How to Barter for Top Quality Child Care

The arrangements parents have made to accommodate child care are absolutely endless - night shift, split-shifts, part-time, flextime, job sharing. Your incentive for all this crazy scheduling is capturing the best child care that won't sink your checking account.

Top Quality Care

So what qualifies as top quality care? You probably want a comfortable, homey like environment where you child is safe, affectionately looked after, and socially stimulated. That means no sharp knives for playthings, screaming, and corporal punishment.

To match your child care selection with your personal expectations, you'll have to spend some time thinking about what your minimum requirements are. Make a list of what is important to both you and your child: playmates, activities, meals, and atmosphere. Compare your wish list to what you are actually considering and see if it meets top quality standards.

Forward and Free

If you want to couple top quality care with absolutely free care, then you need to consider being creative and forward with potential care givers.

Be judgmental; form opinions of the families in your child's classroom and if you find a family you're comfortable with consider asking them to swap child care. Bartering child care is an old practice with tremendous benefits. To get over the initial sensation of being too forward, initiate the relationship by offering to take a child in rather than sending your child out.

When you barter child care you get to bring other children into your family while sharing your own child with someone else. If you are careful in selecting your bartering partners, then your child will enjoy spending time in another home.

Family First

You may not agree with how you were raised, or how your sister is rearing her own family. But still, the exposure to family can be very special to children. If your family meets the criteria for top quality care, then you can add them to your list of absolutely free care givers.

When your child care needs go beyond an afternoon or occasional evening, however, you may need to rethink the absolutely free. That does not mean that you have to slip your mother cash every week; ask about bartering with family too. You can barter just about anything - time, food, knitting, driving.

Today's families are strapped for cash; there is orthodontics, insurance, recreation, fund raisers, and vacations. You can save a few dollars here and there if you get creative with your child care arrangements. In the end, you may have to use the traditional daycare system that lets working parents keep their jobs everyday. Nevertheless, every parent knows that child care situations are fluid and you need an entire toolbox of options to get you through because the dynamics are always changing.