It’s hard for parents to drop their children off at daycare. It’s an act of faith. You have to believe that the center is going to keep your child safe, happy and healthy until you come to pick them up. It’s not always easy to place that type of trust in someone else.
Hard as it is, however, millions of parents use the daycare because they do not have another choice. You need to work, you need someone to watch your child, and this is the only way to accomplish both goals. Even when it feels like a risk, you have to do what you have to do for your family.
Unfortunately, this may lead to injury. In one study, for example, children who were between the ages of 6 months and 24 months old suffered 1.2 injuries per 100,000 children-hours when they were at home. When they were at daycare, this jumped to 2.5 injuries per 100,000 hours. Those may seem close, but you have to think of it as a rate that more than doubles. Your child is more than twice as likely to get hurt in a daycare center than they are at your house.
Care workers cannot prevent all injuries. Children just get hurt as they learn, grow and play. Part of the reason for the rise is statistics could be that they’re more likely to get hurt when they’re around other children, compared to when they’re home with just a parent.
Even so, these care workers cannot be negligent and allow these injuries to happen when they could have been prevented. If your child is hurt, you may be able to seek compensation that will help provide for their needs.
