Nursery workers - is this the reality or just this nursery

[Anon35609]

So I don’t know if I’m just a bit naive and looking for something that doesn’t exist or whether my experience is not the same as everyone’s.
I don’t want to go into too much detail but I have worked in a nursery for about 2 yrs now and had no previous experience in childcare. When I first started I was kind of horrified at the reality of it.
for example, there are 15 babies in the baby room at the moment and a lot of them cry for the majority of the day, even when being held and comforted by staff (unsuccessfully). This leaves your ears ringing by the end of the day and I’m not even in the room. The lights are also off for most of the day due to babies napping at different times which leaves the nearly 2 year olds playing in the dark. Also we are told not to say negative things to parents about the children’s day unless they have been crying all day in which case we say they have been a little bit emotional. I feel that as a parent I would want to know (we have babies that have been there for months and still don’t settle).
There are other issues I have but those are a few. However, I understand that obviously babies cry and they do have to nap 🤷‍♀️

Recently an opportunity has come up at a nearby nursery and I am tempted to apply, the nursery is smaller and seems to be more of a home from home kind of setting but it does sound like I would be taking on much more responsibility for the same pay.

I love my job and the people but the nursery just isn’t the positive welcoming place I expected and can feel quite oppressive and depressing (for the staff and the children). Is every nursery like this or should I take my chance and apply to the new one?

p.s.- my current nursery has a good ofsted rating and great reviews from parents. Children are safe and looked after to the best of the staffs abilities.

A lot of crying in the baby room is normal but I'm surprised the majority can't be comforted.
In my experience there are always some babies, especially in a big room like that, that just hate it and cry all the time but the majority are mostly settled with just peak crying at meal times and nap times, end of the day when they're tired.

The lights off thing is weird, are the 2 year olds in the same room?

Downplaying upset to parents is totally normal unfortunately, especially in a private nursery. Ultimately it's a business and the owners want happy parents and full occupancy.

Nurseries can be quite depressing to work in honestly but yours does sound more depressing than usual!

Wow this sounds horrible.

My daughter went to a really lovely small nursery run by Catholic nuns of all people (it was our local nursery) and it was such a lovely and nurturing environment. They even had a pet cat. My daughter was 2 when she started there and she absolutely loved it and thrived there. It was such a nice place to be. No crying babies at all and the kids were lovely and super friendly, but it was tiny. I think there were only around 12 kids there.

We even invited the nursery worker nuns to my daughter's birthday party at our house as they were so lovely and really liked by all the parents.

Gosh, you make it sound awful and a depressing place to work. As long as you will be well supported by the management at new nursery, I wouldn't let increased responsibility for same pay put you off. It sounds like you need to increase your experience and get out of where you're currently working anyway. Good luck.

@VikaOlson so the baby room is upto 2 but they push the babies over 12m to transition to nursery routine which is one nap after lunch, the younger ones follow their own routine so it means they often sleep in the morning before lunch and then afternoon. Whenever anyone is asleep the lights have to be off which means a large portion of the day the older babies are playing in the dark as well as the younger ones after lunch.

I have thought about leaving for a while but have heard horror stories about other nurseries which has put me off.

Ours isn’t like this as we have a dedicated sleep area so the awake babies are playing as usual.

Few of our babies cry, except for the expected reasons - tired or want a bottle or had a bump. Most of the crying happens when babies are settling in and trigger each other but the majority of the time it is happy and calm. I think we have a smaller setting though, we max out at 12 babies and often have fewer day to day.