How to Help a Child With Separation Anxiety at Daycare
Learn how Jess VanderWier’s Nurtured First course helped us ease daycare separation anxiety through connection, storytelling, and a simple goodbye routine.
You might be here because your child cries, clings, hits, or has intense tantrums whenever you try to leave.
Maybe daycare drop-off has become the hardest part of your morning. Maybe your child panics when you walk out of the room, struggles with bedtime separation, or seems unable to settle unless you are physically beside them. You may be wondering whether you are doing something wrong, whether you should stay longer, or whether these painful goodbyes will ever get easier.
You love your child deeply, but you also feel exhausted, helpless, and unsure how to help. You do not want to sneak away, force them to stop crying, or dismiss what they are feeling. You want them to feel safe, connected, and confident enough to separate from you… but how?
That is exactly where I was.
Shortly after I gave birth to my second daughter, Margaux, my first daughter, Charlie, moved into a new room at daycare. Until then, we had dropped Charlie off in the same safe, familiar space she had known since she was a baby. There were several caregivers waiting to welcome her each morning, and she knew exactly what to expect. Then, seemingly overnight, she graduated to the big-kid room. Instead of walking into her familiar classroom, she was entering a room filled with bigger kids running around and only one caregiver managing the morning drop-off. Add a brand-new baby sister at home, and it was a whole lot of change for one little nervous system to process at once.
Charlie began experiencing significant separation anxiety.
For about two weeks, daycare drop-off involved crying, hitting, clinging, and really intense tantrums. She was deeply distressed, I felt completely disempowered, and eventually I decided: We cannot keep doing this. I needed to understand what was happening, and I needed to find a way to help her through it. That was when my good friend Jaclyn recommended Jess VanderWier’s Nurtured First course on separation, goodbyes, and sleep struggles.
I do not say this lightly: It changed our lives.
The framework that ultimately helped us had several connected parts:
Understand that separation can feel like a threat to your child’s nervous system.
Use connection as the solution rather than trying to shut down the distress.
Identify a connection ritual that can travel with your child into the separation.
Use stories of sameness, success, and what is to come.
Create a predictable goodbye routine.
Connect your child to the caregiver, the other children, and the physical environment.
Bring all of those pieces together into one meaningful, repeatable experience.
I will walk you through each part, including my process and three-step goodbye routine that eventually helped Charlie move through daycare drop-off with confidence. We’ve been cry-free now for months and it’s truly changed my life.
To Your Toddler, Separation Feels Like a Threat To Their Safety
One of the first lessons that really stayed with me was that, to a young child, separation can feel like a threat.
As Charlie’s parent, I was her primary source of safety. Her nervous system relied on mine for emotional regulation. When I left, she did not yet have the developmental perspective to think, “Mommy is going to work, I am safe here, and she will be back this afternoon.”
She experienced the separation as a loss of safety.
That was why she cried, screamed, hit, clung tightly to my leg, and did everything in her power to stop me from leaving. She was not trying to make my morning difficult. She was trying to remain close to the person who made her feel safest. Understanding that changed the way I interpreted her behavior. Then the course posed a simple but powerful idea:
If separation is the concern, connection is the solution.
Of course. Charlie was fighting the separation because she wanted connection. My job was not to convince her that she did not need me or shut down her feelings as quickly as possible. My job was to help her continue feeling connected to me, even when we were physically apart. Until then, I had not realized how much connection we could create within the separation itself. That realization moved me from feeling helpless at drop-off to feeling empowered to do something differently.
A question to ask yourself: When your child struggles with separation, what might their behavior be communicating? Instead of asking only, “How do I get them to stop crying?” try asking:
What feels unsafe or unfamiliar to my child right now?
What connection are they afraid of losing?
How can I help them feel connected to me, even while we are apart?
Which of Your Connection Rituals Are Portable?
The course prompted me to think about the moments when Charlie and I already felt most connected. That part was easy. We feel connected when we sit at the table, eat together, and talk about our day. We feel connected during bath time. We feel connected when we climb into bed, cuddle up, and read books together. Then I asked myself a question that took the exercise one step further: Which of our connection rituals are portable?
Our post-bath routine was meaningful, but I could not exactly recreate bath time in the middle of her daycare classroom. Reading, however, was different.
