BTW, He’s never spent a day in preschool. He’s also not the only kid his general age who can do those things. (Unless somehow I’m living in a neighborhood of supergenius kids and didn’t realize it!)

Preschool can be valid for socialization skills, but the rest of it just takes a willingness to work with a child one on one and see where their interests lie. If you have the patience for it, great! If you don’t, maybe preschool is worth it for you. But there is nothing magical about the instruction there that a parent can’t duplicate at home.

If you are able to work with your child and like one person said, get the Kindergarten readiness info then she might be ok.

I know that as part of my sons going to Kindergarten this year he had to know his letters, his colors, his numbers, how to write his name and a plethora of other things. He would not have gotten this without some form of formal instruction.

Do not sell your child short – let them start Kindergarten with their classmates – not behind the game. You will NEVER regret you sent her to preschool – you might regret that you did not.

On the other hand…
It is nice that she never gets sick…she’s in her little bubble right now since she is babysat at her grandma’s. When she does go to school she’s going to bring home every little sniffle known to man!

We’re probably only going to do 2 days a week for Junior Miss. Hopefully that will be enough so Kindergarten won’t be such a shock.

Second, I have the impression from this woman that she is viewing this as an either-or situation. There are 2 types of preschools in most places – preschools that are also daycares and are open all day 5 days a week, and preschools that are part-time, usually half-day, and cater more to kids with stay-at-homes or nannies. If her aunt is willing to drop off and/or pick up the child from preschool she could do one of the half-day preschools, which are usually 2 or 3 days a week and not too expensive. As others have mentioned, they may also have financial aid available. My town has a public preschool which is fairly inexpensive in addition to many private ones.

My daughter went to a preschool at a full-time daycare center until I left my job this year. Now she goes to a local private preschool 3 mornings a week. I think the socialization aspect is extremely important for her because she has a tendency to be shy, and I think at 4 1/2 she likes having a structured activity with other kids her age and she is learning all the things on the kindergarten readiness checklist.

If the writer calls her public school district or looks at their website, they probably have a checklist for “kindergarten readiness”. It’s intended to help parents decide if their kids are ready for kindergarten, especially if they are close to the age deadline. She might want to look at that and see how she thinks her child is doing compared to what the school expects for a child going into kindergarten. It is true that the schools expect a lot more from kindergarteners than they did when we were kids.

My son is thriving in kindergarten. His teacher says you’d never know he did not attend preschool because he is performing as well as if not better than some of his classmates who went to preschool for two or more years prior to coming to kindergarten.
In my opinion, if a child does not do well in kindergarten, they can repeat the grade. That’s the attitude I went into this school year with my son. Fortunately, I don’t think that will be necessary.
I really don’t think preschool is necessary if the parents work with their children at home.

Many years ago it was customary for children to go to school much later than they do now and they turned out very educated – how about our Founding Fathers? I never heard of Thomas Jefferson attending preschool.

I don’t think that preschool is going to affect a child educationally – long term. Unless the child either has an exceptionally bad experience and dislikes school or has a very great experience and find out that learning is wonderful and exciting, I think, it won’t make much difference.

I also don’t believe that pre-schooled children are more educated than non pre-schooled children. If a parent or caregiver takes some time each day to read to and work with a child on numbers and letters they will thrive on the one-on-one attention and do fine in kindergarten.

The most important thing for that child is to be where she can be well cared for by people that love her.

If the aunt neglects her and let’s her watch 5 hours of TV a day – then sure she’ll be much better off in a structured educational environment.

But, if the aunt interacts with her and plays with her. If she is read to and taken to story times at the library or other activities to meet with children and have social time with friends she should be fine.

It’s really a decision only the family can make – but I don’t think it’s a decision of educational importance – it’s a decision on where the child will be happiest spending her day. Where will she be loved and cared for the best? Where can her imagination be challenged to grow?

It may not be an easy decision for us because we don’t know the situation – there are too many variables. But, if the Aunt truly likes watching the child and is a good caregiver to the child and the child is happy with her – I think she should stay with the Aunt. I think the attachments of family (or at least 1 consistent caregiver) are very important to the development of little ones – she’ll grow up soon and go off to school soon enough, why rush it?

