Working on milestones is probably a more important guage than mastery in the sense of I know children reach different stages at different times but it is also true if you wait too long to introduce something such as a cup or taking away the soother that it can be harder for the child to adapt and achieve. The younger you introduce a child to something the more likely they are to adapt. That doesn't mean we expect mastery right away but we do expect parents to be working on the skills too so that there is some hope of mastery and some consistency between home and daycare. If a child is not expected to do certain things at home it makes it harder at daycare to do what is expected. I think most daycare providers do have realistic expections of what is possible for a child. What they expect is that parents are not holding the children back from reaching those goals and is also encouraging the child as well.

I get the sense that some of the issues with your original caregiver was that her guage of milestones was her own child and not based on any kind of averages of previous kids in her daycare or research of any kind. Just because her child talked early doesn't mean all kids do. But by 15-18 months if a child is not saying words it is also suggested that a child be evaluated. Here in Ottawa we have a group called First Words that will evaluate a child, make suggestions on ways to encourage language as well as suggest when a hearing test or other tests might be a good idea.

When interviewing a potential caregiver ask questions about how many children in your child's age group they have cared for in the last five years. Ask them what ways they use to encourage children to reach milestones - example offering drink only in a cup at snacktime but still giving the bottle after lunch until they are drinking more from the cup or one-on-one talking and singing with a young toddler to encourage speech and sound imitation. Since you won't know for sure ask if your child will be able to keep up their morning nap if they need it or does the caregiver go out each day. Playgroup is a great outing but not if you are tired and whiney and just want to sleep. Another reason why not every caregiver is the right match for every family.