Advice please

Think there are some very good day care nurseries but also some poor ones too. Low pay and low qualifications, in understanding about what small children need to develop healthily in mind and body, do not always support high quality experiences for the babies and toddlers .

I think this thread just highlights the fact that we are all individuals, right from birth. Some cope, some don't! Some need lots of cuddles and some are very independent.

Me...I like cuddles,especially from babies.

Jeni I hope all turns out well in the end,I'm sure it will.

My daughter had a nursery for under three s together with another friend. She is a midwife and her friend a children's nurse( hospital trained) They met training as 'Tages Mutter' this is an 8 week full time training with child care to enable women to look after other people's children. Some go on to do full time work in the house of a full time mother and lots of professional women prefer a Tages Mutter who comes to the house and stays there all day, to a nursery.

They started their nursery but had no children full time and were not allowed to have more than 5 babies at a time. The rules in Germany are very strict for the under twos and you don't make much money at it like they seem to do in the UK.
Both young women went back to their original jobs, but the nursery which we all fixed up ourselves, painted and sewed curtains etc. that is still going. It was lovely, warm and cosy with a big safe garden, a kitchen where fresh food was prepared. But some children took a long time to settle in and were given this time even it if it took a month. Some were better off there than at home!

Ella, my DGDs were in nursery full time from 6 months. They are happy, confident and sociable little girls who had no problems settling at school. It was a very good nursery and the care was wonderful.

They don't need watching all the time.

I take it she was safely in a cot?!

Nor me! But dd objects to not that she cried, but minder wasn't in the room with her rather than standing outside!

I don't think you can attach any blame to the childminder in this instance.

I don't think seven minutes was too long to let an over-tired 11 month old cry for. Chances are she would have settled down and had am good sleep. You say the child minder waited outside the door. She didn't just walk away and leave the little one to get on with it.

I have to agree somewhat with Charlotta. I think it is a shame that babies under two years have to be away from their mums for so long these days. Separation too early can make a child insecure and, therefore, clingy. IMO.

jeni hope things work out for your DGD.
I think all kids are so different so it is tricky to have hard and fast rules. But quite unintentionally parents do compound some innate traits! I feel that all babies need to feel safe and secure from day one and this actually helps them to cope with changes as they grow. My personal opinion is that continuous holding / co-sleeping does not always make for confident kids and for some can make them feel over dependent on main carer. If there have been few opportunities to experience change then babies/toddlers do not know how to handle them or to know that carer does come back.
My DGS has slept in own room since 6 months and been with childminders /me/other gran since 9months as DD1 needed to work. He is a congenial & confident little chap now aged almost 4. My DGD2 has been at home with mum, & co-slept etc ..she still yells in protest when left at Nursery. Within minutes she is fine and enjoys the time there! People are all so different!

My step Gs was put in a nursery from about 12 months and also frequently looked after by different family members (my dil was getting divorced from her first husband and has a sister and two brothers, all very family minded).
My stepgs is now eight and the most confident and sociable boy you could wish to meet. He always comes to greet people without prompting and puts his arms up for a hug when they leave.
Personally, I think it's a good thing to socialise babies as soon as possible, for their sakes as well as their mothers.

However,.....his sister, my youngest gd, is going to nursery at 12 months,when dil goes back to work.
I get upset just thinking about it!!

I'm much better thanks.

Hope you are feeling happier this morning jeni
It is a worry when children are upset. My GC have always gone to nursery and not had any separation anxiety, always looked happy when collected at the end of the day but I have seen tots sitting weeping on their own and looking utterly miserable. As a Gran I couldn't let that happen, I would want to pick them up and give them a cuddle.

I do agree with Bags. By the time I got to DS3, 14 months after DS1, I was much more relaxed, and DS1 slept through the night and had to be woken for his morning feed, which was bliss with two other children to cope with.

But I do sympathise with you jeni - yet another situation where we, as mothers of mothers, can't immediately make things better!

Jeni love.Hope you didn’t have a sleepless night.
‘To cry or not to cry’ opinions on this divide mums/grans/experts like few others.
In my day leaving to cry for long periods was thought likely to cause psychological trauma.However did I cope with 3 children under 4!
My own gut feeling is that to put baby alone in a strange room in a strange house and leave to cry with no mum around is cruel.

