We moved to a new area about six weeks ago and so regretfully had to move DD (nearly two) from the nursery that she has loved, and been attending tear-free since day 1, in our old neighbourhood.
Settling in to the new nursery is NOT going well. Tears at drop-off, which I know is to be expected (new for us, but we guessed this new start would be harder due to her age and also the disruption of the move), but it also seems to be really weighing on her mind - from the moment she wakes up she's frantically trying to postpone going to nursery, sometimes talks about it at bedtime also. She says she's sad there (but isn't at the stage to be able to explain why). The really tragic thing is we can see she's trying to be ok with it, puts on a brave face, tells us (through tears) about all the playing she's going to do there. But it really feels like she's quite distressed about it.
We have also noticed a couple of things we're not thrilled about - but have no sense of how normal this is (last nursery was really great, but may have given us unrealistic expectations), eg: management berating the staff in front of kids, staff looking understandably disgruntled by this, management telling off kids, whose names they don't even know. Some staff seem lovely but there are a couple who seem unable to crack a smile, even to cheer up a bawling toddler at drop off. And finally - when we emailed a couple of weeks back to raise concerns about how her settling in was going and asking to discuss, it took them two weeks to very begrudgingly get back to us with any proper response.
So we've identified a couple of other nurseries in the area with spaces and are visiting this week with a view to moving her if one seems like a better fit. But just today have spoken to her key worker about moving up a room soon with promises of the lovely new key worker she'll have in the new room. And we had observed that she really seems to want to be in with the bigger kids. Not really clear why but it was implied that kids are more settled in that room, it's a more steady environment etc. She did seem a bit more chipper than usual on pick-up today after spending some of the day in the new room.
So my conundrum is (assuming one of the nurseries we visit this week feels like a better fit) - do we go ahead and move her in the hopes of a long-term better environment, even though it will be another round of disruption; or do we assume that the weeks of miserable tears is all down to the upheaval she's been through, hope the new room works out better and ignore the various things we've seen and are not thrilled about on the basis that those are pretty normal for any nursery? I guess one answer would be to leave it for a bit to see how she gets on with the room change, but I can see that she's desperately trying to be ok there as she knows that's what we want so my concern is, if we leave it she will eventually 'settle' but not be as happy/well supported there as she might be somewhere else.
I'm completely torn, not helped by the fact this whole experience has made me realise how incredibly difficult it is to judge a nursery by just a visit. So any and all insights much appreciated. WWYD?
(Sorry for this essay)