NOVA daycares?

[SweetMother]

Any NOVA Moms know of any good, in-home (or conventional) daycares? We are in the VERY early stages of investigation here and not sure where to begin. Thanks!

We live in Sterling - I work in Fairfax City - my DH works in Arlington, so anything in those areas or on the way to/from would work.

[jh124]

I'm replying, since no one else has. We are south of you, in Fairfax County, so I'm not sure that I will be of any use.

We started with Kindercare. Sadly, care seems to vary from center to center and class to class, depending on directors and teachers. We loved our infant and toddler rooms, but the two year old room and older were not acceptable to us. We live directly behind the center and the comments that the teachers made to the children were horrible. Talk about emotionally abusive! We tried to work with the center, but in the end had to move.

We are currently with our second daycare center. Love it. There are some things I wish were different, but I think it will be like that regardless of where we send our child.

FWIW, I hear terrific things about Bright Horizons in Arlington. Quite the wait list, though. Here's a listing of places in Arlington:

http://www.arlingtondaycare.com/

Look around, talk to everyone, decide what is best for you. I found that the centers would not use cloth diapers, unless there was a bad diaper rash (and then only for a few days.) But I had a lot of other things I was more concerned about, so made peace with using disposies at daycare.