First Days at Nursery with Down Syndrome: It Went Well

We have had two mornings of settling in. The first days at nursery with Down syndrome went better than I dared to hope. Here is what happened.

Who Mr is, going in

Mr is two years and nine months old and he has Down syndrome. He is daytime nappy-free. He is learning to dress and feed himself with assistance. He knows his routines – hands before meals, teeth morning and evening. He is sociable, cheerful, completely at ease with adults and medical settings after years of appointments and therapy sessions. The one gap has been other children, particularly small ones – our neighbours are twelve, ten and five, so his peer experience has been limited. It was the right time to try nursery.

The setting helps. Our small rural nursery has three teachers in his group, plus a director, a speech therapist, a special education teacher, a social pedagogue and a creative therapist all available on site. In a small community that is a genuine luxury, and I do not take it for granted. The municipality is also searching for a support worker, with a deadline of the end of the month. Our childminder has applied, but the process requires a public procurement competition with a panel – the social worker, the nursery director, and his group teacher all sit on it. We cannot simply choose who we want. We wait.

Day one

Yesterday was the first day. We went early, before the full group was in full swing – Mr ate sandwiches from home and started playing with the other children. I stayed in the room. At some point the teachers quietly suggested I step out. I did. He did not notice, or if he did, it did not bother him. When I came back before lunch there was nothing on his face that suggested the gap had mattered.

He joined the group for their walk. At home he sometimes refuses to walk outside at all – we know this well. At nursery he went without question, in his trainers and tracksuit, alongside the other children as if he had been doing it for months. He went to the singing session and joined in. He found the piano and sat down at it. The teacher told me afterwards that he was a wonderful child. She said it like she meant it.

Day two

Today went the same way. He joined the dance session and was brave and engaged the whole way through – at one point he was given a hoop and when it was time to hand it back to the teacher, he simply declined. He settled in among the group as if the newness had already worn off. Both mornings, while I was not needed in the room, I had stretches of time that felt almost foreign – coffee with the director yesterday, time with the childminder today, a chance to breathe without scanning the room for what was about to happen next.

Tomorrow he goes onto the official list and eats with the group for the first time. My partner will take him in the morning, stay to help him get settled and his hands washed, and then come back at lunchtime to collect him and then Ms twenty minutes later. The round trip adds up to around fifty kilometres. This is what the logistics look like and we have made our peace with it.

One thing we are still working through

There is one thing that has not yet resolved itself. Mr is holding his bladder at nursery. He sat on the potty there several times while I was not in the room – sat for a long time, patient and willing – but nothing came. The moment I went to the other bathroom he went immediately. At home before his nap he went again, a lot. It is nerves, I think. The new environment, the new people, the absence of his usual routine around it. I hope it settles as he does. For now we watch, we encourage, and we do not make it into a bigger thing than it needs to be.

The logistics behind two mornings

Getting five people out the door and into the right places has required more coordination than I can fully convey. All five of us leave together. The childminder takes B in a carrier and walks with him outside the building. When he needs nursing I am close by. My partner takes Ms to her group and leaves for work. I stay with Mr. When I am not needed in his room I am somewhere nearby, available for B when he needs me, drinking coffee when he does not.

Tomorrow and the day after, Mr and Ms are both at nursery and I stay home with B. Just the two of us. I am looking forward to it in a way that is hard to articulate to anyone who has not spent months simultaneously nursing a baby and chasing a toddler in two different directions. One child. Quiet. No running. It will feel extraordinary.

Tonight: mud kitchens

This evening my partner is going with Ms to help build mud kitchens in both group rooms – hers and Mr’s. I stay home with the boys. Ms gets an evening of building with her father, which she will love. Mr’s new room gets a mud kitchen made partly by his family, which seems like exactly the right way to help a child feel at home somewhere new.

The first days at nursery with Down syndrome have gone better than I dared hope. I know the harder moments are still ahead – the days when he does not want to go, the adjustment of a longer day once the settling-in stretches further, the support worker process which is still unresolved, and the bladder question that still needs to work itself out. But for now, two mornings in, he walked through the door and made himself at home. That is everything.

You are not alone.

If this story resonated with you and you’d like to go deeper, you can explore my e-book Our Journey – A Different Path. It offers honest reflections and lived experience beyond this post.

If you’re looking for practical support, I’ve created Routine Templates to help parents and children navigate daily life with more clarity, structure, and understanding.

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