Starting a Toddler in Daycare
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While many people will put their child into daycare at a few months old, starting an older child in daycare will bring about several different challenges. Being prepared for those will help to make the transition smoother.
When my son was not quite two, we put him into daycare for the first time in his life. Previously, he had been at home with his mom on a full-time basis. Our older son never attended daycare, so this was a new experience for us - both scary and exciting. Several of the following steps helped us through the process.
Start early and look at several options
Waiting until the last minute to find a daycare for your child is going to make the process much harder. We started looking over a year in advance at daycares in order to help us make sure that there would be space available at our top locations, and to make sure the decision to put our son in daycare actually made sense.
We went to about 10 locations that we thought might work for us after looking at closer to 25 online. We quickly narrowed those 10 down to 2 locations that we liked the best. The others were eliminated based off of many different factors that we just didn’t like.
Once we had our options narrowed down, we then really dug in deeply to figure out which would be the best option. We spent a bit of time observing what activities they did with the kids, what was served for meals, and talked with a few of the other parents that brought their children to the locations. While the process was a bit of work, it helped us to be far more comfortable with putting our son in to daycare.
Talk to your child about the change
My son wasn’t even two when he started attending daycare. We would cheer and celebrate whenever we talked about school starting as that’s when he was staring. While we told him several times what would happen, he didn’t really understand any of it. However, you should still talk to your child about the change, and what things will be like, even if they don’t understand. It shows that you love them and you care.
Keep things consistent at home
Just because your daytime will be very different, that doesn’t mean your evenings and night times have to be. Try to keep things as consistent as you can for your child at home. This will definitely be a hard transition for them, so doing what you can at home will help them to feel at least a little bit of comfort. Continue to make their favorite meals, spend time reading their favorite books, have fun adventures with them, and keep bedtime at the same time each night.
Be flexible and loving
While you should keep things consistent, you also are going to want to be flexible and loving. Each child will react differently to a sudden change in daily life, and your goal is to make it as easy as possible for them.
Two things that came up for our son after starting daycare related to eating and sleeping. He wouldn’t eat a whole lot at all. We would try to convince him to eat, but he just wasn’t interested. We finally realized that he wouldn’t starve himself, and so we continued to make our normal meals, but didn’t force him to eat. He ultimately got his appetite back, and actually started eating better because of daycare.
Night time was a different matter, and it took us awhile to get it figured out. When it was time for bed, he would always go right down and go to sleep. After starting daycare, he would scream for a very long time and get so worked up he didn’t want to go to sleep. After a lot of trial and error, we finally figured out that we would leave the door open to his room before he fell to sleep, and we would have to go in his room a few times after he laid down just so he felt comforted that we were still there. While we still leave the door open when he goes to sleep, he has no issue saying goodnight one time these days.
Don’t beat yourself up
This change is likely to be hardest on a parent that stays home all day with their kids. While it’s natural to feel negative feelings about your decision, you should try to recognize that you’ve made this decision for a reason that you felt was best. You still love your child. They still love you. The first couple of months will be the hardest. Once your child is used to going to daycare everyday, it will become easier.
Conclusion
It takes a lot of work to start your toddler in daycare. However, children are very resilient, and by doing your best to make the transition easier for them, you’ll get through it.
