techniques of making it a smooth

transition.

So what we tend to say to parents, and you know, we have these conversations right from the beginning, and I'm talking open morning conversations, just really prepping, especially those first time parents who have no idea what they're about to face.

And one of the things we say to them is, you can be anxious, you can be upset, you can be really sad, but put a pretend yeah pretend fake it till you make it because a lot of the anxiety from children come from the parents and of course a lot of us are parents we know what it's like on day one but you know a child being upset it's a lot of the time is because the parents are upset and they are sort of leaking that anxiety onto the child so at elaine's what we say is the first day you guys can come in it's a two-hour sort of It can change from year to year, but this year we did a two-hour settling-in period where the parents were welcome to stay.

They don't have to stay for the full two hours, but it's just so the child can get used to a setting.

You know, we're greeting children from the age of two.

They are really, really young.

right okay that's that's very reassuring so you see hundreds of children arrive at two and three what are the small things parents do at home that make the biggest difference and what do we worry about that doesn't matter at all