No one is saying the parent can't drop in all we are saying is that we will only settle the child once, and now that you have seen, you need to take your child and go so the rest of the children can go on with their day. It isn't rude, it isn't selfish it is realistic and it is in the best interest of everyone involved - especially the child. With a daycare centre that has an open door policy there is a director or usually another adult to help the parent peek in the door and see their child at play and often they don't even interact with their child. In a home daycare environment it is just me and at any given point in the day I have a baby in bed, a child on the potty, another one wanting me to get something for them or we have finally gotten everyone settled and I am reading a story when the parent arrives. Basically it shifts the focus for everyone including me from the learning that we were to be doing. The visits are for the parent, not the child and it is hard to let an adult disrupt the lives of that many children. When I had an older group I had less of an issue with parents dropping in and if they let me know even a bit in advance they were invited for lunch. With babies I just find my day is so welded there is little room for disruption to the routine. It is hard enough for me to work in the new child's routine to my day without having someone disrupt even my regular kids. Do it once fine. Do it a second time and you take your baby with you and I put my energies into settling the other children that didn't deserve to be disrupted. This is going to sound really bad and stereotyping but in 23 years of daycare the only parents that did the drop in unannounced also tended to be my most difficult to deal with parents and my most fretful hard to self settle babies. I'm sure there is a connection there somewhere and I know that isn't an across the board truth it just has been for me. Being able to give references for current families helps a great deal and if I get the sense at the interview that the family seems nervous about daycare I will mention that to my families and give them a heads up if a woman called .... calls for a reference you might want to talk about what it is like as a parent putting their child into care as much as you talk about the care itself. And that does help.