This month I decided to be less philosophical and more practical. In this post I am going to share our experience of returning to nursery after a three and a half month Corona induced break.
First things first, to go back or not
We opted for yes, for all the good effects nursery had on our daughter before the lock down. I wrote about these in my post On the nurseries, so please feel free to read through if you want to get an insight into our experience of starting nursery at 12 months.
Further, during the lockdown and especially towards the end of it, I started noticing how Klara was looking at and chasing other kids in the park. She didn’t seem to know exactly how to join in and play with them, which was terribly painful for me to watch, but she clearly wanted to. This was one of the signs my husband and I saw as indicators that she needed to go back to her own social bubble, with her peers and learn social interaction by spending time away from us.
Settling back in
The big day came and things were not as smooth as we and the nursery expected. Klara cried at the drop off for four days and she was also teary on pick up. On the fourth day, I got a call from the nursery saying that she has had an eventful day: she took a mouthful of lunch and instantly vomitted; then later she woke up from her nap and had a temperature. I went to pick her up straight away and found her crying her eyes out. She was not allowed to return to nursery until she had had a negative Corona test.
Important to mention here is that she had a temperature for that one day only. If you ask me the temperature was most likely caused by the stress of change and missing us.
Corona test
Here in London, you can either do a drive-thru test or you can order a home testing kit; we do not have a car so I ordered a home testing kit. After it finally arrived, we had to place a swab at the very back of her mouth and the top of a nostril for 15 seconds in each location. As you can imagine, this is not an easy ask from a 20 month old patient and I doubt we swabbed each location for more than three seconds. When the test result came back the result was unsurprisingly UNCLEAR.
The guidance that came with the results said that if she didn’t have any symptoms for seven days, then she could return to the nursery. I emailed the nursery to get their approval on this, but they replied (following other Government guidelines) that yes indeed she could come back, but my husband and I cannot be the ones to bring her in/pick her up, because other members of the household need to self-isolate for 14 days if one member displays a Corona symptom (ie. the temperature).
We could have asked our friends to help us with drop offs/pick ups, but we didn’t want to further confuse her and increase the chances of another stress related temperature. She returned to nursery 14 days after being sent home.
Now
She is still not happy at the drop off.
For me as a mother, this process is very painful and morning drop off often sets the tone of how my day is going to feel like. The other Monday, she insisted I carry her all the way to nursery and when we got there, she looked me in the eyes and through tears said ‘kući, kući’ (Serbian for ‘home’). I handed her over, the doors of the room shut and while I could still hear her cry I left wanting to do the same: scream, cry and pull my hair out.
I expected to find her in tears on pick up that same day, but she welcomed me happy dancing and singing ‘Baby shark dodo dodo’.
What we do to make the process less painful
To wrap up, we know settling in is a process that is hard on both the child and the parents and it can take a while. Here is what we do to try to help her (and ourselves) with it:
1. We talk to her a lot about the nursery: we ask what she did there, what she ate and who she played with. During these conversations she happily mentions her nursery friends (predominantly boys!) which must be the sign that she does enjoy spending time with them. We hope by reminding her of these positive feelings/emotions/friends she will strengthen positive associations to nursery and settle back in more easily;
2. We follow a routine: she has some awareness of the drop off time through our morning routine and if asked she could tell you what time I will pick her up. The idea behind me teaching her what time I will pick her up is for her to know that mama will come and get her and that she will not be left there for good. After the pick up, she knows she will get a snack that I’ll bring from home and then we will go straight to ‘ljulja’ (Serbian for ‘the swing’).
3. Finally, as I learned on the Baby shark day, often after we leave, children stop crying and have a great day at nursery with their friends and carers. They are very clever and sometimes they put on a show for us as they know we are vulnerable and susceptible to their tears.
I hope you found this post insightful. Feel free to share it with anyone you think may benefit from it.
Thank you for reading x