What is the Measure of Your Success?

Here's a transcript of my podcast, "What is the Measure of Your Success?"

Welcome! I’m Tom Copeland. Thanks for listening.

This show is about the business side of child care and is for family child care providers and those who work in child care centers.

Today, I’m talking about “What is the Measure of Your Success?”

How do you know if your family child care program or your child care center is a successful experience for the children in your care?

More importantly, how does a parent looking for child care know that their child will succeed if they enroll in your child care program?

The simple answer is that the measure of success of your program is how well the children succeed in life after they leave your program.

Therefore, you need to show prospective families what happens to the children after they have left your program.

Here’s how you can do this.

Keep track of the children after they leave your program. Write letters and send them birthday cards. Ask the children to write and send you pictures of themselves. You want to have pictures of them graduating from high school or college. You want pictures of their wedding, their new job, their growing family, and any other major life changes. Do this for as long as you are in business.

Post the pictures and letters on the wall or in your scrapbook or photo album. (Be sure to get their written permission before you do so!)Here's how you use theses pictures and letters.

When a prospective parent visits your program this is what you want to say, "My most important goal is to help your child learn. I want your child to be successful once she leaves my program and starts attending school. I also want your child to be successful in life beyond their school years.

I believe that the best measure of whether or not my program will help your child be successful is for you to see how well children do after leaving my program.

I have enough experience working with children to know that my program works. To prove my point, look at this photo album. See all the children who have graduated from my program. This child is in college and doing well. This child now works at the downtown bank. This child is happily married and is now raising her own children. And so on. They are all doing well and getting ahead with their lives. I'm sure your child will also do as well if you enroll in my program."

How can the parent argue with this?

This strategy can be particularly effective with parents who are nervous about whether your program will match the values and expectations they have for their child. Maybe the parent believes in a lot of structure for their child, or instead wants a creative, child-directed curriculum. No matter. Because whether your program is highly or loosely structured, children who attend succeed later in life.

This strategy can also be effective with family child care providers with parents who are afraid to enroll their child with a family child care provider.

Parents may be initially afraid because they don't know what goes on in the home once they drop off their child. They don't know if their child is going to learn and grow. Because a provider is alone at home with their child, they are nervous that the provider may not be the best caregiver for their unique child.

A display of photos and letters in a photo album or scrapbook that shows how children are doing after leaving your program, whether you are a home or center, can be a very powerful statement that what you are doing works.

(Now, if one of these children is in jail, get rid of their picture!)

Tom Copeland - www.tomcopelandblog.com