Positive relationships: All in a day's work - settling-in routines
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Think about your settling-in routines for babies, says Sian Nisbett, nursery director of Dizzy Ducks Day Nursery, which owns two nurseries in Essex.
Recent news articles (Nursery World, 9 March) cite a rise in the intake of young babies in day nurseries in response to the current economic climate. We have certainly seen this in my own settings.
Our youngest registered child was just six weeks old when she started with us. As a single parent with a mortgage and running her own business, the mother simply couldn't afford to take time off work, so had to return to her job quickly. Practitioners needed to consider how to deal with this baby in the nursery environment and how her care would differ to others.
Our initial discussions centred on the mother. It was worth remembering that the mother might still be experiencing the strong post-birth hormones, and potentially not have physically recovered 100 per cent from the birth. We needed to be exceptionally sensitive to the mother's needs.
Our nurseries have strong settling policies. We made sure this mother knew and understood the settling-in process and ensured that she had adequate time to spend in the baby room, getting to know the staff and feeling comfortable. The mother was particularly concerned about sleeping arrangements, so we made sure that one of the settling-in sessions was over a sleep period, to reassure her that the baby would sleep. Another of her concerns was about milk preparation and if we knew how to do it properly. The room leader allowed the mother to show her how to prepare a bottle, in exactly the way that the mother wanted it done. Even though this room leader has prepared hundreds of bottles over the years, it was important that the mother felt that she was being listened to. From her point of view, I imagine that being able to show the practitioner her way of making up bottles gave her some degree of control over the situation.
On the first day that the mother left the baby with us, we made sure that we called her one hour after she had left the nursery, to let her know that her daughter was OK. We followed this up with a call at lunchtime, to let her know that her baby had slept. This helped her feel closely connected with the nursery and helped build the relationship with the family.
A good settling-in policy is essential in any setting, but with a rise in the number of babies using daycare, the policy needs to be flexible and sensitive to the needs of new mothers, too.
