How did you find daycare?

[ZoeyZoo]

In my area there are very few day care centers and preschools.... and they are all waitlisted. I really need to get dd into some child care ASAP. I'm trying to find out how people discovered other forms of childcare such as WAHMs?

[moonyoungi]

My children go to a wonderful family childcare. They have 14 children max. I found this through a referral from a mom that I hung out a lot at our local park.

I think it could be helpful if you ask around through your local LLL or local mother's group, if there is one.

Good Luck!

[bobandjess99]

the newspaper, craigslist (obviously, check them out very thouroughly), signs up at church, word of mouth from friends/family, the phone book, google search, signs in front of house as you drive by, signs up at the grocery store if they have a little place for signs.

[JessieBird]

Yellow pages - it was the last place I thought to look but this is how I found our perfect care situation. Before that, I followed up on classified ads on kijiji, craigslist, posters at the grocery store, online directories, that sort of thing. I even knocked on doors of houses that just looked like they might be daycares (I was usually right!), or googled the address to see if I could find a phone number or other info.

When searching like this, leave no stone unturned and go visit every place you can even if you get a bad first impression of their ad or phone manners. The biggest lesson I learned in looking for daycare is that the perfect situation for your child may come in the most unlikely form and situations you might have thought you'd be totally opposed to can in fact turn out to be perfect. I found it to be a stressful and exhausting exercise but humbling experience... in a very good way.

[*MamaJen*]

I've found great in-home daycares through work of mouth or Craigslist. On Craigslist, childcare is under the community tab on the top left corner of the page. It took me forever to realize that.