Preparing Your Child (and Yourself) for Daycare

Let's say you have done all the research, you decided daycare is the way you want to go, and you have finally found the right center. Congratulations! The hard part is over!

…I wish that were true. 

Nothing about leaving your little one in the hands of strangers is easy. But I have a few tips that can make it easier for both you and your baby.

First, we'll start with infants.

Breast to bottles:  If you are currently breastfeeding, there are three things you can start working on to prepare for daycare. If you haven't already done so, start stashing your breastmilk, transition your baby to a bottle at least half the time, and have someone other than yourself feeding the bottle. If you find your baby will not take the bottle from anyone but yourself, it sometimes helps to leave the room. Breastfed babies know the smell of their mother's milk. They aren't going to want the bottle when they can get the milk straight from the tap!

Safe sleep: Daycare centers (especially infant rooms) are loud! For supervision purposes, some centers do not allow sound machines or dimmed lighting during naptime. This type of sleep environment can be challenging to adjust to when coming from a dark, quiet room at home. It is unavoidable, but I promise your little one will adapt. The most prominent issue teachers have with new babies is incorporating safe sleep practices. If the center you found does not insist on putting your baby in a crib, back to sleep, with no blanket, find another center. Otherwise, I suggest getting your infant used to these sleep requirements while he is still comfortable in his dark, quiet home. Consistency is vital here. Anytime you catch your baby falling asleep in a boppy, move her to her crib! She may wake up when you lay her down, but after so many times of staying consistent, she will eventually stay asleep in her crib.  

Trust: Trusting your infant teachers is exceptionally challenging because your baby cannot tell you about his or her day. If you ask the teachers for specific care instruction on maybe diaper cream, you have to trust they will do it that way. Now you will start to understand why you did so much research in the beginning. If you have faith in yourself that you found the right daycare center, trust in that for now. Trust in the teachers will come, the more you build a relationship with them. Remember that relationships are a two-way street. If they do not feel you trust them, they will not be as warm and welcoming towards you. Professional teachers will hide this well, but it will still show. Also, I want you to remember they are professionals! They know how to do their job. When it comes to getting your baby to sleep or getting him to try new foods, they know what they're doing. They will ask you if they want your advice on what works at home. Reminding yourself of their capabilities will help when you need to leave the issue in their hands. A lack of trust with your child's teacher will show through to the child. 

Mental Preparation: For an infant, preparing him for daycare is obviously beyond his comprehension. But as your baby ages into toddler-hood and become more capable of grasping the idea, you might want to consider trying to prepare him.

My son is two years old and I started to notice he was confusing weekends and weekdays. Every morning he was starting to talk of playing at his grandparents’ house as we would do on a weekend. He then would become increasingly upset when I started getting him ready for “school” that morning. He repeatedly begged to go to his grandparents’ house and that’s when it occurred to me; he has no concept of weekends versus weekdays. For a child of a typical family routine, weekends are distinguished by mom and dad both being home in the morning, and on weekdays we’re up early getting ready for work. In our household, however, my husband does not work a regular schedule. There are some weekdays he is still home sleeping in the morning and some weekends when he’s already gone by the time my son wakes up. I’m sure many families can sympathize with this unpredictable schedule. I started to realize how hard this would be for my son to wrap his two-year-old brain around. The clear solution was to give him a concrete visual he could understand and refer to every morning. I created a color-coded calendar with green days being “school days” and blue days are the “no school days.” Every morning when I say “let’s check your calendar” he is excited to grab his crayon and mark off a day. We cross off the previous day saying “you went to sleep” then I point to the current day and say “then you woke up!” Then I ask him what color that day is, he responds green or blue and we review what that means. Throughout the morning if he begins to confuse what is happening that day I ask him “is today a green day or a blue day.” If he starts to say he would rather go to his grandparents’ house and not school (who could blame him) I just remind him that today is a green day and on green days we go to school.

Now for the big kids.

Not everyone starting daycare for the first time is infant age. Your little one may be older, and that comes with a whole new set of challenges. 

In my experience, the hardest age for a child to start in daycare is somewhere between the onset of stranger danger (approximately 8 months old) and the ability to understand conversation (2-3 years old). Between these ages, the child is aware enough to know you have left her with this stranger but not able to comprehend you will return. There is not much that can be done with this age except consistency. Only time will tell the child that this place is safe and that Mom or Dad will return.    

If you believe your child is old enough to comprehend conversations about what will come, there are a few things you can do to prepare them.

Mental preparation: Before their first day, give him a timeline of what his day will look like leading all the way to when you come to get him. Your center will have likely given you a daily schedule by the clock. I advise translating that to your child by activity (3-4 activities are easiest to follow). Say, for example, you are planning to drop your child off at 8:30 and pick him up at 4:00. Your schedule to your son might sound like this, "Pretty soon after I leave, you'll be going outside! Then, when you come in, you'll have lunch, then you'll take a nap, then you play till mommy comes!" This schedule is something he can follow. A child who wakes up from nap missing his mother does not know that in just one more hour, she'll be there! Preschoolers have no concept of time. They do understand schedules. With this activity schedule in mind, if he starts to miss, you he can remember, I'm eating snack now. That means the next thing we do is free-play, and that is when Mommy comes. By having this conversation with your son consistently, you are giving him a sense of security, knowing that you will come back soon. 

