What Are the Requirements to Be an Infant Teacher?

Start with the baseline.

There is no national license for daycare teachers — staff qualifications are written into each state's center licensing rules, which that state's child care licensing agency administers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) describes typical entry-level education for childcare workers as a high school diploma or equivalent, and notes that some states set no education requirement for entry-level positions.

To qualify for licensure, BLS reports, childcare staff often must pass a background check, have a complete immunization record and meet a minimum training requirement — and some states require CPR and first aid certification.

How much states ask for varies widely.

A 2024 scan of center licensing rules by the Bipartisan Policy Center counted 14 states with no requirements for a child care teacher, 20 requiring a high school diploma and 8 requiring a CDA.

That scan is secondary research — the counts differ between the organization's own publications — so read it as a picture of the spread, not a rulebook.

Your state's licensing agency publishes the enforceable version.

Where does the infant-specific part come in?

In the training topics — safe sleep and abusive head trauma above all — and in some states' staffing rules, which name infant-toddler credits, credentials or training outright.

Early Head Start rooms answer to a federal rule of their own.

Each layer gets its own section below.

For the whole national picture of teacher requirements, the keystone page compares the states; for duties, settings and pay, see the infant teacher career guide.

When a job ad names a credential, the name to know is the CDA: BLS reports that some states and employers require childcare workers to hold a nationally recognized credential, most often the CDA, which must be renewed every 3 years.

The Council for Professional Recognition, the body that awards it, offers the CDA in five settings — and the one built for your room is the center-based Infant-Toddler CDA, which covers birth to 36 months.

The Council's requirements stack education, training and experience.

Eligibility starts with a high school diploma or GED, or enrollment as a junior or senior in a high school career and technical program in early childhood education.

Training comes to 120 hours of formal early childhood education, with no fewer than 10 hours in each of the eight CDA subject areas; no deadline is stated, so those hours can be completed any time before you apply.

Experience comes to 480 hours of professional work in the credential's setting and age group within 3 years before you submit the application.

The Infant-Toddler setting adds the detail that matters most for infant-room hiring: those 480 hours must include all three sub-age groups — young infants (birth to 8 months), mobile infants (9 to 17 months) and toddlers (18 to 36 months).

Hours with preschoolers fall outside that definition, so an Infant-Toddler CDA documents infant-toddler experience specifically.

If you plan to move between age groups instead, the center-based Birth to Five CDA is the broader alternative: its 480 hours must include at least 160 hours in each of three sub-groups — infants (birth to 17 months), toddlers (18 to 36 months) and preschoolers (3 to 5 years).

Budget for the application: the initial CDA assessment fee is $525, paid online at application, and renewal costs $250.

Our infant-toddler CDA guide compares all five settings side by side.

One employer writes the credential into its own staff rules.

Under the Head Start Performance Standards, Early Head Start center-based teachers must have at least a CDA or comparable credential plus training or coursework in infant-toddler development.

As of October 2026 that rule is in force.

ACF proposed on August 7, 2026 to rescind and replace the Performance Standards — a proposal that would keep the statutory staff qualifications, which include Early Head Start teachers', while dropping the regulatory ones for other roles.

Comments close October 6, 2026, and no final rule has replaced the current standards yet.

If you interview at an Early Head Start program, expect the CDA to come up.

This is the layer that separates infant rooms from every other assignment in a center.

The federal CCDF rules at 45 CFR 98.41, administered by ACF (the Administration for Children and Families), require health-and-safety training on named topics for providers receiving CCDF subsidy — and the list includes SIDS prevention and safe sleep, plus prevention of shaken baby syndrome, abusive head trauma and child maltreatment.

The rules also require pre-service or orientation health-and-safety training to be completed within three months, with states specifying which critical topics must be finished before a caregiver may care for children unsupervised.

The minimum annual number of training hours is each state's call, which is one reason the details move at the state line.

The states below, current in their center licensing rules, show how differently that plays out.

In Texas, HHSC Child Care Regulation requires caregivers who care for children under 24 months to have one hour of pre-service training covering shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma, safe sleep and SIDS prevention, and early childhood brain development (26 TAC §746.1305(b)).

In Florida, where a facility serves infants, all child care personnel must complete safe sleep / shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma training within 30 days of hire.

In North Carolina, DCDEE requires center staff working in the infant room to complete ITS-SIDS safe sleep training within two months of assuming infant-room duties and every three years thereafter.

In Minnesota, DCYF requires staff caring for infants to get at least 30 minutes of SUID training at orientation and every year, and staff caring for children under school age to get at least 30 minutes of abusive head trauma training at orientation and yearly.

For what the course teaches, where to take an accepted one and how renewal works, see safe sleep training for infant room staff.

Some states go further than training topics and write infant-toddler education into the staffing rules themselves.

Our research found no national list — the requirement is whatever your state's licensing rules say — but the examples below, drawn from states' current center rules, show the forms it takes.

• California. The CDSS Child Care Licensing rules (Title 22, 22 CCR 101416.2) require infant care teachers to hold 3 units of ECE plus 3 units related to infant care before hire; to be fully qualified, 12 ECE units with at least 3 infant-specific, plus six months of experience.
• New Jersey. The DCF Office of Licensing requires staff who work with children under 2½ to start infant/toddler-specific training within 90 days and finish within one year — for example, the NJ Infant/Toddler Credential or the Infant-Toddler CDA.
• Kansas. Lead teachers in infant units must complete 4 hours of infant-specific professional development within 30 days of hire, and staff caring for infants must devote 4 of their annual training hours to infant topics (K.A.R. 28-4-428a).
• New York. QUALITYstarsNY recognizes the NYS Infant Toddler Credential — alongside the CDA — in its staff-qualification standards, so a state credential can also feed a program's quality rating.

None of these travel across state lines: a credential that satisfies one state's infant-room rule may not satisfy another's.

If you're moving or applying across states, ask the hiring director which qualification the room requires, then check the answer against your state child care licensing agency's current staffing rules.

Directors hiring for infant rooms screen for experience, and the benchmark you can document is the one the Council itself counts: 480 hours of work with children birth to 36 months, spread across young infants, mobile infants and toddlers.

Track your hours by age group from your first week — that record becomes CDA eligibility later and answers the age-group question in an interview immediately.

Expect questions about the daily work, not just the totals.

O*NET lists record-keeping on individual children — daily observations, activities, meals served, medications given — alongside dressing children, changing diapers, sanitizing toys and communicating with parents about daily activities among childcare workers' tasks.

Come with examples: how you logged feedings and naps, how you kept a diapering routine safe, how you walked a parent through the day at pickup.

If your hours so far are with older children, infant experience is buildable — floaters and substitutes who cover infant rooms bank hours with children under 3 too.

One caution as you tally: the Council's 480 are professional work experience, so check how volunteer or student hours are treated before you count on them.

Keep every certificate (safe sleep, AHT, CPR and first aid) in one file, and if your state runs an early childhood workforce registry, keep the transcript current: the Council accepts registry transcripts from all U.S. state and territory registries toward the CDA.

Ready to use it?

Browsing infant teacher jobs shows what centers near you ask for, room by room.

This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. Training, credential and staffing rules come from each state's child care licensing agency — confirm the current requirements with the agency that licenses your program before you apply, enroll or hire.