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Parent’s Resource Guide: The prospect of helping a child to develop can be a daunting one. It’s a good idea to ensure you’re familiar with all the help options open to you.

Parent’s Resource Guide for Early Childhood Development

Early Learning Childcare Bedfordale

For early learning childcare, Bedfordale and Byford offer numerous options.

In what follows, we are not recommending any particular approach, as each family’s requirements and preferences will influence the final decision. This resource guide list is to simply highlight possibilities for consideration.

Pre-school home development

For many centuries, this was the only option for everyone other than the very wealthy. It remains reasonably popular today, with some children only starting external educational development at the time they start school – often at around the age of 5 or so.

There are some advantages. Logistically, parents don’t need to worry about getting their children to another location or ready to go out. Some children may feel more comfortable, in their earlier years, in the safe familiarity of home. It’s also true that some parents may wish to keep a degree of ‘hands-on’ control over the early development years of their offspring. Cost reduction might also be a factor.

However, based on the resource guide there are also some issues with this approach:

• children often benefit from early exposure to other children and environments. It helps develop their confidence and social engagement skills;
• for early learning childcare, Bedfordale and Byford offer establishments that are staffed by experienced and trained childcare professionals. Thanks to their background experience, they may have rich specialist skills to help with childhood development;
• parents occupied by household chores (or professional work) may find it difficult to find sufficient time to give to their children’s learning at home.

Nannies and related personalised home help

This can be extremely convenient and is often the easiest option in logistical terms. Many nannies are professionally trained and highly skilled individuals who dedicate themselves to childcare and development.

There are though, some very important factors to consider before going down this route.

The first is that the term “Nanny” can be used to mean different things. It might describe a highly trained professional but also it can be used for someone who is effectively providing home help and child-minding services. Remember that child-minding and nannying are two very different things. Child-minders may not be skilled in activities that help a child to develop.

Secondly, there is the issue of verification of a candidate’s identity, background and suitability for such a role. That becomes an exclusively parental responsibility.
Finally, experienced professional nannies can prove to be very expensive.

Daycare centres

Daycare centres can offer an environment where children are cared for and encouraged to develop in line with professional resource guide standards and under a structured approach. Drawing heavily upon their experience, they may provide a stimulating and fun environment for children to learn as they play.

That has been proven to be a factor in improving a child’s subsequent formal education once they enter school.

This is the domain within which the Byford Child Care Early Learning Centre operates.

Parents need to check though that the daycare centre they’re considering operates to recognised professional standards and has both suitably qualified personnel and a development ethos that they can share in advance of deciding to utilise their services.