This month Eleanor started at a new daycare.  We made the switch for a few reasons and are really happy that we did.

First, I’ve been so busy with work that I need Eleanor in daycare full days rather than half days. And the full time program at her old daycare was a lot more expensive than their half day program. That wouldn’t be a problem if we were completely happy there. But we weren’t.

A few months ago Eleanor’s teacher left the school. We had loved her and weren’t totally thrilled with her replacement, who was supposed to be temporary but had still not been replaced after more than a month.  The new teacher wasn’t terrible or anything I just didn’t have a great feeling about her. I don’t think she was the right teacher for Eleanor.

Eleanor had started crying and asking me to stay when I dropped her off in the morning. She had never really done that before. I think that was partly due to her general crankiness from all the sleep problems she was having, but I think that she also just wasn’t enjoying school as much as she had before. She never talked about her new teacher. Never even mentioned her name. This was odd because she talked about the 3s teacher who was in her classroom when she arrived every morning, the assistant director who drops in on all the classrooms throughout the day, and even the school cook who brought her breakfast and lunch. But she never mentioned her teacher. Kinda weird, right?

So when I started getting really busy and realized that I needed full time daycare, we thought it was a good opportunity to check out some other schools. We settled on the one that had been our second choice when we had originally looked at daycares. We really like Eleanor’s new teacher. And I love that instead of having classrooms solely based on age like her old school (infants, toddlers, 2s, 3s) the new school bases it more on developmental stage and switch classes based on the school year and not by birthday. So her group of 2 year old toddlers are all together and will stay together until they go to Kindergarten. They will all switch from their room to a preschool room in June for the summer program and stay into the fall and rest of the year, and their teacher will go with them. At the old school the kids changed classes after their birthday so there were always kids coming in and out of each class. Here, unless one leaves the school or new ones come in, Eleanor will stay with the same group of kids as long as she is there. And it’s about $70 a week less expensive than her old school would have been.

Although, we knew that it was the right thing to do to switch schools, we were concerned about how she would handle the transition. Especially because she’s never napped at school and has never stayed a full day, but she’s done really well. The first week was a little rocky. We got some reports of her “testing” the teachers a little, taking other kids snacks she wasn’t supposed to have because of her dairy allergy, not participating in activities she didn’t want to do, not napping, but she seems to have settled in and is doing really well. She’s being a little more cooperative, eating her own food, and taking naps every day. The best part is that at the end of the day she doesn’t want to go home. She always wants to stay at school.

The other day she said to Josh, “Daddy, I like my new school. I run that school.” (She’s just like her mommy!) So, I’m pretty sure we made the right decision.