sick kids were an ongoing issue for me.

An Example

One of my longest term parents, who I had a great relationship with, and cared for their boy for almost my entire 3 year career were lackadaisical with paying and picking up their boy on time. My cutoff was at 6:00. The wife was a successful doctor and the husband a pharmaceutical salesman who had the job of both picking up and dropping off their child. I rarely ever saw the wife.

The late checks where annoying but I knew they were good for it and the dad was just disorganized and simply forgot. However the late pickups where terrible and for me far worse than the checks coming in 2 or 3 days late. After a long day, I wanted my break and to get all of the kids out of my house. Those 10 or 20 minutes of watching the clock really burned me.

Just about every time he was late he was really sorry and just mentioned traffic and the doctors he calls, will sometimes only see him at the end of the day, etc. I had no idea how to handle this. I didn’t want to do the $1 per minute thing that the daycare centers sometime do. But, I didn’t want this just to go on and on and he was late about once per week.

I did mention the $1 late thing, that, by the way was in my contract, and he was annoyed. I tried to reason with him and though he understood he just could not promise that he would be on time every day due to his job. In a way I appreciated his honesty though I didn’t like what he was telling me. He presented his “case” almost like a take it or leave it and that he would be late – there was nothing he could do to change it.

One late Friday night, spurred the climax of this issue. It was a beautiful evening and we we’re planning on meeting some friends for dinner and he was a full 30 minutes late! which put us back considerably. This was towards my “retirement” and I was getting really burned out. Out of desperation, I called his wife to try to reason with her. She of course had no idea this was going on as he had not told her a thing (she worked something like 80 hours a week). She freaked and apparently, as my husband’s says “dropped the hammer” on him.

He and I where never the same and though they did stick around our relationship was badly bruised as I think he felt betrayed that I “tattled” on him. And despite the drama, he was still late about once a week or so, but would no longer apologize.

Maybe I should have done the late fee, maybe not. They were good customers, all in all and their boy was excellent. He was such a little angel. He was a very happy child that really took to me and the rest of the children. Had he been high maintenance I would have been more firm and charged the fee though I would have lost them as a client. So, despite getting walked on a little bit I still think I did the right thing.

Tania Rauth. Author of “Start Daycare – Develop Twitch” More information on running a daycare at starting a daycare or how to run a daycare or opening a daycare.

You need to establish structure before you interview applicants, in this way; you can control of the interview and can gain all the information that you to in order to come up with a good decision.

There lots of things that you need to consider in making a structured interview, this is what you need to do, greeting and nonverbal assessment, brief conversation, 5-10 warm up questions, 20 behavioral questions, clarify concerns, ask for references, tell them to weigh things out and call them, make an handshake and say goodbye. Move to the next interviewers until the process is complete.

In order for you to effectively conduct the interview, you need to be prepared ahead of time. There are questions that you need to ask yourself in order to effectively establish a structure interview. Who will conduct the interview? How many applicants will be interviewed? What format of interview will you use (series, face to face, panel, sequential, group)? How much time will you allocate for each interview? What will be the questions that you will ask your applicants?

Yes, an applicant will arrive in time, properly dressed up, that would be great, but of course, you can’t just base it with that. You need to assess their non-verbal cues. Look on how your applicant sits during the interview. Are the applicants taking note or just drawing? Yes, there are applicants who do not pay attention with the interviewer, so you need to check out the behaviors of your applicants.

Ask the experiences of your employees; make sure that they have dealt with kids before. If you are seeking for caregivers, it is best that they have done babysitting before. If you are seeking for teachers, make sure that they have enough experiences and expertise in order to assure that the kids will learn from them.

Clarify and confirm information about the applicant’s education and work history. The applicant should competent enough for the position; you need to see to it that the applicant before hiring him/her is good enough for the position. The applicant must have the patience and compassion for kids.

Learn more see: How to start your own daycare center

Dolson McArt – Author of: How to Interview Potential Employees for Your Daycare
Contributing to EzineArticles.com since March 2007.

As soon as your daycare becomes successful, you can expand it out. In expanding, you need to hire assistants to assist you with all the works in your facility. But, of course, you need to be extra careful in hiring people for your facility. There are steps you need to consider to make sure that you’ll be hiring the right people.

You do not have to be very strict in terms of experience; you can try out applicants with not much experience provided that they have references from the families that they have babysat before. You can check out if all the information they provide you is true by conducting background check on them.

You have to look for staffs that are willing to work for you for long period of time. So, you really have to assure if these persons are truly interested in working with your facility. Since, changing staffs every now and then can make parents feel that there is something fishy going on in your daycare center. Take note, instability is not good for children under your care.

Avoid misunderstandings from your staffs; you have to explain everything to them. Let your staffs know all the details about your daycare. Before they begin working, you have to make sure that they know all the details including the rules and regulations in your center. You do not have to be afraid of repeating yourself over and over again because you have to make sure that you will not miss anything.

You have to watch your employees for the first month that they are working for you. You have to check out if they can work well with kids. Check out if they have the patience and compassion with kids. If things didn’t turn out well, don’t hesitate to fire your employees.

For more Info see: How to start a daycare Center

Dolson McArt – Author of: How to Hire Help for Your Daycare

Contributing to EzineArticles.com since March 2007.