Tips for Dropping Your Baby Off at Day Care with Less Crying

For many moms, going back to work after delivering a baby is a fact of life. Whether you have to work or you choose to work, day care is a necessary fact of your baby's life. How you facilitate morning drop offs can mean the difference between you crying in the car on the way to work or getting a great start to your work day.

Every child will have days when they do not want to be separated from their parents during the day-care dropoff. When these days come, it is painful for both the parents and the children. However, I have found that after the initial separation the children often recover quickly and begin playing happily. As a parent, I have sometimes found myself waiting just around the corner out of eye sight to make sure that my baby was calmed and soothed. I have also called the day-care provider on my way to work to confirm that my baby was happy and did not continue to cry after I left. While it is tempting to stay until the crying stops, I've found that doing so only makes the drop off worse. Instead of comforting my baby, staying too long unintentionally causes more crying.

While every mother-baby relationship is different, there are a few ways to make dropping your baby off at day care a little easier. First, if you have a newborn, try to feed and change your baby just before dropping her off at daycare. Both of you will have time to bond and enjoy the morning, even if it means getting up a bit earlier than you normally would. In addition, feeding a newborn just before dropping her off at day care gives you the added advantage of dropping off a drowsy or sleeping baby. The transition will go smoother because you can be satisfied that you have provided for your child's basic needs.

As your baby gets older, she may become reluctant to leaving your arms when it is time for you to leave her at day care. We found that both our children enjoyed spending a few moments with us playing with toys in the morning before we left them for the day. Sometimes the toys were all the distraction they needed to make the transition from our care to the day-care provider's care.

At other times during our baby's early lives, no amount of toys could distract them from crying painfully when they were being dropped off for day care. If your child is entering a phase when separation is particularly painful, enlist your day care teacher's help during transitions. Have your day care provider hold the child and offer reassurance that mommy and daddy will be back to pick her up at the end of the day, and provide a favorite blanket or snuggle toy from home to comfort the baby.

As our children grew older and entered the toddler phase, we found that getting into a routine that involved eating breakfast at day care significantly improved the transition at drop off time. We pack a breakfast daily for our children with fruit, cereal or a cereal bar, and yogurt. The children enjoy seeing what little treats might be snuck into their breakfast bags, and they busy themselves with their meal during the drop off time.

Leaving a child at day care is never easy. But if you have found a day care where you are confident your child is getting good care, then these hints and tips can help make dropping your child off at day care a little easier.