This shouldn't surprise anyone whose kid spends time in the care of others, especially at daycare centers, but a new study reveals the obvious: being in daycare makes your kid sick.
56 North Carolina daycare centers were studied. Half of them received $10,000 of equipment upgrades that included automatic faucets and foot-activated, rollout bins for diaper disposal as well as impermeable-surface tables for food preparation and diaper-changing. Not surprisingly, the centers that received the hygienic upgrades had a lower incidence of illness both in the children and their adult caregivers.
Obviously, not every daycare center can afford $10,000 in equipment upgrades, and daycare itself, while perhaps not the ideal situation for children certainly is a viable alternative, and isn't going away any time soon since so many parents need two incomes simply for survival purposes, so what to do? The company that makes the hygienic equipment says it's being used not only in North Carolina but also in Oklahoma, Illinois, and other states. And where one company makes an item, more surely follow suit, so if it were me needing to use daycare, I'd think about adding the presence or not of equipment like this to the already long list of must-haves when considering daycare alternatives.
