Questions to Ask on a Daycare Tour (From Moms Who Forgot)

The best daycare tour questions are the ones you’d otherwise think of in the car afterwards. So the club built its list backwards, out of regrets: every question a mom wished she’d asked, grouped so you can work through them in the order a tour actually happens. Twenty-four questions, five groups — staff, the daily routine, naps and feeding, sickness and safety, then money. Ask the ones that matter to your family, skip the rest, and write the answers down while you’re still standing there.

How to use this on an actual tour

A tour is fifteen to forty minutes, usually with a baby on your hip and a director walking backwards while talking. You will not remember anything. The club’s method:

• Pick eight to ten questions before you go. Not twenty-four. Mark the ones that would actually change your decision.
• Keep them on your phone. A screenshot of this list in your camera roll survives a hands-full morning better than anything you meant to print.
• Write answers on the spot, in your notes app, in the room. Ratios and staff-turnover answers blur together after two tours.
• Tour two places minimum. The first tour teaches you what to ask; the second is where you actually learn something.
• Ask the same questions everywhere, so you’re comparing answers rather than impressions.

Group 1: Staff, ratios and turnover

1. What is the ratio in my baby’s room, and how many children are in it at full capacity?
2. Who are the primary teachers in that room, and how long have they been here?
3. What’s staff turnover been like in the last year? (Ask it plainly — the pause before the answer tells you as much as the answer.)
4. Who covers the room at open, close, and when a teacher is out sick?
5. What training do teachers have in infant CPR and safe sleep, and how often is it refreshed?

Group 2: What a normal day actually looks like

6. Walk me through a full day in this room, from drop-off to pickup.
7. How much of the day is outside, and what happens to that in bad weather?
8. How do you handle a baby who cries for a long stretch — what does a teacher actually do?
9. How do I hear about the day: an app, a paper sheet, a conversation at pickup?
10. Can I visit or call during the day, and are there times you’d rather I didn’t?

Group 3: Naps, bottles and diapers

11. Where do babies sleep, and what does the room look like during nap — dark, dim, lit?
12. Do you follow my baby’s schedule or the room’s, and what happens when those disagree?
13. What happens if my baby won’t sleep, or wakes after twenty minutes?
14. How are bottles handled — storage, warming, labelling, and what you do with what’s left?
15. When and how do you move to solids, and who decides the timing?
16. How many diaper changes should I expect, and do I supply diapers and wipes or do you?

Naps are where the most disappointment lives, because a licensed room can rarely be as dark or as quiet as a nursery. Ask what’s realistic rather than what’s ideal, then plan around the answer — that’s the whole premise of syncing home and daycare naps. It also helps to walk in knowing how naps are usually spaced at each age, so you can tell a normal answer from an odd one.

Group 4: Sickness, closures and safety

17. What are the exclusion rules — what temperature or symptom sends a baby home, and how long must they stay out?
18. How quickly do you call, and who do you call first?
19. How many days are you closed a year, and when? (Holidays, training days, the week between Christmas and New Year.)
20. What happens in a snow day, a power cut, or an unexpected closure?
21. How do people get in the building, and who is allowed to collect my child?

Whatever the answer to 17 is, it will apply to you sooner than you think — usually in the first month. Get your backup childcare plan written before your start date rather than during your first 6am phone call.

Group 5: Money, contracts and the waitlist

22. What is the full monthly cost, and what’s not included — registration, supplies, late fees, meals?
23. How much notice do I give to leave, and what’s the deposit and refund policy?
24. Where am I on the waitlist, how does it move, and what would I need to pay to hold a spot?

Ask 22 as an itemised question rather than a number question. The club’s most common cost surprise wasn’t the tuition — it was the extras that arrived attached to it.

The five minutes in the car afterwards

Before you drive off, write three things down: how the room sounded, whether the teachers spoke to the babies or over them, and whether anyone made eye contact with your baby rather than with you. Every club mom who ignored a tour that ticked every box but felt wrong regretted it. Every mom who trusted a plain building with warm, unhurried teachers did not.

Then put your decision date in the calendar and make it, because the spot doesn’t wait — which is exactly why childcare is the first deadline in the back-to-work playbook.

Daycare naps in, a plan out Betteroo builds tonight's bedtime around your baby's age and the naps the room actually gave them. Take the 2-minute sleep quiz →

Heard in the club: “I asked twenty questions about safety and forgot to ask how many days a year they close. It’s fourteen. I found out in October.”

FAQ: daycare tour questions

What are the most important questions to ask on a daycare tour?

If you only ask five: the room ratio at full capacity, how long the current teachers have been there, what happens when a baby won’t nap, the exact sickness-exclusion rules, and the full monthly cost including extras. Those five change decisions more often than anything else on the list.

How many daycares should I tour?

At least two, and the club’s advice is to treat the first as practice. You learn what to ask by asking badly once. Three is plenty; touring more than that tends to produce comparison paralysis rather than a better choice.

Should I bring my baby to a daycare tour?

If you can leave them, do — you’ll hear more. If you can’t, bring them and accept you’ll catch about half the answers, which is exactly why the questions go on your phone and the answers get typed in the room rather than remembered.

Is it rude to ask about staff turnover?

No, and the good centres expect it. Turnover is the single question that most reliably predicts what your baby’s days will feel like, because consistency of caregiver is what a room’s warmth is actually made of. Ask it directly and listen to how comfortable the answer sounds.