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.