Starting Childcare - Toyoor Al Jannah

Starting Child Care

Thank you for selecting our child care service. Understanding the important details will help you prepare for your child’s transition and ultimate success in our program. It is important for parents to manage their emotions effectively during this process.

Suggestions to ensure your child settles:

Say goodbye: When it’s time to go, it’s important to let your child know you’re going and when you’ll be back. Give your child a hug and a kiss, say goodbye to your child’s educator and leave promptly. This makes it easier for your child to settle down with their educator.
Build a relationship with your child’s early childhood educators:
Your child is more likely to feel secure at child care if they see that you have good relationships with early childhood educators. If your child can see that you trust their educator, your child is more likely to trust the educator too.
Calm your child: Prepare your child by consistently reassuring them with positive affirmations such as, “You will have a great day at school. You will participate in fun activities with your friends. You will learn many exciting things.”
Talk about emotions: Allow your child to be honest about their feelings and listen to them. You can also try talking to them about an outburst once they are calm.
Model showing emotions: Express your own emotions, label feelings, and talk about them out loud.
Validate their feelings: Don’t dismiss their feelings by telling them something like “You’re ok” or “It will be fine”.

Suggestions for settling children from diverse cultural and language backgrounds

Your child might be going to a child care service that’s culturally different from your home. The educators and other children might come from cultural backgrounds that are different from your family’s, or they might speak different languages from yours.

These tips might help your child settle in:

Share some basic words in your child’s home language with the educators – for example, words for sleep, eat, stop, hello and goodbye.
Explain how much English your child can speak or understand.
Explain any customs for eating, dressing or behaviour that might affect your child’s activities at child care.
Lend or donate cultural items that help your child feel welcome – for example, traditional toys, books in your home language, woven or dyed cloth from your culture, or inexpensive cooking utensils to use in home corner.
Suggest that the service has regular events or activities to explore diverse cultures, including your child’s. You might even like to be involved in some way.

How do you know whether your child has settled well at child care?

Your child has probably settled well at child care if they:

are generally happy to go to child care
show you things they’ve made or done at child care
talk happily about their day (if they’re talking).

If you have any concerns about how your child is settling in at child care, it’s best to talk to your child’s early childhood educators.