This week is back to the new school term for us, in January, after a two week Christmas break. When we arrived at my son's nursery yesterday morning, I looked around and saw a few new children and new Mum’s, who I didn’t recognise from last term, and who all seemed bursting with so many mixed emotions - Apprehension, nervousness, fear, sadness, and excitement.
Then I remembered - Of course, January is when many three year olds start at nursery for the first time! Being born in August meant our son started in September, but if you have a September to December born three year old, and you live here in the UK, then this week is possibly their first week at a nursery setting. So it’s potentially a very big week for you, and for them! Especially, if is the first experience for your child of being away from you, for any formal childcare outside of the family, like it was for our son - All of those mixed feelings , for both of you, are totally normal and truly are expected to bubble up in this all-important transition.
This week, our three year old has been VERY excited to go back to nursery (and, admittedly, I was also very excited to have some time back to myself with him back at nursery too - It’s not a coincidence that I finally have the time and headspace to begin writing anything about this topic since he went back!).
However … If we flashback to our first day at nursery, in September last year, things looked very different for us, for a long time - Our’s was not a smooth transition into nursery. I learned a lot on that journey, and I know we were not alone with our struggles - I hope that by sharing some of our experience of the transition, I can in some way support the families who are making this transition now - Especially when it doesn’t feel smooth.
I’ve been reflecting a lot on what did work for us in the end, and while I am clear about what worked well for us, ultimately I believe wholeheartedly that ours was not a ‘one size fits all’ journey - So, to share with you all the ins and outs of what we did, day-to-day, week-to-week, to support our son may not help you and your child at all - Because you child is different to my son, you are different to me, our home-lives are different from each other, and the nursery settings will be different too, in their way.
So, instead of giving you another list of: ’What you definitely need to do’ (which is likely to not fit your situation properly and then potentially make you feel even more hopeless when it doesn’t), I feel its likely to be more helpful to reflect instead on some of the over-arching principles that I applied to our son’s transition to nursery - It was these overarching principles that guided us to make the more detailed, nuanced decisions we made along our journey of this transition, so learning about them should also help direct you to generate more specific, tailored solutions for your child.
Ours was a journey of starting nursery which took our son from initial excitement, to then immediate daily tears & upset, to near-total nursery refusal, to more daily upset, to finally beginning to build a small foundation of nursery-engagement, which then slowly began to grow into a bigger foundation… and finally brought us to where we are now - To him running in each morning feeling excited and happy, and waving ‘bye Mummy (or Daddy, on the Daddy drop-off days)’, over his shoulder as he goes running in to play with his teachers and peers, for the fully funded hours he is entitled to.
So even if it is hard in the beginning, and even if it stays hard for a long while, we are proof that it is possible to get there. Saying that, I feel its important I share that, for us, it wasn’t just important for our son to 'go to nursery’- This certainly did feel important for him, in and of itself, as it really did feel that he was ready for more stimulation and socialising than we could provide for him at home, especially once he turned three, but it wasn’t the only important outcome for us. Just as important as him starting nursery, we had the following goals: That he start nursery in his own time, at a pace that didn’t overwhelm his ability to emotionally cope with all the newness it brought; That he feel & express all his feelings about starting nursery, and have those feelings validated and supported gently; That he learn in this process that when he feels big emotions he will be supported with them, and that when he turns to others with those big emotions, he will met with validation and empathy; That he learn that he doesn’t have to stuff down his feelings inside of himself, and ‘pretend to be okay’, just because they make someone else uncomfortable; That he can learn that he can struggle, and then equally be supported to slowly build tolerance & resilience, to truly overcome those struggles in his own way, and then find genuine joy in the process too (rather than denying that struggle - Smiling on the outside, while hiding his crying the inside).
In fact, these principles I’ve been reflecting on, are not just for getting our children into nursery - They are actually primarily about more generally emotionally supporting our children, in this case through one of life’s great transitions. They are really about furthering a foundation of emotional intelligence, and emotional resilience in our children, that will serve them throughout their nursery years, their school career, and their life. They are about confirming to our children that their emotions are wise, and that they can and should keep listening to their feelings and their bodies - That they should not disconnect from themselves or their feelings, just to ‘fit in’ somewhere. They are about supporting our children to mange this (and any) challenge with minimal shame for their struggles and emotions. These are principles for life. I apply them to my parenting in general, as well as to my son starting nursery, and I apply them based on everything I have learned as a child & family psychologist over the last 15 years.
With this in mind, the first principle that I want to reflect on with you is this:
Flexibility might be important -
It may not be a linear, universal journey - And that's okay.
From the perspective of our nursery, ‘starting nursery’ appeared to mean: Show up on time on your the first day, say a happy(ish) ‘bye’ to your parent, then settle right in & engage well in all activities offered to you, then be picked up at the official finishing time of the nursery session, and leave as happy as you arrived, excited to build on the initial progress tomorrow, and the next day, and so on.
Yet, as you know from reading above - This was not our son’s experience. Our relatively positive start, was following quickly by a severe back-slide, which felt never-ending for weeks, as things just got harder and harder for our son in this transition. I learned really important lessons on this journey, two or three weeks in, that would have been invaluable to know in the beginning days of this journey - Oh how I had wanted to turn back time and start again ‘properly’! Yet of course, in reality, I had to concede that I simply couldn’t know then what I was learning on the journey, and I had to find the self-compassion that told me that this was okay - Learning ‘on the go’ is valid, and important, and we never need to ‘perfect’ this (or anything) from the outset.
Our children don’t need to have a ‘good’ experience of nursery from Day One - We don’t need to get it right for them on that first day, or in that first week, and only move onwards and upwards in this journey. It can look messy, we take back-steps, it can look like we’re trying one thing, then another, then maybe going back to what we already tried, while sometimes having some success, and sometimes having harder times.
There were also times for us on our messy journey, when sometimes we did seem to regain some footing, and we were making some progress, but then it would quickly feel like we needed to take two steps back again, with our momentum feeling nearly relentlessly impeded on our journey … By sudden staffing changes at the nursery, or sickness, or a half-term break, or sickness, or sickness (oh so much sickness, they really aren’t joking when they call that Autumn term the ‘germ-term’).
For us, our endpoint for our transition has been our son becoming settled in nursery - But it is important to remember that for other families, the ‘end’ of this transition journey might be even more flexible - It might be a child withdrawing from nursery, to a different form of child care, or to being at home again full-time — Again, there is no size fits all approach, there is no linear, universal journey here with a uniform beginning, middle and end - This principle needs to extend to you and your family being open to your journey looking very different in the end to what you imagined it might look like, based on the needs of your child and your family.
Looking back, I held this principle (of flexibility being key) in the back of my mind the whole time, without really being too aware of it. On some level I wholeheartedly believed it was always possible to keep navigating forward(ish) on this journey, even when on any given day felt as if it was all going horribly wrong, and even when our journey looked so different for us than it did for all the other children. I acknowledged the hard days, but never did I really lose all hope. I always believed it was possible to get to that place of what would work best for us with this journey.
With this principle in mind, I gave my son (and me) the gift of flexibility and a more tailored approach to this transition. He had part-days, and part-weeks, switched from afternoon sessions to morning sessions, and we also decided to have impromptu days off, when my son was exhausted and I didn’t want to push him any further that week. Finally there were even days when I was present at nursery with him for longer. We also devised our own timeline for the transition, which evolved as we were going, week by week, with us changing it up as we went, as we needed - Our son first did a full 15 hours in a week (his full funded time) for one week, just before Christmas - Every single week before that, for a whole term, he was on a unique, adapted timetable led by what he could manage, as successfully as possible.
I had known the whole time on this journey that I was fortunate, and privileged, to have the flexibility myself, to be able to provide my son a flexible approach to this transition.
I also realise now, from talking to other parents, that we were also fortunate that our nursery supported this tailored transition, and was willing to work with me to find a way to support my son that looked different to how ‘starting at nursery’ looked for other children in the class. And this saddens me, so very much … This should not be the exception. Our three year olds need us as adults, and need our institutions, to be built according to their needs, and to be respectful of what is naturally hard for them at certain times due to their natural development, and our children need to be supported with having their developmental and emotional needs met - They do not need, at their tender age, to be forced into any routine that might works for us adults, yet may not work for them.
I know there are some nurseries out there that will simply not be flexible, for their own reasons, but I also wonder how many more could offer flexibility if parents requested it - My past experience as a child psychologist meant that I had supported countless parents in my career to liaise with schools to find what flexibility was possible (and in every case, it was always flexibility from the school that was needed to help a struggling child begin to thrive), and so as a parent I had the experience and confidence to let the nursery know what I felt was possible for my son, what did not feel possible, and how I wanted to support him, and how I needed them to help me to support him. I wonder how many parents simply don’t know that they are allowed to ask - For flexibility, for a tailored approach, for extra support from staff, etc.
Please know this - at the very least, you are allowed to ask for flexibility for your child. And, if you are not met with a supportive response, and things don’t improve shortly over time, you are also allowed to do more research and find a new nursery/childcare setting for your child that might work more flexibly & supportively with them.
I wonder now how much harder it would have been for both me and my son, if I had not held this principle of flexibility in mind. If I had assumed there really was just ‘one way’ to do it, dictated by the nursery setting. If each and every time we weren't able to follow through on an established plan, or met an unexpected challenge on this journey, it had made me feel that we’d ‘failed’ to stay on a (mythical) linear, universal journey … I think it would been immensely harder without this principle in mind.
Wholeheartedly believing in this principle allowed me to have self-compassion for me, and compassion for my son on the hard days, and gave me strength to keep bringing flexibility into our approach daily & weekly, adapting the journey as our son needed me to. And, more than that, it meant I always entertained various timelines, and even endpoints for the journey. In this way, I never really felt like we were ‘failing’ anything, we were on our own messy journey that looked different to other families, and that was okay - It was hard, yes, but it was okay. There was nothing wrong with us.
And of course, this feels like a really helpful principle for life more generally - If there seems to be just ‘one way to do something’, and you (or your child) don’t seem to fit right into to that ‘one way’ - There truly is nothing wrong with you. There is in fact something wrong with this false idea that there is just one way for all of us to do anything - Our society has built a lot of structures, institutions, procedures and therefore expectations that suggest we should all fit into a ‘one size fits all’ mould. Knowing that this is untrue, that this is a myth, gifts us so much freedom and grace to love ourselves through the process of finding ‘our right way’ through life (and nursery!)
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NB. As I started writing this yesterday, it turned out that I have rather a lot to say on this topic of supporting our little ones with their transition to nursery - I surprised myself with all that came flowing out of me when I sat down to write! So, I’ve started with just one principle today, with the plan that I’ll write more blog posts in the near future, which will cover more, equally important, principles I also applied throughout our journey in this transition.
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I am Dr. Jenny Turner, Clinical Psychologist, and parenting specialist - The focus of my therapy work in private practice is supporting parents with how our own childhood impacts our parenting, and therefore the emotional health of our whole family. I also have a special interest in the mind-body connection, and whether this has been supported, or disrupted, for us, also from our own childhood into our adulthood.