How to prepare baby for nursery

[birdybirdbird]

My LO will be starting nursery 3 days a week when he’s 11 months. However, I’m really worried that he’s going to find it very hard to settle as he’s only ever really spent time with myself and DH AND everyone keeps telling me how awful separation anxiety is at 11 months. He’s 8 months right now so it’s a way off. Is there anything I can do? Or do I just need to accept that he might find it very difficult?
Sadly all our family live a long way away so when he sees them it will be for a full weekend and then nothing for a couple of months. He always find the first day completely overwhelming and I then worry that he’ll find the nursery interactions similar. We don’t have any friends that I would be confident to leave him with to build up how time away from us either.

Hi

I think the settling-in period is often a bit tough for the first few weeks, but small children are quite adaptable and he will settle in there. The staff will be very used to helping children settle. But there are definitely things that you can try now which might make the experience a bit easier for him:

• Naps: try to find out what the nursery does about naps (e.g. what time, how they get the kids to sleep) and see if over the next few months you can help him to adjust to that - e.g. if he feeds to sleep at the moment, it might be a good time to try other ways of soothing him.
• Food: nurseries often publish their menus, so it might be worth him getting used to some of the dishes they serve.
• Noise/activity - try taking him to playgrounds or baby groups so that he can get used to seeing lots of children running round and making noise.

Hope that helps.

I guess you just do what you can, leave with DH for increasing amounts of time, toddler groups rather than structured groups are good for mirroring free play you'll get at nursery, try to leave him to play a bit on his own at home without your full focus on him so he develops a sense of playing/ exploring alone.

Main thing is don't worry, nursery staff are great at supporting the transition in.. be led by them.

My son has recently started nursery as I've just gone back to work. I started off taking him to the baby group there for a for a few weeks to get him used to the building and the staff (it was for an hour on a Monday morning and I stayed with him - you won't be able to do this though if they don't have a baby group), then put him in a couple of mornings a week for about three weeks, then he did two full days. I didn't want to leave him there for a full day for the first time when I was at work so I built up his time there over a month. He was 13 months when he started the morning sessions there.