You may be asking yourself why you need a guide to finding great daycare when there are AI tools available that can provide you with information more closely tailored to your family’s situation. Fair point. The main challenge with AI tools like Chat GPT is knowing the right questions to ask. A second challenge is knowing the ways to tailor your questions to get the best information for your situation.
With that in mind, I’ve provided some suggestions for Chat GPT questions that are similar to some of the questions in this guidebook. Following those questions, are attributes or modifiers you could add to your questions to make the answers more specific to your situation.
Daycare quality
- What are the components of daycare quality?
- How can you tell if a daycare is high-quality?
- What makes a child care program good academically?
- How can I tell if a child care center is doing a good job caring for my baby?
- How can I tell if a daycare isn’t safe?
- What are the red flags of a daycare that show it is dangerous?
- What should a child care program do to prepare young children for school?
Types of child care
- What are the benefits and drawbacks of center-based child care?
- What are the benefits and drawbacks of home-based child care?
- What are the benefits and drawbacks of having a nanny?
- What is the difference between preschool and child care?
- What is Montessori?
- What is Reggio Emilia?
Searching for child care
- Where can I find child care near me?
- What are the components of licensed child care?
- Where can I find a list of licensed child care?
- How do I search for child care?
Touring child care programs
- What should I look for when touring a child care program?
- What are red flags of a low-quality daycare?
- What questions should I ask a daycare teacher to know if a child care program is good?
- Should I be concerned if a child care program seems chaotic?
- How to tell if a daycare is well run?
Choosing a child care program
- What type of child care program is the best for my family?
- What do most parents care about when choosing a child care program?
Paying for child care
- What is the average cost of child care?
- How much should I budget for child care?
- What is the total cost of child care for one child?
- How much does after school child care cost?
- What tax breaks are there for child care?
- How do I manage my child care FSA?
Transitioning in
- How can I make my child’s transition into child care as easy as possible?
- What challenges are there when transitioning into a new daycare?
- How can I help my child stop crying when I drop them off at daycare?
Below are a list of modifiers you ca add to the above questions to get more tailored responses from Chat GPT. Not all of these modifiers will make sense for each question, but for most questions you’ll probably want to add at least one modifier.
For example, for the question “What is the average cost of child care?” you’ll get a better response by adding modifiers related to the type of child care, your child’s age, and your location. A better question is then, “What is the average cost of a child care center for a toddler in Columbus Ohio?”
- Location: city, region, state
- Age: infant or baby, toddler, preschoolers, school age child
- Type of care: child care center or center-based care, family child care or home-based child care, preschool, school-based child care, pre-k or early learning program