Books already represented warmth, safety, predictability, and closeness in our home. Reading was something we could carry into her school environment without changing what made it special.
That became an important clue. A question to ask yourself:
What does connection already look like in your family?
Think about the ordinary moments when your child seems most relaxed, open, and close to you. Maybe it is: Singing a song, reading a favorite book, sharing a special handshake, saying a family phrase, giving a certain number of hugs and kisses, or unlimited other things. Then ask:
Which parts of those rituals could come with us into the separation?
The answer does not need to be elaborate. In fact, the simplest ritual may be the easiest one to repeat consistently.
Using Stories to Build Connection
The course also introduced three ways to use storytelling to support a child through separation.
The first is a story of sameness. You might tell your child about a time when you felt the way they feel now: “When I was little, I felt nervous about going to school without my mommy, too.”
The second is a story of success. This helps your child remember a time when they faced a difficult separation and made it through: “Remember yesterday when saying goodbye felt really hard? You took a deep breath, went inside, and then you had so much fun playing with your friends.”
The third is a story of what is to come. This gives your child a predictable sequence so they can mentally prepare for the separation and the reunion: “We are going to drive to school. We will walk into your classroom together. We will read our book, visit the bunnies, put on chapstick, and say goodbye. Then you will play with your friends, and I will come back after your nap.”
These three storytelling archetypes were incredibly powerful to me because they each answered a different need.
A story of sameness says, “I understand you.” A story of success says, “You can do this.” A story of what is to come says, “You know what to expect.”
A question to ask yourself: Which story does your child need today? Do they need to know that you have felt this way, too? Do they need to be reminded of their own capability? Or do they need you to make the unfamiliar feel more predictable? Sometimes they may need all three.
Bridging Separation Through Routine
Children thrive on routine. We know this when we prepare them for bath time, bedtime, or almost any major transition. The more predictable an experience becomes, the safer it can begin to feel. A consistent goodbye routine creates a bridge between connection and separation. Instead of the parent disappearing at an unpredictable moment, the child learns the sequence. They begin to understand what happens first, what happens next, how the goodbye works, and when the reunion will come. I returned to my question about portability:
What familiar connection routine could we carry from home into the classroom and repeat in the same way every day?
I knew reading could be part of the answer, but I still needed to figure out how to turn it into a complete routine that would work for Charlie.
Connecting Your Child to the Entire Environment
Another important part of the course was connecting Charlie with her caregiver. For example, Charlie has beautiful curly hair, and some of her caregivers have curly hair, too. At drop-off, I might say: “Oh my gosh, look at your beautiful curly hair! Does Miss Michelle have curly hair? Does Miss Anne have curly hair, too?” It helped Charlie recognize a point of sameness between herself and the safe adults in the room.
As I began applying what I had learned, I decided I wanted to create what I thought of as a 360-degree sense of connection. I did not only want to connect Charlie to her caregiver. I wanted to connect her to the other children and the physical classroom, too. I might say:
“Do you have shoes on today? Look, Erin has shoes on. Otto has shoes on, too!”
Or:
“You have blue on your shirt today. Can we find three other blue things in the classroom?”
These observations sound incredibly simple, but they helped Charlie locate familiarity within an environment that felt unfamiliar. I was showing her: You have something in common with your teachers. You have something in common with these children. You recognize things in this room. You belong here. You are safe here.
A question to ask yourself: How can you help your child connect in every direction? Consider three categories:
The caregiver: What does your child share with this safe adult? Can you build familiarity by using the caregiver’s name, noticing something they have in common, or talking about something the caregiver enjoys doing with your child?
The other children: What points of sameness can your child see? Are they wearing similar colors, carrying backpacks, eating the same snack, or playing with something your child enjoys?
The physical space: What familiar, comforting, or interesting details can your child find? Can you look for certain colors, visit a classroom pet, find a favorite toy, or count familiar objects?
You are helping your child discover that safety does not disappear when you leave. It also exists in the people and places you have entrusted them to.
When the Framework Did Not Work Right Away
I would love to tell you that I learned these ideas, tried them the next morning, and Charlie skipped happily into school. That is not what happened. For about two more weeks, I experimented with storytelling, connection, routines, and helping Charlie find familiarity in her new classroom. The individual pieces made sense, but we were not applying them consistently enough to resolve the problem. So I asked myself:
How can I bring every part of this framework together into one meaningful, repeatable experience designed specifically for my child?
That question led me to create something I never anticipated making. I wrote Charlie a book…
The Personalized Book That Changed Everything
I created a 20-page children’s book that told the story of Charlie’s actual morning and her real daycare experience, called Charlie Goes To School.
The book begins with her waking up when the light in her room turns green. Then we brush her teeth, brush her hair, put on her shoes, drive to school, and arrive at her classroom. It shows Charlie saying goodbye to Mommy, spending time with her teachers, playing with friends, visiting the bunnies in her classroom, and going down the slide. Every detail was intentional. I included the actual people she saw at daycare, the friends she loved playing with, and recognizable details from the physical classroom. The illustrations helped her see herself moving safely through the exact experience that had been causing her distress. The book also repeats one very important line several times:
“Mommy always comes back, and Daddy does too.”
It explains where Mommy and Daddy go during the day and helps Charlie understand that we continue loving her and feeling connected to her even when we are somewhere else. The book brought everything together:
It was a portable version of a connection ritual we already loved.
It gave Charlie a story of what was to come.
It showed her connection to her caregivers, friends, and classroom.
It created a predictable routine for our goodbye.
It repeatedly reassured her that separation would end in reunion.
I originally worked with an illustrator I found through Upwork, and then after we’d established a solid baseline, I used ChatGPT to complete the remaining illustrations, and published a single baby board book through Artifact Uprising. Then we read it every single morning at daycare.
Our Three-Part Goodbye Routine
For approximately two months, we followed the same three steps every day:
We read Charlie’s book together in her classroom.
We went to visit the classroom bunnies.
We put on chapstick, hug, kiss, and then I left.
That was it. The routine did not ask Charlie to pretend she was not sad. It did not depend on me sneaking away while she was distracted. It gave her connection, familiarity, and predictability before asking her to separate from me.
Over time, the separation anxiety fully resolved.
Today, we do not even need to read the book at drop-off. We walk into the classroom, put on chapstick, and I leave.
That small chapstick ritual is the piece that stayed. It is a tiny, portable reminder of the much larger connection bridge we built together. It has been absolutely magical for our family.
A question to ask yourself: If you created one repeatable goodbye routine for your child, what would it include? Try bringing the different components together:
What familiar connection ritual could you carry with you?
What story would help your child prepare?
How could you connect them with the caregiver?
How could you connect them with the other children?
How could you connect them with the physical space?
What words will reassure them that you will return?
What simple sequence can you repeat consistently enough for it to become familiar?
Your solution does not need to look like ours. Your child may not need a personalized book or a classroom with bunnies. The goal is to understand the component parts and put them together in a way that makes sense for your child and your family.
You Can Get to the Other Side of This
One of the wild things about becoming a parent is that you never know which challenges you will navigate with each child. The challenges will be different every time because our children are different every time. But knowledge is power.
Sometimes we need a friend like Jaclyn to point us toward the right resource. Sometimes we need the mental fortitude to look at our current reality and decide that it does not have to become our permanent status quo. Then we have to be willing to experiment. We have to test different solutions, implement what we learn, remain consistent, and allow change to happen over the natural course of time. The answer may not reveal itself immediately. Ours certainly did not. But that does not mean there is no answer.
If you are currently carrying a crying, clinging child into daycare, struggling through bedtime separations, or wondering whether goodbyes will always feel this painful, I want you to know that you can get to the other side of it. When you do, you will feel so proud: You will be proud of your child for doing something that once felt impossible. You will be proud of yourself for refusing to accept that your hardest season was inevitable. And you will both have evidence that you can move through hard things together.
Healthy attachment does not mean our children never have to be apart from us. It means they feel so secure in our connection that, eventually, they can carry it with them.
Jess VanderWier’s course helped me create that kind of connection with Charlie. It also helped me give her the confidence to enter the world without me physically beside her.
And that has changed both of our lives.
Since writing and publishing my first Children’s book for my daughter, Charlie, I’ve written and illustrated an entire series of Big Ideas for Little Girls, learn more here.
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