From the day Chhori was born, every parent around us has suggested putting Chhori on the waiting list for childcare. From their experience it can take more than a year to get a place. As I had to come back to work from my maternity leave, we put down Chhori’s name in two different childcare centres when she was around a few months old thinking she will have to go to child care when she is one, which is when I came back to work.
But lucky for us, my parents decided that they would come and look after Chhori and we were lucky to have them around. But unfortunately like every good thing in life, their stay in Australia will come to an end in a few months’ time which means we need to put Chhori in childcare 5 days a week while we are at work.
So it was time for us to do childcare visits to determine which childcare we want to send her to. We got offers from two different childcares so we decided to visit them on the same day and we took Chhori with us.
We met with the teachers in both the child care centres where they showed us around the rooms she would be in and also the play area and the toys they have. They also showed us their process for doing things and updating us about her as well as what kind of food is given to her while she will be there.
At the first childcare Chhori saw a drawing table with crayons and paper so she insisted that she wanted to draw. The teacher was kind enough so she was allowed her to draw while we had a chat with the teacher. Once we finish our tour, it was time for us to leave but Chhori refused to go wanting to draw some more.
We distracted her and finally we were out.
At the second childcare, as we were doing the tour, she spotted a few kids and a teacher playing with blocks. She straight away went and started playing with them. We did the rest of the tour without her but I was so surprised that she didn’t seem to care at all that we were not around her. I am sure she didn’t even look for us until we finished everything and went to get her to go home.
No matter what we said she didn’t want to go home so we had to pick her up against her will and leave. She was crying when we left.
That got both us wondering if we made a mistake by not sending her to the childcare sooner. As I have previously mentioned, she is very social and loves people but seeing her enjoying childcare so much, now we hope she will have an easy transition to go to childcare part time in January and full time from March.
I will definitely share our experience next year. Please do share your own childcare experience with your kids. Is it normal for kids to not want to go home?
Take care everyone,
M from nepaliaustralian
XOXO
nepaliaustralian 