Gentle Giants Supports Preschool Transition in Chilliwack

Published August 14, 2026

Most three-year-olds have a hard first week at daycare, and most are settled by the end of the second. What happens in between is not luck. It is a plan the family and the educators agree on before day one and adjust as the child shows them what they need. This is the plan we use, written out so you can start it at home before your child ever walks through our door.

Before day one

Visit after 2:30 p.m. Tours run once the morning program has wrapped up. Bring your child. Let them touch the shelves, see the outdoor space and meet the educators who will be there on their first morning. A room a child has already been in is not a strange room.
Talk about it in concrete terms. “You will hang your coat on the hook with the elephant, then play, then have snack from your blue box.” Three-year-olds do not want a pep talk; they want to know the order of things.
Choose a comfort item. A small soft toy or a family photo that can live in the cubby. It matters most at rest time.
Practise the goodbye at home. Decide the exact words and actions you will use every day: a hug, a phrase, a wave at the window. Rehearse it. Predictability is the whole trick.
Move bedtime earlier the week before. A full day of care is tiring; a tired three-year-old has a harder week.
Tell us what soothes your child. Songs, words for the toilet, how they like to be held when upset, what they call their comfort item. It goes on their file and every educator reads it.

A typical settling ladder

We do not run one fixed timeline, because children are not one child. This is the ladder we suggest as a starting point; the educators will propose speeding it up or slowing it down based on how your child is doing, and you always have the final say.

Day	What happens	Goal
Day 1	A short visit of about an hour, parent stays in the room, then leaves together	The room is familiar, the parent is relaxed
Day 2	Parent stays fifteen minutes, then leaves for about an hour. Child is collected before snack	First goodbye, first reunion, both short
Day 3	Drop-off with the practised goodbye, stay through the preschool block and snack, home before lunch	A morning of routine with a clear end
Days 4 to 5	Stay through lunch, home before rest time	Eating with the group
Week 2	Full days, with pickup earlier in the afternoon for the first day or two	Rest time in the room, the whole shape of the day

Some children are through this in three days. Some need the ladder stretched over three weeks. Neither is a problem, and neither predicts how the child will do by October.

The goodbye

This is the part parents find hardest, so here is the honest advice. Keep it short and the same every day. Say you are leaving; do not slip out while they are distracted, because a child who is tricked once watches the door all day. Hand them to an educator, do your phrase and wave, and go. If they cry, they cry with a warm adult who has done this many times; most children settle within a few minutes of the door closing, and you are welcome to phone and ask. What makes crying last longer is a parent who comes back in.

What the educators do

Greet the child by name and with the thing they know that child likes: “the blue truck is out this morning.”
Offer the comfort item and a quiet corner if the room is too much at first.
Keep the routine identical to every other day. A child settles faster into a day whose shape they can predict, which is why we do not change the schedule for new starters.
Keep the same faces on the floor. In a one-room centre with one small team, the adult who greeted your child on day one is there on day ten.
Send a daily update so you know how the day actually went, not just “fine”.

What to expect at pickup

Big feelings. A child who held it together all day often falls apart when they see you; that is trust, not a bad day. Expect hunger, tiredness and a short fuse for the first couple of weeks. Keep evenings quiet, keep bedtime early, and do not interrogate them about the day. They will tell you in pieces, usually at bath time.

When to talk to us

A hard drop-off that eases within minutes is normal for weeks. Talk to us if, after two to three weeks, your child is still distressed for long stretches of the day, has stopped eating at the centre, or is regressing in sleep or toileting at home in a way that is not settling. Sometimes the answer is a slower ladder; sometimes it is a change in what the morning looks like; occasionally it is that a different setting would suit the child better, and we will say so.