21 month toddler twins still in baby room

[twinees]

Dear all,

I would appreciate any advice from anyone.

I am a full time working mum. We are sending both our twin daughters to a nursery since they were 11 months old. The nursery staff are great and both our daughters are well care for.

However we think they have overstayed in the Baby room! When they were around 18 months old, we informally enquired about the transition to toddler room. We were told that it is more difficult to move two full time baby becasue they have to wait for space but thye would look into to it. A weeks passed with the twins 19 months old and we asked the staff again and we get same answer. We expressed our concerns formally in a letter. They then promised to move our daughters to toddler room two days a week. We were promised by the manager that our daughters would be in her priority list. Two weeks ago, we were then told it has became three days a week. However, last week, we were very angry to find out another child who is 2 months younger has been transferred to the toddler room. We complained agian now to the Regional manager which she promised to investigate. A day later we were told we now have another day leaving only one day in the baby room.

We are still extremely unhappy with the arrangement, our daughters are coming to 21 months and still in the baby room albeit one daya week. What is annoying us most is there seems to be lacked of planning and organisation of the transition to toddler room. We have been left with no choice. They should have planned this ages ago since day 1.
We have concerns of whether they can provide adequate learning experience, environment and stimulation to two active toddlers in the baby room. They have been there for 9 months already.
THough this matter is with the regional manager, we are getting some sandard answers from her.

Any more advice.

This might be staff : children ratio issue. Legally they need a 1:3 ratio of staff to children before they are 2 years old and after 2 the ratio is 1:5 . Moving them to the toddler room before they are 2 would require the nursery to increase the number of staff in that room, and it's possible they don't have staff available every day to cover this. It sounds like they have tried very hard to comply with your requests and really I can't see how one day a week in the baby room would do them any harm.

I'd be pretty annoyed too. In most nurseries I think baby room is till 12 months or 18 months. By 21 months they are almost due to be moving from the first toddler room to the second (depending on the size of the nursery). It also doesn't provide any consistency of care for your dt's even though they are at the same nursery. They are at a very clingy age.

I'd just keep nagging. Also, why are they treating them differently to singleton babies (who are moved earlier?). That doesn't seem right.

Ive worked in a nursery for over four years, we had similar problems but never did we have children doing some time in one room and then some time in another...thats awful. how are they planning for your children? who is their key worker etc? the nursery should never have allowed this to happen.

The nursery ultimately has responsibility to ensure your children are in the appropriaite room, with similar aged children, being cared for consistently and are developing well.

I will also tell you that a similar thing happened to a friend of mine and they sued the nursery after nothing happened and they got compensation, it was a slighlty different situation because the child was legally entitled to two and a half hours in the pre-school room every day, as they were over 3 and they weren't getting this time, so the nursery actually broke the law.

Just be more demanding, as a full time parent the nursery will not want to lose you.

I work in a nursery, and we have had lots of twins through the nursery, we have never had issues with moving them through the nursery, i currently have two sets of twins in my room, and about to gain another.

We look at the children individual needs, and it has been the case that sometimes the children do benefit from staying in the room, this can be because emotionally they aren't quite confident enough to move, and we feel they may get lost in a older room, or physically they may just have not gained all the skills for move to be successful, however this has never forced a child to be held back for 9 months.

What we work on a term basis, so generally on the term after their birthday they are moved, e.g if a child is born between late Sept and Dec they move up in January.

Once all the children have moved up then we look at taking children off the waiting list, maybe your nursery is taking children off the waiting list, thus filling the room, which then has an on going effect of stopping your children moving up, if you see what i mean!

Your nursery is right though it is harder to find two full time places even one is a push, but as you say they would have known this from day one.

My ds's nursery has a clear policy of baby room for 0-2 and then a 2-5 room. You move up in the month when the birthday falls.

Its quite a transition going from the baby room - there is more structure (and noise) in the 2-5 room and obviously the ratios of staff fall, so less one on one care. Staying with the babies may not be a bad thing.

It sounds like your issues are less about this, than around poor communication/planning/weak management in the nursery, which is a wider issue I think. Are you happy with the nursery in other respects?

This seems a little strange - I used to work in a nursery - and we had to move children up from our 1-2 room to the 2-3 room regularly and we would have children moved up to us.

I disagree that there is no space for a full time child or 2 in your case to be moved up to the next room - have they not lost a full timer upto the next room in the last couple of months? I can bet they've probably started a brand new full time child in this space in the last couple of months.

I would be writing a strongly worded letter to the nursery stating that you want your children moved into full time places before their 2nd birthday or you want a reduction in costs until it can be sorted.