KidPort brings together the childcare pricing near you, the latest news shaping the industry, and research-backed tools for tracking how your child is developing — all in one place, so you always know where to look.
Enter a ZIP in Lamoille or Chittenden County.
A running read on the policy and market shifts that affect what Vermont families pay and what centers can offer.
Pandemic-era stabilization dollars that propped up thousands of providers ran out at the end of 2025, and researchers are calling 2026 a likely tipping point for the sector's underlying finances.
Industry analysts report infant and toddler care has climbed roughly 80% since before the pandemic, putting it right behind housing as a household's largest recurring expense.
Vermont's universal pre-kindergarten provision now funds 10 hours a week of care for three-, four-, and five-year-olds, cutting thousands off the annual bill for families in Chittenden County who qualify.
The global childcare market is on track to grow from roughly $275B this year to $355B by 2031, with demand for infant care — the priciest and most caregiver-intensive category — leading that growth.
Pediatric researchers draw a clear line between watching for milestones and formally screening for them. A milestone is a single data point — a first step, a first word. A validated tool like the Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3), endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, turns a string of those observations into a reliable read on what's typical for a child's age and what deserves a closer look, well before kindergarten.
That structure matters because intuition alone has gaps. Research on parent knowledge of developmental trajectories has found meaningful blind spots even among highly educated, well-resourced families — not for lack of attention, but because typical development doesn't come with a manual. Every KidPort Portfolio maps a child's progress across the five domains screening tools rely on: gross motor, fine motor, language, cognitive, and social-emotional — so parents and providers are working from the same read, and asking a pediatrician the right question at the right time.
Sources: Ages & Stages Questionnaires (agesandstages.com); Brookes Publishing interview with ASQ co-developer Jane Squires; parent-knowledge findings via PMC (NIH).
Log observations at drop-off, review what your provider noted, and see the same five-domain picture pediatricians look for — all synced between home and daycare.
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