Adaptation
A child's entry into nursery marks the passage into a new phase of life, not only for the child but for the whole family. A new reality in which the child leaves the narrow, fully protected family environment and takes its first steps into a miniature of society, such as the nursery. This new experience brings up a host of questions and intense emotions, since the adaptation to new circumstances regarding how the child is to integrate into the nursery must happen smoothly, yet it is often overlooked that parents go through a corresponding process at this developmental phase.
Adaptation, then, denotes the whole set of reactions relating to the child's transition from home to nursery, which each member experiences in their own way. For this reason reactions vary and, while for example some children enter the new environment very easily, others struggle in different ways. It is therefore useful to know some things that make the smooth transition to this new reality easier.
The preparation phase
Especially important for achieving the best possible adaptation is preparing the child for the change that is about to take place in its life. Very often difficulties in adaptation are the result of incorrect or insufficient preparation of the child for the transition to nursery. Some useful points for achieving good preparation are the following:
- It is very important that the parents themselves also prepare psychologically and accept the new reality, so that they in turn can prepare the child appropriately. It helps a great deal to talk to each other and share thoughts and feelings, with an emphasis on rejoicing that their child is growing up. If they feel that the upcoming change troubles them emotionally very intensely, it is very helpful to turn to a specialist.
- It is very beneficial for the child to be prepared and informed about entering the nursery. This change should be spoken of in a positive way and linked to how many lovely things the child will gain through the new experience, that it will learn many lovely things, new games, make friends, and so on.
- It is very useful for the child's familiarisation to have first visited the nursery's space, with emphasis placed on the good things it will begin to experience there.
- Parents can use the projective power of play or of storytelling to familiarise the child with the new reality, for example by playing together to enact a family where the parents leave for work and the children for school, or reading it stories with relevant depictions.
- If a new baby is due to arrive in the family, it is preferable for entry into nursery to take place 1-2 months before the birth, so that the sibling is not experienced as the reason the child is being sent away from home.
The entry - adaptation phase
- The emotional reactions of the parents are decisive for the child's adaptation to nursery. It has been shown that if parents mirror their own intense emotional difficulty, fears, doubt, hesitation, etc., the child finds it harder to integrate and adapt.
- Waking 15-30 minutes earlier is particularly beneficial, since it ensures the possibility of connection and contact before departure and prevents starting the day with stress and time pressure, that is, a poor goodbye.
- It helps enormously for parents to be firm and confident that something very good and non-negotiable is happening with the child's transition to nursery.
- It is preferable for parents to say goodbye to the child sweetly and confidently and to leave the nursery without bargaining or negotiating the time of their departure, because this prolongs the child's adaptation time to the space.
- It is very helpful for parents to have explained to the child, without apologising, the process that will follow: that they will leave to go to their work, even if that is the housework, and that they will return later to pick the child up again.
- When parents collect the child from nursery, it is good to express their pride and joy, rather than to transmit anxiety or worry about whether the child managed on its own in the space.
- It often works very positively for the child to be able to take its favourite toy along to the nursery for “company”.
- Even if everything else is done in the most functional way, it is very likely that the child will express emotional difficulties and reactions in relation to separation from the parents and, by extension, to its adaptation to the new environment. These difficulties need not panic parents, because they are entirely normal and expected, since they express a healthy reaction — separation anxiety.
- A possible step backwards, that is, stopping nursery because of the child's difficulty in integrating, simply postpones the difficulties for later, and usually in a more intense way, since it mirrors to the child a lack of trust that it can grow up and become autonomous. Thus the child is kept more of a baby, or weaker, relative to its age.
The most important thing for a parent to know is that a child's entry into nursery, when that moment comes, is about growing up and development, and is a step towards the child's autonomy. It is the experience of a life process, since in life the developing child will many times be called upon to make functional separations and adaptations, so that it can stand firmly on its own feet. As healthy and necessary as it is for the child to receive family protection and care to a greater degree in the first stages of growing up, it is equally healthy and necessary to be led with trust and confidence into the next phases of autonomy. Let joy and pride in the child's growing up prevail, then, with the knowledge and awareness that this usually entails some difficulties at the start.
By our associate Menelaos Kanakis, Psychologist - Psychotherapist, Family Counsellor.