New Farmingdale drop-off program helps toddlers with separation

Leo McDonald’s shirt is flecked with applesauce, and he ignores the globs of it on his chin as a teacher at the Early Childhood Center in Farmingdale encourages the 2-year-old to keep playing with the food. Leo puts his hands in it, uses a silver cup to scoop some to transfer to a bowl and, when he feels like it, delivers some right into his mouth.

Or close enough.

It’s sensory play time during a new drop-off program for toddlers run by Reimagined NY Kids in the new Early Childhood Center at The Nesting Place in Farmingdale. Playing with applesauce helps the children age 2 to 4 experience wet textures as well as develop fine motor skills. But the ultimate goal of the 2½-hour classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays is to help children — and parents — get comfortable spending time apart, says Reimagined owner Deanna Powers. Children can attend one, two or three days a week.

Some of the families worked up to the drop-off class with another new offering — an eight-week separation program launched in September for children age 18 months to 3 years that had parents leaving each weekly class 15 minutes earlier while the child stayed, until the children gradually adjusted to being without the caregiver at all. "It’s a bridge between our ‘Mommy and Me’ and our drop-off class," Powers says. "We slowly wind back. The ulterior motive is you get to leave eventually and get a hot cup of coffee."

The separation program and the subsequent drop-off program are held in the new Early Childhood Center, which opened adjacent to The Nesting Place in September.

Juana and Zachary Weinreb, both 35 and of East Islip, a teacher and software engineer respectively, had their daughter, Luca, 20 months old, do the separation program this fall; she is now in the drop-off program. "It definitely helped her transition. She was able to get comfortable in the space and with the teachers. She just goes right in, like she knows where she is," Juana says. 

The next separation program cycle is planned for January, Powers says, after which the center will add drop-off class options on Mondays and Fridays as well. The cost for the 90-minute separation program, which runs on Saturdays, is $360 and is limited to five to eight children, each with a parent in a class; then the drop-off classes cost $310 a month for one day a week or $600 a month for two days a week and are limited to 10 students in each class. 

In addition to sensory play, the children experience circle time for speech and language development and movement exercises, such as obstacle course or yoga, to practice gross motor skills, Powers says.

"I felt there was a need in the community for a center that was really focused on childhood development," says Powers, an occupational therapist who created the curriculum  with the help of a physical therapist and a speech therapist.

Leo is one child who went into the drop-off program cold turkey. "I wanted to enroll my 2-year-old in a program that emphasizes play, exploration and social interaction rather than early academics," says his mother, Dawn, 29, a speech language pathologist.

Lindsey Cariello, 28, of Wantagh, a government grant manager, says she’s happy that "getting messy and playing" is part of the day for her son, Teddy, 2. "It’s so good for them," she says of the children. And, she says she’s happy to delegate that messy play to the center. "All right, you guys do that," she jokes.