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You've chosen your childcare but how can you make the big day easier?

By Erin Brownfield with Prof Dieter Wolke

You've explored the options, interviewed potential carers, selected the childcare you think is best for your son or daughter, and now the big day is approaching. But how can you make the transition to the new arrangement easier? When we think about starting children in a new childcare situation, we focus on what the transition is like for the child, but often as difficult a transition, especially if your child is an infant, has to be made by the parent. In fact, the repercussions of this change can spread out to affect the whole family.

Tips for Helping Yourself

Tips for Helping Your Child

Tips for Helping Yourself

Parents may feel lonely, sad or anxious at having to entrust their child to someone else. We feel protective of our children and even competitive with the people who help us care for them. Expect to feel some guilt, and expect a sense of loss at first. Talking to other parents who have been through it can be a big help. One nursery dealt with the impact on families by bringing in "veterans" from the previous year who had already been through the transition. They described the emotions they'd experienced, from relief to sadness to hope, so the new parents knew what to expect and understood that what they felt was normal.

It is often advised that parents change their perspective on goodbye: see it as a way of helping your children to learn how to venture out, as an opportunity to teach children how to approach the world with enthusiasm and anticipation of what the new day can bring.

Tips for Helping Your Child

As for your child, expect some transition time, especially at the age of 6 months or so, when children start to experience stranger anxiety and are more attached to you. Children may respond to separation in a variety of different ways. Some may be fearful of the new arrangement and clingy when you try to leave; others may be eager to go in the morning. In the evening, one child may be irritable and demanding, wanting to be waited on or carried, while another may resist you at pick-up time, as if to "punish" you for leaving him.

But there are strategies for minimising this emotional disruption. Help your child to get used to the new arrangement by easing into it. If possible, don't drop your child off at the new place for a full day the first time - go for a few hours, visit the nursery or childminder together, and then talk about the new toys, people and activities he'll be exposed to. If you're using home care, leave your child alone with his new childminder or nanny for a short time at first and then come back, so that your child gets used to your coming and going.

Transitional objects can also help your child feel more secure. Give your child something from home or from you that will remind him of you and make you feel connected. If your child is older, you might even ask him to help you pick out the object. Maybe it'll be a handkerchief with your perfume on it, a picture of you both together at a favourite park, or a note from you that he keeps in his pocket. When you're getting ready to leave, tell your child when you'll be back. Show him on the clock, even if he can't tell the time yet. Say, "When the little hand is on the five, I'll be back".

Try to keep your promises. Make sure that you never, ever sneak out, even with a young child, because the child will not trust the environment if you suddenly evaporate into thin air. Sneaking out might seem to be an easy option the first time but it will be harder on you both in the long run - next time he'll be watching you anxiously and expecting you to disappear.

Perhaps the most important way to help your child deal with the transition into childcare, however, is for you yourself to feel as comfortable as possible with the arrangement you've chosen. Children can sense their parents' anxiety or sadness and may internalise it. Many parents wonder whether childcare is good or bad for young children. But this is often too simplistic a question to ask. It implies an either-or situation and pits childcare against parent care, and working mums against stay-at-home mums. Instead, think of childcare as a support that can help your child begin to venture out into the world but return to a mother and father who have a fulfilled life and are happy to provide all their attention when their child returns home. Parents are always first and foremost in children's lives, but good childcare can help you be the best parent possible. Thus, most important is:

 that you carefully choose good-quality childcare that both you and your child are comfortable with
that you keep your promises about time keeping so that your child can trust you
 that you are available for your daughter or son when you return home to be with him or her

Category Tags:

Behaviour

Article Tags:

separation anxiety

,

child care

,

independence

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anxious