Transition into day care made just a little easier.

Once your day care has been chosen and your child has been accepted I found the two best questions to ask if not already asked are….

1.       What time do they eat?   2.       What time do they take a nap?

I had three weeks before my sons first day at the day care and I thought it would be best to start trying to get him into the same routine so that it would not be too much of a shock for him when they put him to bed, or fed him at a time he was not used too…

And it really helped my son with the transition...

Their lunch time was at 11.30am and I usually fed him at 12.00pm. So for a week I just fed him a little earlier every day.  And when I noticed that by the end of the week he was starting to get hungry around the 11.30am I was happy.

Getting him to sleep at 1pm instead of when ever he felt like taking a nap was a little harder but I had to be persistent…  I would keep him awake even though he may have been cranky because he wanted to sleep in the morning, or wide awake because on that particular day he wanted to sleep in the afternoon, I would put him to bed at 1pm.   Their sleep time was two hours. So if he had not fallen asleep after an hour (I’d do the old controlled crying trick) I would pick him up and keep him awake. Cruel as it sounds because the poor little tacker did get ever so tired . But it also helped him sleep through the night because he missed his nap during the day…

 Eventually he learnt that when I put him in bed at 1pm that was sleep time. And now he sleeps for two hours from 1pm to 3pm.  And it only takes him about 5 minutes for him to fall asleep…

This helped the transition into day care for him, and also for me because I would have hated to think he was at the day care somewhere he did not know screaming and wanting mummy, and god forbid keeping all the other kiddies awake!  And now my son sleeps the way I wish he did from day one…