Crying and mum's reaction

[Guest Spiral]

Hi there,

 

back to work and what a start! (I do jest, actually most of it has been lovely).

 

we have a set of twins who have limited English.

 

One is happy to go off and play, however his brother cries incessantly and asks for 'mummy'.

 

After a while we called his parents and they took ages to arrive.

 

When they did arrive they said he is usually like this and they leave him crying for an hour or so...they want us to do the same.

 

My staff and myself are uncomfortable with this and so am I.

 

Thoughts please???

 

 

[SueFinanceManager]

Well I am not sure I would be comfortable especially if the child becomes more distressed as the time goes on.

 

I think you have to say something like whilst you respect their way of doing things in their home it is not really viable in the setting where presumably one member of staff is taken up with dealing with this one child and his crying probably upsets other little ones....I am sure you can phrase it more professionally then this

 

I am not sure prolonged crying like this is good for the little boy either....he is missing out on so much fun

[AnonyMouse_11396]

Oh it's so hard isn't it when you have the dilemma of knowing what you feel is right to do in this given situation, as well as recognising and working with parents.

Personally I would have done the same as you and infact have had exactly the same thing with twins.

I don't know if this is possible but could the parents of the children stay at all and leave once child(ren) are settled. Or could they come back a little earlier so the separation is not so long.

I also considered the other children in the setting at the time and how the upset impacted on their well being too.

Hope you are able to resolve this. Fx

[AnonyMouse_3139]

Poor little thing

We always phone parents if the crying is prolonged or inconsolable. Its draining for the staff and interupts the other children. If they stop and start though and distraction works to some degree we might hold off from phoning or at the start of the session ask the parents to come back earlier.

[AnonyMouse_19782]

Our wonderful little twin boys went onto school this week, but when they started with us they had had a bad experiences at another local pre-school, didn't help mum told a few fibs too to get them there each time they went and I suspect their crying and vomitting had as much to do with that. Anyway, having this background we said to mum she really had to be honest with the boys during the Christmas break before they started with us. So they had had a break from the other pre-school, and mum did as we asked.

 

From our perspective what we did next was to think how we could settle these boys without trauma. We decided to turn their morning around. So they arrived at 11.30 and they left at 12.15, with all the other children when they went, family lived only 5 minutes away from us so this was easily done in our case. We then added 5/10 minutes to their arrival time for the first week, by the end of the second week their wonderful Key Persons had worked hard with them and they were confident enough to come in at the correct time. One always had the occasional wobble, he was the youngest and had been the smallest, they had been 10 weeks prem and he had most of the medical problems too so had had a lot of mum input during the previous 3 years.

 

The boys were little gems by the time they left us, we were so proud of them. This term we have another set of boy twins, again one is dominant and one much more sensitive, they had big sister with us too, so that helped when they first started at Easter she too has now gone to school, so I am hoping the sensitive twin will cope ok next week. We also have boy and girl twins starting next week, the girl is the shyer of the two this time, we have suggested that although they are only booked in for Mondays and Fridays, that they actually come every morning next week for 2 hours, hopefully coming regularly but only for a short period of time may help them, we will have to see, if not we will have to try something else.

 

Must say I don't like the just let him cry it out, that is not really workable in our situations, plus the other children even those who are established old hands get upset by constant crying and then they loose a little confidence in us too because we can't appear to help the little one who is so upset. I'm afraid mum and dad will have to learn new rules!

[Guest Spiral]

Its very difficult. We phoned the parents and they seemed more like....well, like they didn't want to come back!

 

Its not an attitude I'm comfy with, I will talk to them further. We'll offer shorter sessions and coming in when the others are settled.

 

Thank you for your responses.....wish me luck :-)

[AnonyMouse_19762]

Some great advice already - don't know that I have much to add - apart from - I make it very clear to parents that this is not our expectation and that we will work together to sort things out........makes me sad that some parents seem to think leaving their child crying is acceptable

 

Hope the twins that start with us on Monday are going to be very happy little girls! :1b

 

I looked back at last years 'log' to remind myself of what we were up to in September and thought oh I'd quite forgotten that he/she found it hard to settle.......I had recorded all of the discussions with parents and strategies that we put into place - like Panders I'm a fan of the 'come in at 11:30 and go home at 12'........I do have a 'sneaky suspicion' that this 'concentrates' parents minds too........you always get the odd one or two who actually feel good themselves if their children don't want them to leave - oh did i just say that out loud! :rolleyes: