Nursery or Childminder

My little boy is 18 months old and has been in nursery 1.5 days a week for 4 months now. He seems to enjoy it but I just don’t feel he’s getting as much out of as he could be. I have concerned the nursery is understaffed and when he first started we had updated constantly, they’ve dwindled down recently. I don’t know why but I just felt more nervous about a childminder, think I’m just paranoid I’m being replaced as his mum🤣 but that’s stupid. I’ve been looking into them more and the children just seem to do so much more, and have much more 1 on 1 engagement. I would love to send him to a forest school but there’s nothing that works locally for us. A large amount of childminders ive found local to me have a lot of land and tend to more forest school like activities. I also didn’t realise childminders were typically so much cheaper than nursery fees!! We are expected our 2nd baby in January, so when i eventually go back to work we’ll have 2 to pay for so the money situation helps, as I’m in wales we get no funded hours until age 3. Also one day we are going to need childminders for school holidays, after school etc as we don’t have help from family and unfortunately we both need to work. In your experience, if you’ve used both which worked better? Do you have any positive childminding stories? Or any negatives to childminding? Please share xx

Show your support

If we had a childminder near us I would use them. I think the smaller group sizes and attention to detail is much greater. As it happens we don't have any, so we've chosen a very small nursery where the baby room is a 1:2 ratio and our friend child already goes there, and personal recommendation means a lot

@Stephanie he’s been there 4 months now, and generally he is very settled. He enjoys his days very much I just feel he’s getting a bit looked over in nursery when it’s such a large group to children. The childminders I’ve been looking into always seem to be doing more exciting activities, days out, baking, crafting. I understand that’s a completely different structure to nursery and maybe when he’s older that will be great. Unfortunately we are going to need a childminder at some point when he’s in school as we don’t have the luxury of help from family. I’m sorry that happened, doesn’t sound like a very nice childminder. That is a concern of mine but I do have that exact same concern about sending him to nursery. I’ve heard nursery horror stories too so I think really in that instance it’s down the nursery/childminder and wouldn’t necessarily group them together. I think there’s a lot more vetting and interviewing that needs to go into finding the right childminder, I do agree there

Is something more reassuring about the structure of a nursery

Sorry, just I wasn’t really after horror stories about “this nursery I knew” or “a childminder my friend went to” I was more after developmental experiences

Sorry for bringing up that unpleasant story about the childminder earlier. My daughter is 14 months old and goes to nursery three days a week. Since she started there, I’ve noticed real progress in her development, she’s now walking and can point to her nose, ears, hair, and mouth when we ask her to. She’s learning a lot from being around others, and since she’s quite an extroverted child, that definitely helps. Before choosing this nursery, I visited around six different ones. I ended up picking this one because they have plenty of staff and a well-structured schedule filled with stimulating activities. I also receive updates throughout the day about what she’s doing and how things are going, which is really reassuring.

The choice really depends on your child’s personality, your own experience, which plays a big role, your budget, and what you think works best for you. I don’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all answer; it’s really down to individual circumstances.

‌

‌
‌

‌

‌
‌

‌

‌
‌

‌

‌
‌

‌

‌
‌

‌

‌
‌