When should you remove a child from their nursery/pre-school?

When your intuition tells you to.

 As a mother or as a father, you will know intuitively when it is the time to remove your child from their nursery/pre-school.

 Let me tell you about my experience and the circumstances that led me to removing my son from his nursery.

My son has attended two nurseries in his life so far. He started at his first nursery when he was 9 months old. It was definitely not what I wanted but I decided that I needed some time to continue with my work so I enrolled my son into our local nursery and he went part time 3 days a week (15 hours a week). If I were to have another child, I wouldn’t send them to nursery until they would have the ability to speak.

This is something that is very important to me now after having experienced him going to nursery from such a young age (and with what I’ve seen going on in this country in nurseries).

Nothing ‘bad’ per se happened in his early years but I definitely never felt happy or comfortable leaving him there at such a young age. Between the ages of 2-3, my son continued at this nursery and he was still going on a part time bases. My son started talking very early on (way before the age of 2) and he was able to articulate well his day to me. The first red flag was when we started potty training.

He was really great at going to the toilet with us at home and we rarely had accidents. At nursery, he would have accidents daily and every single time that I collected him, he would have been changed. When I questioned the nursery about their systems for taking children to the toilet they would get very defensive with me and they would claim that they were doing ‘everything right’.

One evening my son told me that he had asked his teacher to go to the toilet and his teacher had asked him to wait. His teacher went over to deal with another child and left my son for a ‘long time’. I get it ok. I get it. I’ve worked in nurseries. It’s hard. But this was a big red flag to me.

The other main red flag was that when I would drop him off to nursery, he would often be very resistant to going in. He would often cry and said ‘no mama’. I didn’t notice the warmth and care that I wanted to see from his teachers. Often they would just tell him to ‘Come in!’ and ‘Stop it now!’.

That’s when I decided to move him.

 And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made for him when it comes to his nursery choice.

 He goes in happily and in fact will often ask me to go back to nursery- even on the weekends. He adores his teachers and I see the energy that each his teachers have. The amount of love and warmth they all show to their children is truly amazing. I adore them too.

We are so delighted with them that he will continue there next year too (will be his Reception year).

 We have a brand new 3 month intensive preparation programme which will be perfect for you if you are preparing your child for the 4+ (2027 entry) Book your Sample Lesson and Sample Week today.