Smoothing children's transition into a childcare centre

Starting to attend a childcare center is a big challenge for young children and their parents. Transition from home to centre could be very difficult time and stressful event and it is very normal for the child and the parents to show a range of emotions. To settle a child into a childcare centre, teachers need to take an extremely careful process and to practice professionally and effectively.

Here are some key aspects of good strategies that summarized from daily practice and research articles:

Allowing the child and parents time to adapt to the new environment. Children need opportunities to become familiar with the new setting, and the parents need take time to getting know the teachers. The length of transition process depends on an individual child and family, so make sure that the individual child needs are met.

It is a good practice to have a key teacher for the new child. The key teacher has responsibilities to share detailed  information such as the child primary care needs, interests, and learning experiences etc. with the parents. The teacher should have the main role of providing primary care, supporting the child's learning, and obtaining information about the child home background.

Encouraging the child saying goodbye to the parents when they make separation. This is a good way to help the child develop a sense and understanding of regular events that he/she attends centre regularly and the parents collect him/her at certain time.