If your child is starting nursery soon, the most useful preparation you can do is to start bringing some of what will happen there into home life beforehand.

None of this is dramatic. It is mostly about timings and consistency, and it takes the edge off the transition.

Move mealtimes closer to nursery timings

If you are used to getting up quite late, or offering a late breakfast, nursery may be starting a lot earlier than normal.

Getting into the routine of regular meals at roughly the same timings that nursery will be offering them can be really helpful. It means the first week is not asking your child to eat at an unfamiliar hour on top of everything else that is new.

Find out what those timings actually are, rather than guessing, and work towards them gradually.

Look at milk

This is the one that catches people out. Whether your child still drinks quite a lot of milk in the morning, or has a lot of milk overnight, can affect their appetite during the day.

If a child arrives at nursery already fairly full, they are unlikely to eat much at the first mealtime, and it can look like food refusal when it is not.

Appropriate volumes of drinks matter generally. If you offer lots of nutrient dense drinks, they may fill your child up too much, and the same goes for milk. It is also worth weaning off baby bottles after the age of one, which is the general advice for dental health as much as anything.

Keep offering food consistently over the holidays

Continue offering food over the summer rather than letting things drift. Summer months can be a bit different if you are travelling or away, and in real heat appetite can definitely be altered, so take that into account.

The aim is not perfection over the holidays. It is that you are at least thinking about these things at home before they start.

Eat together where you can

Sharing meals together is part of the preparation. A lot of what makes nursery mealtimes work is positive role modelling, with children sitting around the same table watching peers and caregivers eating the same sorts of foods.

Recreating some of that at home makes the nursery version less unfamiliar.

Build in predictability

Children really like knowing what to expect, and nursery mealtimes are consistent and predictable by design.

At home you can mirror that with:

• Regular mealtimes at consistent points in the day.
• A limit on how long a mealtime runs. A 4 to 5 year old will rarely sit for longer than 8 to 10 minutes.
• A routine that signals a meal is starting, like tidying up toys first, or a song or some movement. It is almost like preparing the brain for the next task.

Move towards how nursery food will taste

If you use quite a lot of salt at home, reducing it gradually brings your cooking closer to what your child will be eating at nursery.

Children do adapt quite quickly to new flavours anyway, even when they are used to more heavily seasoned food. But narrowing the gap beforehand makes it easier, and less salt is better for the whole family regardless.

Start the conversation with nursery early

Alongside the routine changes, talk to nursery before your child starts. Share whether you have any concerns about their feeding, what eating habits are like at home, whether your meal patterns are quite different, and how much milk they are having.

If you have concerns about their eating or their growth, raise them beforehand so you can work together, because starting nursery will not change things overnight.

If you are already struggling

There is never a bad time to get support with your child's eating. If you are struggling a little, or thinking they are really fussy, or worrying about how they will manage at nursery, working on some of this at home over the weeks beforehand will stand you in good stead.

Then keep the conversation with nursery going once they start. Staff are very experienced with children, and often have useful suggestions of their own.