To think nursery should be READING children stories

[greatpotential]

...instead of getting them all to listen to an audiobook on headsets?

Have been settling my 3 year old at a new, v expensive, nursery and was astonished to see that when the nursery nurse offered to read the preschoolers a story, she actually led them into a corner, stuck headphones on them and left them there. Really worried me. I thought I was paying through the nose for care for my child, and for him to learn to socialise with other kids. Not for expensive headsets so my son can sit by himself in a corner!

I understand that nursery workers can't spend every minute at my individual child's beck and call, but would rather they let them do free play than put headphones on them. He has a lifetime of screens and headphones ahead!

AIBU to be surprised by this? Have no experience of nursery - is this really normal and am I likely to run into practice like this at other settings??

Wow @amanduh @dojo @curlsldn sounds like the headphones are pretty standard at the moment.

I can understand listening to good audio but still find the idea of a group of kids listening to the same story separately so sad. Feel like stories are meant for sharing and discussing, esp at this age, and technology is getting in the way here instead of adding to their experience. Think I need a luddite nursery for my child...

I would have two worries I'd want to check out

• is the "story time" limited ie could they end up doing it for ages? Are they limited how many times a day?

• is there plenty of "proper" story time as well?

It's not that unusual for a nursery to have a limited slot of tv time etc think it's the parallel headphones that make this seem more odd

But if they can't spare someone to read to them right away, they could always ask the kid to wait.

Plus, I don't necessarily agree entirely with this, but we're always nagged as parents to reduce screen time. None until 2 and then a max of 2hr/ day further on is the current advice so don't see how this stacks up.

Also useless from a learn how to use tech point of view as they're not actually interacting with the tablet.