Help any ideas- my 9 month old is struggling to settle in with child minder

[snowywol]

Hi I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions, we have just started a settling in period at the child minders for our 9 month old daughter. However so far she has been crying throughout most of the sessions apart from when she sleeps. She has had five half day sessions over three weeks but no real progress made.
We have tried taking familiar toys but this hasn't made a difference, I was just wondering if anybody had any other ideas or experience about what might help.

Thanks

The sessions you've been doing seem quite long and spread out. I'd try it over the course of a much shorter immersion period:

Monday - 1 hour, mum stays and plays
Tuesday or Wednesday - 2 hour stay and play
Thursday - 1 or 2 hour mum leaves baby
Monday or Tuesday the following week - half day, mum stays for first half hour max
Wednesday - half day, mum drops off at door

(I'm not a childminder but owing to house moves etc my daughter is onto her third childcare setting in 2 years so I feel quite experienced at settling her in!)

Absolutely need her to go more frequently ie daily for an hour or so at a time.

Unfortunately 9 months is the age at which separation anxiety usually starts so often difficult to start childcare then.

Thanks that's really helpful I have been led a bit by the child minder as she is very experienced but had wondered about this sort of style approach as I know of a few nursery's that do something similar.

Agree that half day sessions to begin with are a bit much. DD (now 2.5) had severe separation anxiety at 9 months which coincided with my return to work. In the run up to my return I started settling her in with her childminder by slowly building up the time she spent with her. I stayed and played then left her for 30 mins, then an hour, then 2 hours and so on. From memory I think we did this daily (4 days a week) for about 2 weeks. There were still tears at drop off when I returned to work but she eventually settled after a couple of weeks.

Those days seem like such a distant memory now but I do remember feeling so anxious when she cried as I left her. CM is now one of her favourite people and DD often pushes me out of the way to run to her in the morning

How many and which days will the childminder have her?

I think this is fairly normal for a 9 month old unfortunately. I would agree that shorter sessions closer together night be beneficial. A few months ago i took on a 9 month old boy who was quite difficult to settle at first but as he attended every day we very quickly got to know each other. I found that once I'd managed to get him to nap at the right times he was a lot happier.