Now, it seems like maybe this single mother’s aunt may have been hinting to the child’s grandmother that she needed a break and they may have hit on the solution of preschool. If so, I hope she looks into head start or something like it so her child gets some preschool in preparation for kindergarten.

As for the question of preschool, I’ve had 4 kids in various preschools, and granddaughters in a couple of others. Yes, there is a superficial sameness about the types of activities they all do or say they do. No, they are not all the same. Yes, I’ve unfortunately found that more expensive preschools are better.

For example, Montessori preschools have been mentioned. I had 2 of my grown kids in 2 different certified Montessori preschools over the years and was very pleased with both of them. They weren’t cheap but the equipment and teachers were excellent.

Before I enrolled one child in Montessori I went to check out several other available ones. I went to a less expensive preschool in a community centre in a poor area of town (but only blocks from where my office was at the time). It was dirty, the attendants were more interested in cleaning up from snack than interacting with the kids and the head of the program had to leave me abruptly in the middle of our talk when a child caught himself in the closet where they kept the pads the kids napped on! I walked out and nobody even noticed me go.

My grown daughter also moved her oldest from the very affordable community centre program a couple of blocks from our house to the centre where she herself used to work (expensive). Why? The program was very so so and she didn’t like the language. In the centre she moved her child to they speak in a very precise, positive way to the kids at all times, even when they need to correct their behaviour. They never put the child down or allow the children to say negative things to each other. And they keep track of the kids. The local centre claimed that only the specified person could pick up but we had up to 4 different people who might be doing pickup and no one ever asked us who we were, even the first time we came to pickup and when we weren’t the person who had dropped off that morning! Very, very dangerous.

The moral of the story is to really spend some time checking out the places in person (sometimes very hard to do as a single working parent) and to look beyond the shiny doll corner and toy-filled sandbox to what they are teaching and how they are teaching. Do they look at the children when they talk to them? Listen for tone of voice. Look at how the children interact and see how the staff deals with a problem between 2 kids. Yes, money definitely comes into it. If you can’t afford it, don’t put yourself into a risky position. But don’t put your child somewhere if you have any red flags popping up.

Sure, it’s more difficult to teach her to share. On the flip side, she’s hardly been sick (she’s 2.5) and she’s been much slower to learn naughty things! It’s certainly not worth it to me to make the 20 mile round trip to town an additional 2-3 times per week.

I guess my point is that Marjorie can get all the input she likes, but her decision must be based on whatever is best for her family as a whole. That includes herself! If I were her, I might “invest” a small amount of money into books, activities, supplies, etc for her aunt to work on with her daughter. And I don’t necessarily mean workbooks, but art supplies and various activities and projects. I have a lot of respect for the Montessori methods, maybe pick up some books and try to recreate some of it the best they can.

Good luck, Marjorie!

There are dozens of good suggestions already on the list here–however, if the LW lives in a rural area or one without much funding for low-income parents, she might have to bite the bullet and spend the cash for childcare.

I do agree with the other posters too that at age 4, one of the major benefits of preschool is to help kids make the transition to kindergarten, which is now a full school day in many areas. My two kids went to play-based programs and absolutely thrived there, and much of the benefits had to do with socialization– making peer friends, building a relationship with teachers, taking turns and playing together well, being able to follow directions and schedules in groups. For a kid who’s been relatively structureless, these are skills that will be important in kindergarten.

If that is the case, and she enrolls her kid in preschool, what kind of sick child care would she have in place? Yes, the socialization is important, but c’mon….little kids generally have questionable hygiene and can pass on all kinds of germs, especially if a parent decides to dose their kid up with tylenol instead of taking him/her out of school for a day because they don’t have or won’t use their sick time.

(That’s why I’m passing on it for my boy…our little girl will have a temporary immunocompromised condition because of a correctable heart defect. I can’t risk her getting sick because of something her big brother will pick up from another kid. He will have to get his socialization for the next year from the small circle of “friends” he already has who know about our situation.)

This is not to say pre-school is worth it at any cost. But any good school will have a benefit. Please look into headstart and other alternatives if cost is an issue.