Toddlers stressed out by nursery

Last updated at 09:22 20 September 2005


Toddlers experience high levels of stress when they leave their mothers to begin nursery, a new study has found.

Children who have just started day care are apparently suffering much higher levels of anxiety than their counterparts who are still at home.

Even five months later, the youngsters may still be experiencing 'chronic mild stress'.

Researchers from Cambridge University and the Free University of Berlin found the level of stress hormone cortisol doubled in some toddlers during their first nine days at nursery.

The levels did then drop, but were still relatively high several months later even though the toddlers showed no outward signs of distress.

The study, led by Professor Michael Lamb, of Cambridge, and Lieselotte Ahnert, of Berlin, monitored 36 girls and 34 boys aged between 11 and 20 months. The children had all been cared for mainly at home and were then placed in nurseries for 40 hours a week.

Their stress levels were found to be between 75 per cent and 100 per cent higher compared with when they had been at home.

But the researchers emphasised there was no evidence that the stress had any lasting effect on the toddlers or meant day care itself was bad for children.

It did, however, suggest that children should be placed in day care for shorter periods of time and there should be more individualised attention from childminders.

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