Seahorse Nursery Wimbledon Park

Ninara Mirb

3 months ago

My son attended this nursery for six months in 2023, starting at 18 months old. During this time, he was scratched multiple times, with little proactive response from staff. He had several different key workers and staff ratios appeared to change frequently. We were repeatedly told he was doing well, yet on leaving we received a report showing concerns that had never been clearly communicated before. The toddler (2+) room is very small and incidents seemed frequent. On one day he was scratched four times, after which we were asked to collect him urgently and gave notice. Overall, adult supervision and safeguarding felt weak, and management offered explanations rather than effective action. I hope things have improved since then.

Nick Neto

a year ago

Our family has two children that have been at Seahorse for many years. We have had a wonderful experience with Seahorse over the years and our boys have been very happy there. The real standout is the team at the nursery. They are a wonderful bunch of individuals who truly care about the children and are genuinely passionate about what they do. I have seen massive improvements in my kids confidence and hunger to learn which I believe stems from the nursery. The nursery is well led by a capable and competent management team, and I would highly recommend the nursery to my closest family and friends. It has been a hugely positive experience and one that we will always remember fondly.

Nathalie Oestmann

a year ago

Such lovely caregivers. I'm posting this not as a parent with children at Seahorse but as a local, who happens to have a home on their path to the park. I have watched Seahorse Staff walking the children to the park for a long time, and I've meant to write this post for a while. The carers are so kind, they chat with them kids. Teach them to be careful, take care of one another, hold hands, and are generally chatting with the children (rather than chatting with one another or on their phones). It's a joy to see and I want Parents to know that I approve wholeheartedly of how the company chooses their staff. I look forward to many sunny days for the children to enjoy Wimbledon Park!

Richard Sullivan

2 years ago

The Seahorse nursery Wimbledon park team have been amazing with both my son and his younger sister. They blend the right amount of love and care with mental and emotional development that has helps prepare them to start school with the skills they need.

Laura Chan

2 years ago

I cannot recommend this nursery. My 22 month old daughter was asked to leave the nursery after several biting incidents. Despite our efforts to find a solution to the biting, including finding a private behavioural therapist and reaching out to various psychologists to come and observe in the setting, we were given less than 7 days notice to leave. At the time, I was heavily pregnant, working full time, and without family nearby and had to scramble to find alternative childcare. The head alleged they had never experienced biting like this in some 20 years of running a nursery (which sounds incredible). Beyond contacting the Merton council to request that a support officer come and observe my daughter (the officer was supposed to attend 3 sessions, but only managed 1 before we were asked to leave, and before we could properly implement any of the suggestions made by the officer) the nursery showed little interest in working with us to find a solution to what is clearly a normal developmental behaviour (per below) especially a not even 2 year old child. I would add, the biting stopped after we moved her to another nursery in the area, which goes to show this was a behavioural issue that could have been resolved with properly trained staff. At the time I had reached out to a child psychologist for advice on biting and was given the following advice which I passed onto the nursery: Quote Hello again, I've just found this link which would be helpful to share with the nursery. As we discussed on the phone, biting is actually very common at this age. When this persists past the age of 3-4 that's when it is usually considered a problem. Of course, it's not a behaviour you want to continue but in order to help her stop biting, the nursery will need to do more to find out the possible causes and maintaining factors, and to then put different ideas into place to reduce it. Whether this is boredom, tiredness, emotionally driven, a way of asserting herself, a way to get attention (I would be curious about how much attention she gets when she's not biting), a way of showing affection, or her way of trying to engage in play. Whatever the cause (and there may be many different ones), it is really important to avoid using negative or shaming language when this happens. Her ability to understand and empathize with others perspectives will be very limited because of her age. Children learn to develop empathy through repeated experiences of this being modelled by adults. It would be good to remind the nursery that she isn't doing things with bad intent but more likely because of other causal factors, or she may enjoy the effect sensorily, in terms of how it feels or because a shocking reaction can be pleasing to a bored child. Also most children her age have no idea that biting hurts, and need time to learn this from adults who explain this clearly and calmly”. Unquote Edited to respond to nursery’s comment: I am not sure if you really believed an alternative environment was best for my child, as within 6 months of asking us to leave you emailed asking if I would be interested in putting her in your new term time nursery…