Hello,
I'm a first time mum to a 2 year old boy. He's been at home being looked after by me, hubbie and his Gran until now. We take him to playgroups, playdates, toddler classes and soft play three times a week. He's sociable, very active and likes sensory play, having books read to him, grappling with puzzles etc. We are in the process of introducing him to a nursery. On Tuesday, he and I were at the nursery with his allocated key worker for an hour. His key worker is also the deputy manager. She seems pulled in so many directions. During our Tuesday visit, whilst trying to talk with my son and I, she was also attending to four other children (reading to them etc). She showed us around a little. It was our first time in the building. The nursery owner agreed that we could do thr visit only if we paid for and signed up to a settling in period. The agreement is that this will be refunded if we're unhappy with the fit. I thought we would leave thr tuesday visit with clarity about the policies, procedures, plans for settling. We didn't!
However, our son loved the one hour tuesday visit. He interacted with other children, played and was even happy to go out into the garden with the key worker. When she left him out in the garden to come back to speak with me, he appeared happy to stay behind with other staff who were interacting with him in the garden. I saw him from the window.
The next day, the keyworker, hubbie and I agreed that he would remain at the nursery for an hour without me. There was still no plan provided about what his hour at the nursery would look like. We held of from asking too much because we wanted to have faith in the competence of the team.
Our son was excited about the start on Weds but the keyworker says it might have been because he hadnt absorbed that our goodbye meant that we'd not be with him. When he did fully absorb this, he was said to have appeared ok. When I returned to collect him, he wasn't crying at that time. It was clear that he had been tearful and his keyworker explained that he had been onky for the last few minutes. He was whimpering when he met me and looked so so overtired. To be fair, he had woken up an hour earlier than usual, so we expected him to be knackered after 30 minutes and to have a snack which we had prepared for him. The snack bag and details about his fatigue were shared with the key worker. We felt that he might need us to collect him earlier that day because though he said he wanted to go to the nursery, he was exhausted. We didn't receive any updates during that hour. Our concern is that all of his cues of hunger, thirst and fatigue were missed. We'd have liked to have been contacted to collect him when his countenance changed from outside. Why was he not being closely observed given that it was his first day? He was also without his keyworker for the first 30/40 minutes whilst playing in the garden. The keyworker explained that he had wanted to do outdoor play and at the time he was returned to her, he was already overtired and upset. His cues had been missed and he had been left without his food, drink and bag where all his creature comforts were. The keyworker was eventually able to use the books, cuddly toys etc which we provided to soothe him.
Our biggest concern is that she may be too busy to be a responsive and reliable key worker for our son. He's only 2 yrs and isn't yet able to verbalise all of his needs to new people. We're disappointed and confused about why on his first day of being without his family he was without his key worker? And why there was no planned time together with the key worker until he was distressed? We're also surprised that there was no meeting to discuss the 'All about me' form before asking us to leave him there for an hour. We're also disappointed that perhaps in our excitement and anxiety about the nursery start, we missed the attachment about key info which had been buried in the email chain. We hadn't seen the attachment (All about me) until Weds. Unprompted, I had volunteered a verbal account of our son's interests on Tues but we find it such poor practice that nobody brought it to our attention that such an important form was sent and needs discussing. They just seem either very busy and chaotic and/or very lassez faire about gaining key information about children in their care and demonstrating clear processes . We've shared our concerns and suggestions about ways forward, i.e we bring our son jn earlier if he wakes up earlier. We do 30 minute sessions if he's presenting as overtired. He wakes up at 5am some mornings and his scheduled settling in sessions are 10:15am. The key worker had meetings scheduled on thurs and explained that she can only be available for 30 mins of his scheduled settling in session! In light of our questions about whether to continue with this nursery, they have now suggested that we restart the settling in process in two weeks time. How is this stop and start helpful for our son who was expecting to be at nursery yesterday and again today?
Is this usual practice at nurseries? We're curious to learn and to find out whether it might be appropriate to adapt our hopes about nursery standards. What's everyone else's understanding about the key worker role and what are the settling sessions or settling activities meant to involve?