Settling in period?

[Anonymous]

Where I currently live it is very normal for daycares to do a settling in period when a child first starts. The first day you might come for an hour or two and the parent stays and plays with kid in space, the next day you come for two hours and the parent leaves after a half hour (but stays nearby), then do a couple half day drop offs, and then start full time. A lot of these processes are longer (you might only come two times in a week) and go for three weeks.

I am getting the feeling from reading posts on here that daycares in the DC area don’t typically have any kind of settling in period. You just drop off on day one for the full day. Is that right? While I tend to think the processes where I currently am are a little OTT, it does make sense for older kids (here most kids don’t start daycare until 1) to have at least one visit where parent is also present to help them feel safe as they bond to teacher. But I get that dc daycares might just not be set up to allow that.

If your daycare didn’t have any kind of settling in period, were you able to do one? If not, how did your older than 18 month old react? My DC has never been in a daycare setting before.