Feel sad about nursery F/T

[BananasAreForever]

My child is about to start nursery full time aged 3 (8-5pm) They currently do 3 days.

Financially, I have to increase my hours at work and can't work flexibly. I can't dip into savings as I need a house deposit.

I know this is becoming more common but it just makes me upset that my child is away from me and doing full time hours at such a young age.

I'm hoping someone can come along and make me feel better because I feel awful that I can't spend more time with my kid.

He is generally happy to go to nursery but is also quite an anxious kid by nature so I have no idea how this will affect him.

My dd had to do 4 days a week from age 2. One day with her gran as I worked 5 days a week. It is hard , I still feel guilty and I regret it now (dd is 15) but we had to make it work.

The pros are: your dc won’t be the only one full time. My dd became buddies with the other FT kids - there were six in her year Group and they were fast friends.

The advantage of going to a good nursery every day does show! When you’re there every day you get the continuity of the activities - so yesterday everyone started to make clay animals, and today we painted them and tomorrow we will hide them in the garden and play Safari Rangers and hunt for them.

By the time dd was 4 she could read, write and do basic maths. She became so comfortable at preschool and has remained very confident and independent. She makes friends easily and has always known instinctively what’s the best way to behave in a school setting. She found the transition to school very easy and has thrived from day 1 (now taking GCSEs and has taken everything in her stride).

Also because I was able to work we have done well as a family - we can afford support her hobbies. We have savings for uni, driving lessons and starting to save for towards her house deposit. I have a good pension so she won’t be stuck wondering how to care for us in our old age.

It is sad but you still have holidays and weekends and evenings.

Don’t worry op.

DC1 went to nursery 8 hours a day 5 days a week. He was fine and now he absolutely loves school.

Your aim is to buy a house which is great, so please see this time as investment for your family. Short term ‘pain’ for long term gain and security :)

Thank you so much for replying. It does make me feel better that I am unlikely to be doing long term damage by sending him to nursery every day. Reading the positives really helps.

I need to tell myself that if we manage to get a house, it will be a gift to him in the future - far better than spending thousands on rent every year that we won't see again. Financial security is important to me because it's been a rough few years. We need the stability and there isn't really any other option.

I'm at the other end of this. Uni is super expensive (hefty parental contributions are expected, often beyond what parents can actually afford) and having paid off so many years of our mortgage really helps us in being able to support DC better. Driving lessons, A level tutors, uni halls - all opportunities that we'd really struggle to stretch to if we were still paying market rate rent, rather than an elderly and diminishing mortgage.

The choice you are making is not an easy one, but it sounds sensible and a great investment in supporting him long term. The security of the roof over his head isn't the half of it.

A slightly different perspective..I work as a supply teacher and bite my agency’s hand off when I’m offered work in a nursery. The children have an absolute ball, snacks are compulsory, and there is such a lot of implicit learning going on within the playing (linguistic development, pre-reading skills, fine and gross motor control etc etc) that the time just shoots past.

I’m rather jealous of them, actually!

A lot of us wouldn’t choose to put children in nursery full time, it is a lot for them at that age and of course it’s nice to spend more time with them. But, you are providing a future for them and that it’s important. My DS goes to nursery 4 days a week as that the hours that work for my job, if I was in your position I would absolutely choose to put him in for 5 days.

On the other hand I did read an American article that said kids who attend nursery full time are more likely to grow up to be sociopaths!

So watch out … 😆

My son was in full time nursery from 8 months old due to myself and my husband working full time. We had no choice as we had no other childcare and a huge mortgage to pay.
Looking back, as much as I hated leaving him there for so long, he absolutely thrived and did incredibly well at school as well as socially. He’s now 23 and has an amazing graduate job so I don’t think it did him any harm!