D. Golden, the co-owner of Happy Tree Child Development Center, recently decided to start a podcast. Real Deal Childcare is a fun but informative look at child care from the perspective of someone who not only works in the child care industry but is also a mom.
“I started looking around and saw that nobody was doing this,” she says. “It’s pretty general information, but it’s also the real deal.”
The podcast has been in the works for about three years. Originally, the idea was for D. and her business partner (who also happens to be her mom) to put together a checklist of things to look for in a child care center. Together, they came up with more than 100 ideas but had no idea how to share them. That’s where the idea for a podcast was born.
She started recording a couple of months ago and can now be found on Apple, Spotify and other podcast outlets. The episodes are relatively short because, as D. puts it, she simply can’t talk very long with everything else going on in her life.
On one recent episode titled “Hansel and Gretchen,” she talks about the procedures child care providers follow when parents are late picking up their kids. She recalled one time when a parent didn’t show up. Local ordinances for that type of situation say the children should be taken to local police. In this instance, D. decided to look after the child herself until the parents could be located.
“The mom ended up calling the police on me saying that I’d kidnapped her child,” she recalls.
Other episodes cover things like what makes a good infant program for kids, who needs child care and what you need to consider if you want to start your own child care business. D. says that she aims to be informative without calling anyone out. Her goal is to get people thinking about the reality of child care and how care providers should relate to parents as well as how they should relate to child care workers.
“I think I can give good insight into what a high-quality child care facility should look like and feel like,” she says. “The podcast is meant to be fun and not offensive.”