Difficulty settling 10 month into nursery

[MildredH]

Would appreciate any advice.. Back to work in two weeks. DD ( 10 months) will be going to nursery two days a week.

She has always been fairly clingy and often only happy with DH and I so I anticipated this might be tricky and asked the nursery for an extended settling in ( they would only have offered 2 x one hour sessions as standard).

I thought four weeks would be good and aimed to go from one hour to maybe two hours, half day, full over that time. We have been trying for two weeks now and she hasn't managed more than half an hour before becoming so upset they've asked me to take her home.

I now just don't know what the best strategy for the next two weeks is and naturally I am feeling super anxious and quite upset at the thought of the whole thing.

I asked the HV for advice and she suggested lots of short sessions but with only two weeks to go how do I go from short to a whole day?

The nursery have not been very forthcoming with advice and I feel that their approach is just to accept that DD will probably cry her way through the first few weeks which makes me want to weep ( am I being PFB?).

Where should I go from here?
TIA

I had the same problem with my DD, two days and going at ten months.
We did more shorter sessions, but my DH was able to work round this. I had to go back to work.
I don't have any real advice. I just want you to know you're not alone. All I heard from other people at the time was how much their child loved nursey. It made me feel terrible.

At the end of the day, I just had to sort of resign myself and think well, she's safe and cared for and it's only two days a week.
Good luck. I hope it works out for you !

You picking her up after 30m can't be helping, they need to be able to comfort her. I don't know what the answer is that doesn't cause her hours of distress though.

Have you stayed with her at all? Could you go for a relatively long time, ie 2 hours, but you stay the whole time? Try and make it a nice place that doesn't necessarily mean mummy leaving?

Would you consider a childminder or another nursery? From what you've said, that particular nursery may not be a good fit . They don't seem to be looking for a way to suit your child, it's more like they expect her to suit them.

Mermaid- how long ago did your DD start? Does she enjoy it now?

Trilby- I think you are right, and earlier today I had a chat on the phone with the manager who said she thinks longer sessions will give her more of a chance to settle. We are now doing one hour tomorrow and half a day later in the week.

Mipmop- I have had some thoughts along these lines. I am personally not keen on idea of CM but would consider another nursery although I am not sure it would be better and at this stage I feel it would risk confusing her by being another new place.

This whole business is quite honestly the most difficult part of parenting so far by a long chalk. I am usually fairly strong but just want to cry non stop!

It's good to hear the manager has made some suggestions today. Best wishes.

A few things that may help (even if she hasn't got a sophisticated understanding of them): read some books about going to nursery and be very upbeat & enthusiastic about them - one I can think of is a Baby Owl book 'I'm not ready', and even just very simple flap books that depict nurseries. Talk about them while you are reading. When you drop your child off, put it into context when you are going to collect them (very roughly) - I used to say 'You'll have your lunch here and Mummy will come and pick you up after lunch' (even though it was actually 3.30). Do these things as a ritual pretty much every day. Be as calm as you can as your discomfort is likely to have a knock on effect. Try to keep everything around the nursery experience positive, and if she does cry, persevere with the nursery staff (as long as you see that they can have good relationships with other children there and especially other children who are upset) as they need to be able to be allowed to comfort her successfully, so that your child will trust and get used to them. It will come.

Oh, the other thing I did (although my DD was a fair bit older) was to stay just for the beginning of the lunch period and I said to DD that it looked so nice that I was getting hungry but I hadn't brought my own lunch, would it be ok if I went home to get some and came back to pick DD up afterwards? I left at the pudding stage (cake in custard!) In fact I was pretty upset then as they'd given DD picnic plastic cutlery which was huge for her and she found it very hard to use, but I was trying not to interfere with it too much. The first course was hard going but she was not going to let a silly thing like a huge spoon keep her from her cake (and developed great spoon manipulation skills in a matter of minutes!)