Starting nursery is a wonderfully exciting time and the beginning of a whole new adventure in your child’s life. However, any transition or change can bring with it feelings of nervousness and anxiety. This is perfectly natural because nursery will seem like a strange and unknown place with lots of new people. Overcoming this is all about getting to know each other by making connections, developing relationships and secure attachments.

We want to make the settling in process as smooth for you and your child as possible, ensuring they feel happy and their well-being is high. We know that children with a high level of well-being will be ready to play, learn and thrive at nursery.

The settling in process will be key to enabling your child to feel secure, happy and at ease with their key worker and new surroundings, giving them a sense of well-being. Of course, all children are unique and there is no ‘one size fits all’ prescription. It can be difficult to know how quickly and easily a child will settle. There are so many different things that can affect how each child copes in their early days at nursery. With this is mind, the settling in process will be individual to each child, respecting their different needs and circumstances. Some children settle quickly over a few days and for others it can take several weeks.

When your child starts at nursery we will ask you to stay and help them. At first, you can stay and play with your child as they explore and get to grips with their new environment. Once they start to feel more secure with the environment and begin to engage in play more readily, you can step back a bit and allow your child to play alongside the staff and other children while you are still present. The next step would be for you to leave your child for a short while before returning to pick them up. This will be done in mutual agreement with your child’s key worker and it is important that the agreement is adhered to. Over time, working in close partnership, we will together enable your child to feel trust, security and confidence. This will allow your child to become happier at nursery for extended amounts of time without you being present.

We would not expect very new children to complete a whole session to begin with. We usually build up the time a child spends in nursery gradually as they become ready. Staying for the group time at the end of the session is usually the final step. This is the most formal part of the session, when children are expected to sit and attend in a larger group. It is often difficult and tiring for them to begin with and not expected of very new children.

Throughout the settling in period the nursery staff will keep talking to you about the process and how your child is progressing. This means joint decisions can be made that tailor the process to suit the needs of your child. Working together we can enable your child to flourish.

Ways to help your child settle