With this security, he can go off and play. It may take time as he learns the schedule of the classroom, but, with consistency, it will not take longer than a week or two.

Drop-off: When it comes to dropping off, I recommend one very important rule:

Leave! Leave and never look back!  

As dramatic as this sounds, it is astonishingly effective. Leaving your child in the arms of a stranger and walking out of the room is heartbreaking. Especially when they are calling after you for "just one more hug." But I don't need to tell you the way a child can turn "just one more" into two, three, or five more times. They will never be satisfied enough to let you go. After a few heartbreaking bandages ripped off, your child will learn once you walk out of the room, you are gone for the day. Rip off the bandage. Do not enter the room. If you cave, and re-enter after saying goodbye, you are opening the opportunity. This opportunity is hard to close once it's been opened.

To lessen the blow, I suggest coming up with a drop-off mantra. This mantra will be the last thing you say to your child before walking out the door. The purpose of a consistent phrase is to prepare the child for what is about to come. It could be encouraging, "Make today great!" Or loving, "Okay, baby, I love you!" Or a reminder of when you'll be back, "I'll see you after a nap." Whatever mantra you chose, your child will know when you say those words it is time to let Mom go for now. 

Forming a bond: 

It is important to allow the teacher to comfort your son or daughter after you leave. It may break your heart (scratch that, it will break your heart) to leave your crying child with a stranger. However, it is crucial you do not take her off the teacher. This will not only disrupt the whole drop-off process we just discussed. It will also interrupt your child's bond with her teacher and communicate to her that you do not trust the teacher to do the job. If you feel the teacher cannot soothe your child, they will sense that and, therefore, not allow themselves to be comforted.  

Try to spend as little time in your child's classroom as possible. You want their classroom space to be free of mom-memories and full of teacher-memories instead. The next time she falls and gets hurt, her instinct will be to run to the teacher rather than search for you. Since she is not looking for her mom, she will be more easily comforted by the teacher.  

Speak kindly of her teacher whenever you can! And if you have any trouble with the teacher, do your best to keep this from your child's knowledge. Showing that you have formed a bond with her teacher will communicate to her that it is okay for her to do the same. Children not only mimick out actions, they feel our feelings. 

Sickness: Every daycare center has germs. It is best to have an expectation in your head that your child will be sick, quite frequently, for the first year in daycare. You want to look for cleanliness while choosing your center, sure. However, they can have the top-of-the-line cleaning products and rituals that border obsessive-compulsive territory, and your child is still going to get sick. 

Your child's immune system will never be as absorbent as it is right at this moment. As we age, our bodies learn how to fight whatever microbes are sent their way. A child of daycare age will be introduced to a world of germs. Through the years of stomach bugs and sore throats, his body is learning how to fight those microbes. If the child is in a daycare center, the likelihood of being introduced to new microbes is much higher. Yes, there are few sights more pathetic than a sick child, but there is a silver lining.  

With the exception of children with a compromised immune system, you want your child to get sick while young and more resilient. You can expect to have to take a few of your own sick days during this time, but it beats the child being exposed to all these new germs as a school ager when he now will have to miss class.  

When you're young, your immune system is learning. As the body fights foreign microbes with what is called the innate immune system, the system we are born with, it is learning all about these invaders. It remembers what needed to be done to defeat them. This strengthens what is called the adaptive immune system, which is built over time. For a child who has been indoors most of their young life, they won't be exposed to those invaders until later in life. Meanwhile, the children exposed to the variety of germs in a daycare center have a very actively learning immune system that is drinking it all in. If that child exposed to these germs already is confronted with a similar microbe when he or she gets older, the immune system already knows what to do and how to handle it.

Now, that being said, please respect your center's sick policy. It is easy to blame the center for allowing the spread of germs, but if a child is sent home with some sort of airborne illness, every child and staff member in that room has been exposed. Say a baby picks up the virus from the infant room and brings it home to her preschool sister. The sister then brings it to her classroom days later. This continues until the virus has spread to the entire center.  

Yes, your child is in daycare because you have a job to get to. And yes, sick days are valuable. And yes, some jobs are harder to take off than others. These are challenges that need to be considered when choosing daycare. Before I became a parent, I used to get so frustrated at the parents who would bring their child back to the center the day after he was sent home sick. As a parent now, I can say, though I sympathized, I still hold my stance on the matter. If your child is sick, they should not be in school. I advise before enrolling in any daycare center to first check their sick policy, then create an accommodating plan.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Fontecchio Design

With the pressure of parenthood to be successful in both your career and childrearing, every working mom is bound to break down now and then. Even though my son has been in daycare from infancy, I still have moments I do not want to let him go at morning drop-off. Particularly when he is also clinging to me for whatever reason. Most days he walks into the building happy and excited for his day but every once in a while he decides he doesn’t want to go that day and it’s a heartbreaking departure. On one of those more recent days, the teacher reached out to me mid-day to let me know he was doing better. At the end of the day, she told me how they talked about what he was feeling and he got extra cuddles that day. I fought back tears as I told her it is for moments like this that I bring him there. It is for teachers like her that I can leave him on rough mornings. I know my son is loved and he is in good hands.

I can assure you there is a daycare like this out there for you and your child. It might take some time to adjust and you may still have bad days, but if you have prepare your child as best you can and form positive relationships with the staff, you can leave reassured that your child will be cared for not just physically but emotionally as well.