當馬克遇上莎莉

Parents know how stressful caring for a child at home can be - even their own child - so, rather than worry about how a nanny might cope with a child during particularly trying moments, many prefer to choose a nursery.

Choosing a nursery for your child involves researching your local area, asking plenty of questions and being observant. Start your search as soon as you can; many nursery places are booked up months in advance, especially for babies. Use the following factors as a guide, although you may want to add your own criteria about what is important for you and your child.

資料來源 Baby Centre, 文章內字體顏色不同者,按下會直接連結至說明網頁 

Written by childcare expert and author Penelope Leach

Babies have an inbuilt interest in human voices and a natural tendency to listen and to concentrate when someone is talking. You can build on this as you did when your child was a baby. 

One of the most important milestones in your child's life, learning to walk is a huge step towards independence. As he moves from standing propped up against the couch to tottering hesitantly to your waiting arms to running, skipping, and jumping confidently, he'll be leaving babyhood behind. 

Now your baby is officially a toddler - but she still needs as much sleep as she did when she was younger. Until her second birthday, your child should get between 13 and 14 hours of sleep a day, 11 of those hours at night. The rest she'll get in naps. She'll probably still need two naps at 12 months, but by the time she's 18 months old, she may be ready for a single hour-and-a-half to two-hour nap in the afternoon - a pattern she may follow until she's four or five. The transition from two naps to one can be difficult; some experts recommend alternating one-nap and two-nap days, depending on how much sleep your toddler got the night before. You can also try putting your child to bed a little earlier on one-nap days.