How To Prepare Your Toddler For Nursery

At Family Seat, we support our clients with children of potty training age and beyond. Our advice in this post aims to bridge the gap between home and preschool. We hope it proves valuable for parents, childminders and nursery or preschool staff.

Parenting may well be the most difficult job you will ever do. It comes with endless questions for which there are usually no right answers. That’s why it’s so important to have a good, solid advice portal to reference at each stage of your child’s life.

At Family Seat, we support our clients with children of potty training age and beyond. Our knowledge and advice is well seasoned. We’ve brought up four children – boys and girls - between us and that was before the age of iPads…

Our advice in this post aims to bridge the gap between home and preschool. We hope it proves valuable for parents, childminders and nursery or preschool staff.

Preschool prep

A level of continuity can prove extremely valuable when going to preschool for the first time. Little ones must learn to gain confidence in a social environment and adapt to new, unfamiliar things. Retaining a level of familiarity can soothe their fears.

Visit the preschool a number of times before they start to attend properly. Begin with brief visits and gradually extend to longer periods of time. That way, when your child does start to attend part- or full-time, they will already have a connection with the nursery staff and the intricacies of the nursery structure.

Bringing your child’s toys and books from home to nursery is another way to provide a link. It will also help to encourage sharing, a key aspect of independence, and help your child to make friends and learn social skills. Just don’t take their very favourite toys as this might cause unnecessary upset!

Mums and playdates

Check out local sites and social media to find mums in your area whose toddlers will be attending the same nursery. Set up playdates at your home/their home and in places such as the park or Soft Play with which your child has positive associations. You can also join a mum and toddler group to give your child more opportunities to socialise.

It can be extremely frustrating to maintain continuity with potty training when your child starts nursery. Changes in their routine and the people taking them to the loo can be scary and cause setbacks. That’s why many nurseries have fitted our Family Seat to offer children consistency in potty training from home to nursery. Our seats are currently used in Bright Star Nursery and Stepstones Day Nursery in Enfield as well as Oakfield Nursery School and St. Mary’s Catholic Preschool in Altrincham. Both nursery staff and parents have given us great feedback and we’re looking forward to collaborating with more nurseries in the future.

Become a reseller

Many of our nurseries are also resellers, offering the Family Seat for sale to parents and grandparents of children attending their nursery. This generates additional revenue for the establishment (translation: a better nursery for your child) as well as keeping that toilet training continuity. Click here to find out more about becoming a reseller.

As the popular Budapest Mums blog tells us: “Potty training is a shared job and it is important that your child gets the same messages at home and at the nursery.”

We couldn’t agree more!

If you have questions about anything to do with toilet training or products in the Family Seat range, email: info@familyseat.com or fill out our online contact form. We’d love to hear from you! You can also stay in touch with Family Seat by joining our friendly community on Facebook and Twitter.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donnieray/15938387319/in/album-72157659984505254/