A break between leaving nursery & starting school - is it essential?

[Sheila]

My DS starts school on 2nd Sep. and for the 1st 2 weeks will only go for 2 hours in the afternoon. Since I work 4 full days and have no holiday left this is a real nightmare for me. I think I've decided to take unpaid leave for these 2 weeks but to mnimise the amount of leave I have to take (and the disastrous effect on my bank balance!) I plan to send him to nursery right up until the day before he starts at school.

I know this isn't ideal but do you think this will be really difficult for him? I'm not sure what options I have (no dh/dp so it's all down to me) but any advice/views will be very welcome.

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I agree with Yorkiegirl. The nursery option would also be far less stressful for you too as you wouldn't have to worry about arranging leave in the first place and then losing 2 weeks of your salary. I would imagine that the nursery solution is the only way that a lot of families can cope with the first weeks of Reception.

I did this, he finished nurery on Friday, started school on Monday, I also kept him out of school until the January after xmas, for various reasons, no harm came to him at all. He settled in well and has really flourished!

Thanks for all views. I could leave DS in Nursery for those 2 weeks, but I can't see that this would be a less stressful option because they won't pick up/drop off. So my day would be the usual rushed morning drop off (already stressful 'cos DS NEVER wants to go) rush to work, rush back in lunch time to pick up DS (already tired from his morning at nursery) drop him off at school, rush back to work for an hour before rushing back again to pick him up at 3pm (and then what?).

I'm sure you get my drift! Think I'm pretty much stuffed whatever I do, but the unpaid leave option still looks the best, even if it means no "buffer" zone time off for DS in between.

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