Helping my toddler adjust to me opening family daycare

Hi everyone,

I officially open up my family daycare next week with a part time and later a full time child will be attending. One is younger than my son and another is just a bit older. My son will be 2 in about a month or so.

My question is what can I do to help him transition to other children coming into the home to play, eat, sleep? We don't have a lot of play dates with anyone but he does have one friend he enjoys. I make sure at some point the families I interview meet my son but he is not there for the entire interview. When he sees them he gets so upset. One stayed for a while as she is a friend of mine and it took over half hour before he calmed down fully. I understand there will be a transition and I have been talking to him about other children coming to play and eat snack and lunch with him and having a sleep here, which his response is no most times but sometimes he goes uhmmm. I think may be it will just take time but I don't like to see him so upset and I don't want other parents to be worried either.

Any ideas and tips would be most appreciated
Thanks you!
By the way I am fully qualified registered Early Childhood Educator worked in many centres. Family daycare is a new adventure for me which I am excited about:)

Are you doing transition days for the children. I personally do a week of half days. Maybe even more if your son will be fighting it that hard. When I orginally started my set up was downstairs and it was never an issue at least not much of one. My son always loved the idea of other kids coming over to play so sorry i dont' have any othe suggestions. Hopefully it goes well.

He may have picked up some anxiety from you over the last weeks because I'm sure getting everything ready has been a bit stressful. Also leave as many of his toys in his room or away during the day and buy new toys for the daycare so he isn't sharing his toys he is sharing your toys. Just as we can only cater so much to new kids coming in it is also important from the beginning to establish some rules for our own kids with the idea ok this is now what your life is going to be like and while you don't have to like it you have to accept it and live within these boundaries. I would think the beginning will be rough but once you get the kids there and he starts to see how much he gets to do because of them, the amount of time you spend doing stuff with them it should get better soon. If he is two and has had very little exposure to other kids then that is the part you will need to work on in the sense of he doesn't know what it means to have someome come to play and stay for lunch as it doesn't mean they replace him and he goes away or whatever might be going through his mind. Consider having some treats like cookies for snack or lunch or favourite foods of your son - things he can look forward to.

I made sure my kids had space that was still just theirs, which was their bedrooms (only used for napping, and off limits to dck otherwise). They get to keep special things or things that they don't want to share in there. Sometimes they bring toys or books out, and if they do, they are expected to allow everyone to play.
I try during the day to spend some one-on-one time, even for a few minutes with my daughter (my boys are older, so not such a hard adjustment). Maybe put the other kids down for a nap, read a story and snuggle, and then he can go for his nap? Or make it a point to do something with him immediately after the daycare kids are gone. Sometimes that means dinner waits a little longer, but I think it's worth it.
I agree that he may not like it, but he will have to learn to deal. We choose to do this business because we think it's best for our family, he just won't quite that yet. Just keep that in mind on any rough days.
Best of luck!!