Most parents begin with a list of practicalities — the journey to work, the hours, the place on a Tuesday, the cost. Those things matter, and they will shape your decision more than any brochure headline. But underneath them sits something quieter and harder to name: whether a nursery feels like a place where your child will be understood, and where the adults would respond to a difficult moment in the way you would want them to. That instinct is your values talking.

For families across Enfield and North London, the choice is rarely between a good setting and a poor one. It is usually between several decent options with genuinely different personalities — a calm, slow-paced room versus a busy, tightly scheduled day; a garden that is used every day versus one that is admired from the window; an approach that leans on adult-led teaching versus one that follows the child. Knowing what you value turns an overwhelming decision into a series of answerable questions.

Start With Your Values, Not the Prospectus

Most of us have never written our parenting values down, and yet we recognise them instantly when they are crossed. It is the small, unplanned moments that reveal them: the way you feel when a tired child is told to hurry up, how you react to a two-year-old covered in mud, whether you want a room that is quiet and ordered or lively and full of noise. Values are not a philosophy you adopt; they are the pattern of what you already do.

A useful starting point is to think of two or three recent moments when you felt strongly that something had been handled well — and one or two when it had not. Perhaps a grandparent waited patiently while your child worked out a shoe buckle. Perhaps a toddler group leader crouched down and named a feeling instead of distracting from it. Write down what those moments had in common. You will usually find one of a handful of threads: time outdoors and in all weathers, independence and self-care, calm over constant stimulation, respectful communication, belonging to a community, food and mealtimes, home language and culture, or the way adults respond when behaviour is hard. Most families can only protect two or three of these fiercely; the rest are preferences, and knowing the difference is what makes a decision possible.

The next step is translating each value into a question a nursery can actually answer, rather than one that invites a slogan. Instead of asking whether children go outside, ask what happens on a wet Tuesday in February. Instead of asking whether a setting is Montessori-inspired, ask how much choice a child has over what they do in an afternoon, and who decides when an activity ends. Instead of asking how behaviour is managed, ask what an adult does in the moment when one child hits another. Concrete questions get concrete answers, and vague answers are themselves useful information.

Finally, be honest about the non-negotiables that come from your family’s own life — a home language you want reflected, a faith or cultural calendar, a child with additional needs, a shift pattern that rules out certain hours. Values that exist only on paper will cause friction later; values built into your criteria from the start will guide you well.

What a Values-Led Setting Looks Like in Practice

Settings usually declare their ethos in a mission statement, but ethos lives in the furniture. Walk into a room and look at the shelves: are the trays, baskets and materials at a height a one-year-old can reach, and is there a system — however loose — for putting things back? A prepared environment is not about tidy cupboards for their own sake. It is a daily message to children that they can choose, reach, use and return things without asking permission, which is where independence begins.

Outdoor learning is one of the clearest tests. A forest-school approach is not a weekly trip or a special event; it is ordinary time outside in ordinary weather, with waterproofs and the expectation that children will get muddy. Dens that are rebuilt, a mud kitchen in daily use, seeds planted and checked, mini-beast hunts that end in an argument about whether a woodlouse has legs — these are the visible signs. What matters is not the activity itself but what it says: that outdoors is not a reward for finishing indoor work, and that reasonable risk is something children are trusted with. Learning to weigh risk is a benefit, not a by-product.

Ask, too, how an approach is blended with the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage. A Montessori-inspired or forest-school ethos should sit inside the EYFS framework rather than alongside it, with practitioners able to explain how the characteristics of effective learning show up in what the children actually do. The strongest settings describe what they observe rather than labelling children; you should hear the words “I noticed” far more often than “he’s a bit behind”.

Families exploring this kind of provision sometimes use a Montessori-inspired, forest-school nursery Enfield EN2 as a reference point when comparing settings, simply to see what a prepared classroom and all-weather outdoor learning feel like in person, and to hold that atmosphere alongside more traditional rooms. It can be a useful benchmark even if it turns out not to be your final choice.

Then watch the adults. Who gets down to a child’s eye level? Whose voice slows down when a child is upset? How is the key person arrangement explained, and what happens when that person is unwell or on holiday? Notice the walls, too: displays of children’s own marks and constructions, or perfectly matched adult-made artwork? Ask how mealtimes run — whether food is something done to children or with them — and how parents hear about the small things, not just the headlines.

Turning Values Into Practical Decisions

Values survive contact with real life only if the logistics work. Before you fall in love with a room, sketch your actual week: who does drop-off, who does pick-up, what happens on a day when a train is cancelled, and how term-time opening compares with your own leave. If you need care beyond the core day, ask precisely where wraparound begins and ends, and whether your child stays in the same room with the same adults. If you work shifts or irregular hours, say so early and ask whether the setting can accommodate it; honest answers now prevent stressful mornings later.

Ask how funded hours are applied in practice, how invoices are structured, and whether any additional charges apply for meals, trips or consumables. Ask, too, about the waiting list: when places are decided, what happens if you need to change days, and how much notice is expected. These are unglamorous questions, but they are the ones that determine whether a values match becomes a workable relationship rather than a stressful one.

Settling in deserves the same scrutiny. A gradual start, a named key person, a comfort object from home, and a clear plan for what happens if your child finds the first fortnight difficult — these tell you as much about a setting’s ethos as anything on the curriculum page. So does the way staff talk to parents: whether information flows both ways, whether you can say “we do this at home, could we try it here?”, and how a difference of opinion about nap times or toilet learning would be handled. Ask how observations are shared day to day, and look at an example before you decide.

Visit when the setting is busy rather than when it is being presented, and if you can, go twice. Speak to parents at the gate, and ask them what has changed since their child started. Then, after a term, revisit the question: is your child recognised here, and are the things you care about visible in what they bring home and talk about? If something feels off six months in — a change of key person, a room that no longer suits your child, a routine that has quietly drifted — raise it early. Values-led childcare is a conversation, not a contract you sign once and never revisit.