Toddlers´ Adjustment to Out-of-home Care

For many infants and toddlers, their initial reaction to day care enrolment is characterised by insecurity, negative affect, and social withdrawal. Usually, infants` and toddlers` active and positive participation in their child care environment increases with time, replacing initial reactions of withdrawal and negativity. While this is a crucial developmental step for young children in child care, it has received little research attention, and there is only restricted research evidence about the factors which facilitate children`s successful transition from sole maternal to non-maternal day care. This study will investigate toddlers` initial reaction to care and their patterns of behaviour change over the first months in care. More specifically, it will explore how toddlers` behaviours in day care during their familiarisation phase relate to: (i) the general quality of their care environment, (ii) their experiences in one- to-one interactions with their care providers, (iii) parental behaviour before and during leave-taking, and (iv) their own physical stress levels. Furthermore, the study will investigate if and how children`s initial reaction to enrolment to care and their familiarisation over the first months in care relate to their social adjustment in day care year and 1 year after their enrolment. On the basis of the study`s findings, thoughts on how to foster toddlers` successful transition to day care will be brought forward and considerations will be made in regards to practitioner education and development.

The number of infants younger than three years old and being cared for in day nurseries is one that is continually growing. As a result, the question gains in significance of just how toddlers experience the transition from home care to out-of-home day care, and also, what factors prove to be helpful in the process and what importance should be allocated to the subject of "settling in at the nursery" within the training and continuing education of kindergarten teachers. These issues were examined in the research project entitled Toddlers` Adjustment to Out-of- home Care (WiKi Wiener Kinderkrippenstudie), which was conducted at the Department of Education in cooperation with the research unit for Developmental Psychology at the University of Vienna. The following results were found to be of particular significance: (1) It was confirmed that the daily separation from persons a young child is familiar with proves to be emotionally burdensome for infants. Even so, young children do not always show their emotions either by crying or by some other expression of discontent. (2) The transition process may be regarded as having been successful if young children, either alone or with the help of others, (a) manage to experience the situation at the nursery as pleasant; (b) engage with others in lively interactions; and (c) develop an interest in the people and objects they encounter at the nursery. The mere absence of crying or other expressions of dissatisfaction does not form a criterion for a successful adaptation. (3) Very young children experience the separation from their familiar caregivers as stressful not just during the first few days, but often for weeks on end, and they need throughout this time professional support and attention. Such support is given to younger children more readily and to a greater extent than to older children. The likelihood is great that children who display only silent signals of distress will not receive the kind of support they need. (4) Children`s abilities to regulate affects, having been developed before entering the nursery, and their relational experiences in the nursery have a strong impact on the development of various strategies to alleviate the emotional stresses and strains they experience. The contribution to the transitional process that children are expected to make in this way is greater than it is usually assumed. (5) The settling-in processes of 104 children thus examined ran vastly divergent and depended only to a limited extent on the general quality characteristics of the day care centres involved. (6) Recommendations: Within the training and continuing education schemes pertaining to caregivers it will be necessary to a greater extent than has hitherto been the case to develop professional skills that will result (a) in transitional processes being managed on science-based concepts; (b) in individual particularities of the settling- in process being taken into account more than previously and (c) in the emotional well-being of the infants considered in this connection being given more attention in more differentiated terms than has usually been the case in the organisations that were being surveyed.