Today we have a  note from Nancy who is dealing with a situation we recently went through - transitioning a toddler from one daycare to another.

Hello!

Thanks for all your hard work on the blog.  It is the only blog I read, and I love it!

Kay- I have a 5 month old and a 2 1/2 year old.  We are switching daycares at the end of August.  We *love* our current daycare, but she is not doing daycare starting in September.  We have found a new daycare, and we feel very good about our new daycare provider.  I know you went going through this same situation.  My question is, how did you prepare your toddler for the transition?  Did you do anything that helped to prepare him?  Any advice as we make this change?  We talk about it, but I am not sure how much he understands.  Overall, I think it will be harder on me than our son…

If you are at all comfortable with blogging on the topic of preparing a toddler for the daycare transition, I would love to hear about it. 

Thanks!

Nancy

Hi Nancy -  Thanks for your nice note! My sympathies, it is so hard to leave a daycare provider you really trust and love. But sounds like you were fortunate to find another one so quickly. 

The transition for us actually went pretty well. We did talk about it quite a bit with Ben - as you said, I don’t know how much he comprehended but I think he caught on. We were very lucky on a few points. One of the other parent’s from our previous daycare found our new provider who happened to have more openings.  So Ben automatically had one of his good buddies there.  I think it helped him to have a familiar face.

Plus our new provider was very into the transition because it’s not only a big change for our child but also for the children she’s already taking care of. Sometimes it’s not easy to add new personalities (or two) into the mix. She recommended that we send Ben and Vivian to her three weeks ahead of time for 1/2 days and eventually full days a few days a week prior to starting with her. (super bonus - she did this free of charge!) Sure, there were a few leg-clinging mornings, it’s hard to get used to new faces. But now, as he’s made new friends he can’t wait to go play cars and go to the park with everyone. So if your new provider will let you start doing some “trial runs” I think that is a great way to ease into the new environment, and a win-win for everyone.  Good luck!

- K

Do any of you have some additional tips or words of advice for Nancy?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Childcare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.