Settling In

Helping Your Child to Settle in

At The Wendy House, we take every effort to ensure that coming to the nursery every day is a pleasant and positive experience, for both parents and children. Drawing from our experience, and discussions with parents, we practice a settling-in policy from which we hope to secure a long and happy relationship between all staff, parents and children entrusted in our care.

We recognise that this policy needs to be flexible and tailored to each individual child’s physical and emotional needs.

On acceptance of your nursery place, you will receive a letter from our Nursery Manager, confirming a mutually agreed starting date. Approximately, one month prior to this date, your designated child’s key worker will contact you to discuss settling in and schedule the settling in sessions. Before you child starts their first settling in session, we do request that their Enrolment Form is fully completed and returned to the nursery. This will ensure that we have all relevant information about your child, including the all-important contact information.

Children generally have up to 5 settling-in sessions in the week prior to their scheduled starting date. These start with 30 minutes and gradually increase to 1-2 hours. Obviously, this remains flexible and may be subject to change depending on how quickly a child settles in.

To help your child feel safe and secure in their new environment, we request that you stay for the duration of their first session. This will give you a good opportunity to get to know your child’s keyworker and discuss any specific needs, routines, likes and dislikes. It’s also a good opportunity to ask questions and become familiar with the nursery room and routine.

Many parents are so concerned about how their child will cope with starting nursery, but they are not prepared for the mixed emotions that they will feel such as guilt, anxiety and, yes, even relief at starting to get back into a work/home routine.

Here are some tips and ideas that you may find helpful to put in place before the start of settling in sessions:

Start getting into a ‘home to nursery’ routine prior to starting the settling in sessions

Depending on your child’s age, talk about starting nursery and some of the activities that you know your child will relate to

Try to keep your emotions positive – remember that children are very perceptive and will easily pick-up on any negative emotions

Practice a goodbye ritual that is quick, upbeat and consistent. This can avoid the heart-breaking option of ‘sneaking off’ at an opportune moment when your child is distracted

Staff at The Wendy House staff have a commitment to giving you both support and feedback on how your child is settling into the nursery and the progress they are making. We are more than happy for parents to telephone the nursery to check on their child during settling in sessions Likewise, we will not hesitate to contact parents, if we feel that their child is too unsettled to stay with us.

Working together, we aim to succeed in creating a warm, caring and stimulating environment for all children that attend The Wendy House.