[...]The Playpen » Blog Archive » Is Preschool Bad For Your Kids?[...]…

[...]The Playpen » Blog Archive » Is Preschool Bad For Your Kids?[...]…

I do my very, very best to stimulate my child at home (18 months). We play music and dance and sing, nursery rhymes, actions to music, books, books and more books, drawing, playing with toys, going to parks/playgrounds and the sad thing is I find it hard to keep my daughter stimulated. I find that if she gets 4 hours of nursery 3 times a week she is really, really happy – really happy. She LOVES nursery and she goes mental (tantrums) if she doesn’t get it. So, PLEASE people who have posted some rather controversial comments on this site, don’t assume that mothers are lazy and are doing it for themselves and not for their children only. I won’t pretend that I don’t enjoy the break from my very busy daughter (in which case nursery also benefits me as a parent), but I resent being judged as a parent just in it for myself and not my child.

The Playpen » Blog Archive » Is Preschool Bad For Your Kids?…

Early education can happen at home. I can’t imagine what amazing things that can happen at preschool (basically overpriced daycare) that can’t happen at home. What is music time for preschoolers? Are they learning an instrument? Probably not. They’re doing what parents should do anyway on a regular basis. Playing instruments at home, playing music, bringing out the drums and shakers. Having fun with music.

Foreign language? If they’re surrounded by a foreign language at all times, like all of the workers at the preschool speak french, then that might be pretty cool, but I’m envisioning they spend 30 minutes once a week learning a hand full of words. A mom could easily do that at home if they wanted.

My biggest reason for being against preschool is it really doesn’t do anthing but prepare kids for the structured environment of kindergarden (kindergarden was supposed to prepare kids for 1st grade), and preschool also teaches bad manners. I can pick a preschool kid out from a mile away. They tend to bully my kid, they grab things they want, no matter if it’s not theirs, they tend to act oblivious to adult insturction (not always, and of course there are degrees). But, kids who stay at home and who have attentive parents are going to be well mannered and are going to learn more than at preschool because you have a 1 or 2 or 3 to one situation, with someone who actually cares about the child enough to talior the child’s day to their interests.

That said, some people are just plain bad at educating their child. They really love their child, but they make almost no effort to enrich them. I have a friend like this. For this child, I think preschool is a good thing, as she is learning next to nothing at home. Also, there are special circumstances like if you live in the US, but speak a language other than English. You may want to surround your kid with English, and that makes a lot of sense to me as well.

Aside from a few select instances, I can’t imagine why someone would send a kid to preschool other than to make their day easier. Honestly, that is the real reason here. It’s not exactly hard to teach counting, quantity, abc’s, reading, and bring out some drums and play a cd on a regular basis, and gasp, look on the internet once or twice a week for an especially fun craft project for your kid to do. Pulling out some crayons and paint regularly isn’t hard either.

Preschool is USUALLY (not always) for the parent.

Also, you say that statistics say that preschool is better, but let’s be a little honest here. Most kids are from families who are working so much, and don’t have the time or energy to actually devote attention to the child. So it’s a no brainer that for the majority of the population, preschool would be good, but for parents who are devoted to their children, and have time and energy to care for them properly, it’s best to stay at home, and maybe enroll in a class or two as interests develop.

I recently had to pull my four-year old out of a very structured preschool. They had exercise, phonics, Spanish, art and show-and-tell integrated into a play-based program, but all that didn’t necessarily add up to a great program, unfortunately. I felt there were ways in which he was not fully treated the same as other children. He was being bullied by other children. He was not encouraged to do art projects and phonics were extremely basic for his level, just working on letter sounds. I now use our local YMCA for many activities for him including cooking for kids, yoga for kids and Spanish for kids. The only thing he misses is a weekly experiment that a teacher would do to teach Science. Other, than that, he is a lot happier and less stressed out now. I have also enrolled him in Karate class to teach him techniques in dealing with bullies. Hopefully, when he goes into Kinder next year, he will be better equipped to deal with bullies and reading chapter books, as I’m able to dedicate a lot more time to his phonics than they could at school.