How much nursery time is ‘too much’ for a 3 year old who’s never been before?

[Kugelschreiber]

Hi everyone,

TLDR: people with kids who started nursery for the first time at 3 years old, I’m hoping to find some opinions and anecdotes about how many days per week you think worked well for your kids (or didn’t work well).

Longer post:
It’s getting close to the time where I’ll need to apply for a local authority nursery/pre-school placement for DS, which he’ll start shortly after this third birthday, and I’m having a bit of a mini-crisis over it and am hoping to get other opinions.

Our local nurseries all offer sessions of 5 hours per day, at a minimum of 2 days per week and a maximum of 5 days per week. I’ve ended up as a SAHM and am really hoping to get back into paid work when DS is old enough for his funded childcare hours and a local authority ELC placement (we live in Scotland, so this is at 3 years old), and my initial instinct was to apply for a “full-time” placement to maximise the chance of me being able to find a job after he’s settled.

However, my mum reckons that putting DS in our local nursery for 5 days a week, almost like school hours, will be way too much for him at this age and he won’t cope. She thinks it would be different if he’d started nursery as a baby and was already used to it, but since he’s always been home with me, she thinks he won’t be able to adjust and I’d need to wait until he’s old enough for school before he’d be able to manage 5 days.

I really, really don’t want to set DS up to hate nursery by placing him there for too many days too quickly, but I also don’t want to have him placed for too few days for me to have any prospect of finding a job that matches his nursery hours either (for example, school dinner lady work is a possible option for me, but I've never seen a dinner lady job that wasn't 5 days per week; there are also so few jobs in my local area generally that I can't really imagine a scenario where a part-time job of 2-3 days per week would come up that conveniently happened to match the exact 2-3 days a week my son was previously enrolled in nursery for). On the other hand, I'm really scared of ending up in a nursery refusal situation if I don't get this right and DS really doesn't cope with the transition to nursery - I think nursery will be really great for his social development and for preparing him for school and I'd really like him to do well there. Either way, I want to prioritise what's best for him but I'm also feeling a bit down at the thought that it could be another 2-3 years before I'm in a position where I can work again depending on what I put on the nursery enrolment form when it opens next month.

Other people whose kids first started nursery at 3, how many days did you start with, how did they cope, and how much do you think is too much?

[As an extra bit of background context, I do have reasons to be concerned about how DS will cope with nursery in general, regardless of the number of days he goes each week. He’s 2.5 at the moment and is very chatty and sociable with adults but is terrified of being approached by other children, regardless of everything we’ve done to try and help him feel more comfortable around them. We think it’s due to sound sensitivity (which I also had) and a slightly anxious/over-responsive temperament, which is leading him to be scared of things that make unpredictable movements and noises (i.e. babies, toddlers and young children!). He’s very interested in watching other children from a distance, asks us questions about them, and sometimes copies what they say and do, but he panics and screams if they approach him. He loves our local playgroup where he can play with me, keep his distance from other kids, and run away if they get too close, but he melts down at story sessions where he’s expected to sit with other children; we can’t even get him in the door for Bookbug sessions. He may well change over the next six months as his social interest in his peers develops, but I’m still expecting to have to handle his introduction to nursery very carefully.]

I think a 5 hour day sounds like a good amount regardless of how many days per week for a child who hasn't been to nursery before. I would be cautious about an 8 hour day 5 days a week at a first go but plenty children do it! 5 hours a day if have no worries about it as long as the settling in has gone well. Can you talk to nursery themselves about whether you could take a "full time" place and phase him in over a few weeks/months if need be?

I did the traditional 5 mornings a week with DD1 aged 3. It turned out that she was autistic which we didn’t know at that point. In reality, she was far happier with 2 very long days. The home/nursery transition was traumatic for her so reducing the number of transitions was beneficial.

I‘m in a similar situation and my newly 3 year old is going for 3 days a week in September. I had the same concerns as you & your mum, so I asked the nursery and they suggested three days would be a good start. I’m only doing morning sessions but mainly because I can’t use funded hours for lunch times there, plus my little one still has a long afternoon nap & I’m home with baby anyway so didn’t see the point in paying for him to nap there. Hope it works out for you!

Ps I agree with the idea of taking a full time place and phasing him in if they allow it!

Sorry I would say full time for a child thats 3 and has never been to nursery too much. If he was starting school he most likely would have been to preschool or nursery first to ease him into it. Mine started preschool at 2 having only been looked after by grandparents 2 days a week while I worked (I appreciate I was lucky to have this option). He only did a morning initially but found it difficult for a few months. I think because he had only been left with people he knew the transition for him was not easy and that was only hours a week.

DS started at 3 and did 2.5 days a week but would have been fine with 3. He was similar to your DS in that he was fine with adults but very wary of other children and didn’t like loud noises/music. The nursery were brilliant with him and really brought him on, doing social workshops etc. At the time I felt like full time would have been too much and he is full time in reception now and absolutely thriving - a real social butterfly.