The 11 mth-old I look after for short periods has been a very placid baby.but now cries when mum hands him over.
I cuddle him and unashamedly use CBBC on tv to distract him.Music (Mozart) helps as well.- until he remembers that mum isn’t there.-do they call it ‘separation anxiety’
My grandson went to nursery 3 days/week from 6mths.I picked him up when mum couldn’t.He always seemed happy there - grew into a very confident
child.
I feel so sympathetic to you and your DD.Hope the situation can soon be resolved
Love and hugs

When my daughter found she was pregnant for the first time she asked me if I would give up work to look after the baby when she returned to work; I agreed at the time as I didn't want to upset her but, thankfully, she decided herself that she didn't want me to be financially dependant on her [and I would have been out of work when she next went on maternity leave]. So both babies went to nursery for 2 days a week and thrived on it. She felt that nursery was more impersonal than using a childminder who might have their own ideas on looking after babies that conflicted with hers. This is not meant as a slight to ladies on here who are childminders, by the way; it was just our personal preferance.

Yet another sad story about a mother and baby being seperated who should realistically spend the next year at least still together.
I don't know here these mothers get their ideas from. A baby is not parcel. I have so often heard pregnant colleagues talking about their plans for baby to go here or there as soon as it is weaned. The reality breaks their hearts!
The truth is that these mothers - should anything go wrong later will always blame themselves for what they basically, deep down, feel is against nature. To put your 11 months old baby into someone else's hands.

Jeni you must be vey worried. I would be and I hopw you find a solution.

Agreed!

I think I got more skilled, or my babies got easier, because by the time no.3 came along, I was able to carry her upstairs singing a silly soft chant and leave her in her cot for either a nap or her night-time sleep. Mind you, she was a thumb-sucker and the other two weren't. I'm sure that made it easier too: thumb in, fast asleep half a minute later.

But it was almost as if she knew I was there and would come when she woke up. Seems daft, but it did seem like that.

Maybe it's just that first babies so change your life and they are such a wonder and so precious, and you don't know your own limits, and there are mountains of advice and oodles of rules. No wonder mums get so stressed and however calm you are on the surface, I reckon the baby knows that.

Just mulling.....

Probably, but not me!

Hope someone has not been sticking needles into babies to assess their cortisol levels!

Hope everything goes well jeni with setting up protocols.

She doesn't cry much. Minder says she cries more when having her face wiped or nappy changed. Both of which she takes exception to!
Dd is going to talk to minder this evening and agree protocol!
The stress hormone is cortisol!

jeni the recent research about leaving babies to cry referred to stress hormones accumulating and still being in their system days later (the research didn't look at the stress hormones accumulating in mum's system as she was listening to baby!) The recommendation is to leave them to see if they mean it and if they do, pick them up to cuddle and settle them, then put them back down to sleep.

If the childminder can distinguish between baby crying and not going up into top gear, or getting extremely upset, all well and good, but a baby getting itself into a real lather and becoming unconsolable should not be left to cry.

Childminders are supposed to agree strategies with mum and comply with her wishes if they are reasonable. My daughter's childminder says some mums prefer their babies to be left to learn to self-soothe (Gina Ford's method) whilst others prefer her to respond to the baby on demand. I believe that a secure baby who has its needs met and can predict its mother's protection can develop into a resilient child, but I acknowledge that mothers also need looking after and a persistently crying baby whose needs appear to have been met may have to cry more than one would ideally want. I can't see how the childminder can justify leaving the baby to cry for long. I would be inclined to discuss what my requirements are with her, and say I only want her to leave it a minute or so and then placate the baby, and certainly stay with her.

That is an important point nelliedeane - although very sad way of learning it in your case. Is it really fair on babies to convince them in the first year that mother is always going to be a few inches away - and then if something should happen, like the mother being taken ill, of maternity leave ending, it is a big shock? I guess in the first flush of mum hood they don't think that far ahead.
I do remember my DIL trying to let DGD cry herself to sleep when she was 5 months old. She was in agony but she knew that if she wanted the baby to be able to settle herself down, it was no good being there all the time.
ANother way of looking at crying is that the baby is enraged that the mother is out of sight and is using the full force of its personality to try to reel her back in. Less upsetting than if you think, poor sad lonely baby. (of course the are sad and lonely if left in hospital or something. Like my DH was at 18 months.) We are programmed by evolution to respond to those cries. Just like a cat when she hears her kittens yelling.
Babies are yelling at the end of my garden at the moment FEEDMEFEEDMEFEEDME in a very high pitched tone - bluetits.

jeni My granddaughter was a Velcro baby never separated from her mum,slept in same bed until she came to us,I believe that has enhanced some of her issues and anxieties as the separation obviously wasn't planned,it is awful when you feel so helpless but as I have found so much help and good advice and support I agree what a wonderful bunch of friends we have on here and feel very blessed to have found you all thinking of you laterxxxxxx