The study looking at young children’s levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) during the day at Nursery or playschool , due to be published next year, showed that children at nursery do not see a drop in cortisol levels over the day as they would if they were at home. Instead, they remain "unusually aroused or stressed",
The study looking at young children’s levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) during the day at Nursery or playschool , due to be published next year, showed that children at nursery do not see a drop in cortisol levels over the day as they would if they were at home. Instead, they remain "unusually aroused or stressed", and, a research paper to be published next spring and drawing on the cortisol studies concludes, they need extra time and attention at the end of the day to help bring them back to "emotional equilibrium" ready for the next day at nursery. Without that comfort from a parent, says the paper, the children start the following day "hyper-aroused", which can lead to behaviour problems or disobedience. Parents need time in the evenings to return youngsters to "emotional equilibrium" before the children face another round of emotion-arousing experiences, the paper concludes. However, Professor Lamb acknowledged children's need for parental focus and a cuddle coincided with parents' hurry "to get the food ready, clean up, get the child ready for bed". Professor Michael Lamb also suggests that nurseries provide regular rest periods which allow "some degree of self-regulation to take place". A 2002 cortisol study led by the US academic Sarah Watamura found cortisol levels fall during rest times, even when children appear not to sleep. UK nurseries could also adopt the practice common on the continent of encouraging parents to accompany their children for the first days or even fortnight in care to help ease the transition, the paper says.
Quoted in the Guardian, the findings do not mean that daycare is bad for children, and there is no evidence yet of long-term effects of raised cortisol levels, according to co-author Michael Lamb of Cambridge University. However, the conclusions can help provide pointers to show how parents, nurseries and policy-makers can minimise the stress toddlers experience when they make the transition from home. . In his paper, to be published next year and co-authored by Lieselotte Ahnert of the Free University of Berlin, Prof Michael Lamb proposes a range of measures to ease children's experience of daycare. One way of controlling the build-up of stress, according to the paper, is quite simply to minimise the time children spend in care each day. However, while some parents may wish to reduce the time their children spend in nursery, the UK's notoriously long working hours - the longest in Europe - still militate against parents, who may also face financial pressures to spend extra time at their desks.
Group-based daycare is not without its critics. A series of studies in the US and Britain - highlighted last year in the Guardian - have concluded that high levels of group-based care can have damaging effects on some aspects of emotional and psychological development for children under two. After two, the situation reverses, and group-based care benefits all aspects of a child's development |