As pp have said you could always start off with less days and see if the nursery will let you build up to more days if that’s what you want and you think he’d cope.

Both mine did 3 hours each morning from the term after their third birthday, returning home for lunch and a more relaxed afternoon. It’s been brilliant for both, they were noticeably tired after lunch and benefitted from a quiet time before we’d play more, visit the park, etc.

Their pre-school is quite structured and they start learning letters and numbers, etc. So I guess more hours may be less tiring at a more free flow setting, I don’t have anything to directly compare that to. Every child is different too- I actually think my youngest would have coped much better with longer hours than my eldest, they have different energy levels generally.

Talk to nursery, can he do a phased start, and work up to 5 days perhaps. Or be picked up at lunchtime every day for the first month. I think whatever you choose, from what youve said you do need to more work on transitioning him in. My little girl was at home with me or a nanny till 3, but she still played with children at parks, soft plays, play dates and she had a sibling and we still got some separation anxiety and never did 5 days as she did find it quite hard to start with (she did enjoy it and made friends though). She did 3 days of 4 hours until 6 months before school when she went up to 4 days and 9am till 3pm.
Do you have any family support, or any other childcare options at all. It sounds like a room full of strange children for a lot of the day, 5 days a week, is going to be a big shock to your little one perhaps. I'm sure he'll get there in the end, but i would try and get him a bit more confident around other kids, and then work with the pre school to phase him in the best way you can. Ideally start looking for roles now, lots of places expect you to not be available immediately and have a notice period, so you can explain you're not available until Sept and it gives you time to work out what pt options there are (e.g. if you were a dinner lady, you could pick up early or drop off late as work is likely to be only 2 hours max).

My daughter started nursery in January after turning 3. I'm also in Scotland and she was phased in doing a few hours a day but she done so well she was going for 6 hours 5 days a week after 2 weeks of starting. She was a very shy child who wouldn't talk to adults or children she didn't know and her keyworker has been amazing with her and she's came out of her shell and will now talk to the other adults and children.

Mine did 3 hours 5 days a week.

Mine went from nothing to 2.5 hours 5x per week as that's was the "normal" hours. There was no option to do less days but more hours. I guess I could have sent them only some days but it didn't occur to me to do so.

My DD is starting all day as I work 8h/day Monday-Friday. I don’t think it’s ideal as I would have preferred 5-6h/day for her but it is what it is.

My ds1 started off doing a 10 hr day once a week and that was a mistake, in hindsight. He didn’t settle well. As a result my ds2 did 3x 6 hr days then I put him up to 4x 6 hr days.

I started with 2 x 3 hours, then went to 3.5, then went to 5.5, then went to 3 days a week at 5.5 (8.30-2) and have stuck there.
he is thriving, he’s just finishing his first year there he is 3, I won’t be increasing becuase I’m at home with younger sibling and I’d still like us 3 to have time together

Mine went daily but 3 hours a day, in retrospect I wish I had the option of ( hours 3x a week

Hi everyone, thank you so much for sharing, it's been extremely helpful! I think I'll look to start DS at 3 days a week at first and see if it's possible/desirable to build it up as he gets used to it, either through a 'full-time' placement with a long phased start as @ForAzureSeal, @Toomanyusernames123 and @Ireallywantadoughnut36 suggested (thank you so much for that, as it hadn't occurred to me to ask about it!!) or just through straight-up asking for a 3 day placement and then seeing if we can increase it later if he enjoys it.

@Herewegoagain8 and @BluenoseGers, it was great to hear your stories - very reassuring, and I'm so glad your DCs are doing well :) @Herewegoagain8, my DS is also often terrified of music just like yours was, so they must be quite similar in some ways.

@Ireallywantadoughnut36, thanks for your question - unfortunately we don't have any regular family support for childcare as our families all live about 6 hours away, but we would have the option of trying to get a childminder for him if nursery really doesn't work out and we need to try a smaller/calmer setting with fewer other children. We might also have the option of blending nursery on some days with a childminder on others if we ever really needed more coverage but couldn't handle more nursery, but we'll try nursery on its own first to try and avoid multiple settings getting overwhelming for him.

@stargirl1701, thanks so much for sharing, and I'm really glad you were able to shift to an option that minimised difficult transitions and worked better for your DD. I have a few diagnosed or suspected autistic family members, including my only sibling having level 3 autism and a severe learning disability, and there have also been a few questions about possible undiagnosed people on DH's side, so we were aware before we had DS that we had an increased chance of him being autistic or otherwise having different support needs. So far we believe he's neurotypical, but I'm very open to the possibility that we might learn otherwise as he gets older and starts interacting with same-age peers more, in which case we can also reconsider what will work best for him in terms of early years care. Wishing you and your DD all the best.