Not settling

[Babysienna]

21 month old not settling well at nursery.
still crying a lot at drop off and refuses to go. Still crying on and off once there.
did settle sessions with him.
Been 4 weeks now and no improvement.
any advice or suggestions or tips or can you share your experience

Hello
i can share experience as my LO hasn’t started yet… although I’m anticipating soem separation anxiety…
but is there a comforter he can take? (Something familiar - although my LO hasn’t taken to one yet!)
Or anything there he really likes that he doesn’t have at home?
I’m hoping my LO will realise there are fun things to do at nursery that are different to at home, something to look forward to…
do you take him to any groups?

my LO has always been Clingy etc - so we’ve been going to baby groups and book bugs at the library and over time has gained the confidence to crawl to other spaces, babies and other mums! and is now ok when I go to kitchen to wash cups etc. Took a while though… but makes me think settling in will be ok… even if it takes a while…
I guess some little ones take longer?

has the nursery given any suggestions?

What has her key worker suggested @Babysienna? I think how the key worker handles the situation is usually a good indicator of the kind of care she's receiving.

They’ve suggested giving more time. I’m happy with the key worker and he my LO really likes her too

Unfortunately this is a hard age for them to settle. How many times a week are they going? I work with children & it took me 3 months to settle a little girl in once. She's running the show now. Don't panic just keep trying.

How often are they there?

It deffo took longer than 4 weeks for my DC to settle

Two days of the week

I think it will be a matter of time. Two days a week isn't a lot - my nursery won't offer it because they say it's too hard for children to settle and too disruptive - so it will take longer than if they were going 3+ days a week.

2 days a week isn’t much, so he’s done what 8 days total, and some of those were presumably settling in sessions. If you were saying that a full time child hadn’t settled after only a week, it would be completely expected, yet your DC hasn’t actually been to nursery much more than that. I think you definitely need to give it more time, and finances not withstanding, have a think if they’d actually be best doing 3 days a week for consistency.

So LO as done 4 consecutive weeks plus 4 weeks of settle sessions prior to that where he was going for about 2 hours for 3 days.
considering another day but it’s so expensive and I don’t really need the child care.

I agree. Unfortunately 2 days isn't ideal but you just need to preserve if you can't up the hours. It will work out it will just take longer.

2 days is fine. My DD started off with 1 day from 8-15 months then upped to two. She never had a problem settling in. Most of the children in her room do 2-3 days.

its early days still, keep talking about nursery positively and what fun things they’ll get up to.