Why Parents Really Send Their Kiddos to Preschool

I am a former middle and high school educator turned stay-at-home mom. Even though I stay home with my littles right now, I still choose to send them to preschool part-time.

But it’s not all about academics. And I don’t think I’m alone.

In recent years, preschool has become increasingly academic and sometimes people wonder if we send our kids to preschool to give them an academic edge. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I hate that kindergarten, and by extension, preschool has morphed into this sort of frantic, must-teach-kids-to-read-and-all-the-maths, kind of environment. Even my children’s preschool teachers aren’t really into this schedule, but their hands are kind of tied.

So why do I (and many other parents) send our kids to preschool anyway?

The Village. This idea goes for both parents and the kids themselves. In my world, we don’t have any family nearby for thousands of miles. Preschool is our Village. It’s a safe place to send my children so I can regroup, write, or just clean the house in peace. For my children, it’s a place for them to build early friendships, learn some social skills, and learn to interact with adults that aren’t me.

No More Daycare. By the time children are three, regular Daycare no longer really exists for them. It just automatically becomes academically-oriented. If simple daycare was available for another year or so, I’d be happy to send my kids to a place where they could just play and be read to and loved on. They will eventually learn to read and do math and become functioning adults. I’m not worried, and I’m not sure why everyone has adopted this frenetic pace.

The Expertise. I taught middle and high school. I have no idea what a three and four year old should be capable of doing. So I guess some of my reasons are “academic,” but perhaps “child-development” would be more accurate. Eventually my children will go to full-time, Big Kid school. They will need to have some preparation. I don’t feel qualified to give it to them, and frankly I’m not all that into much “pre-school” activities besides reading aloud. So I send them to preschool.

So what do I expect for them during their days out of the house with other kids and adults? I want them to be loved and cared for. I want them to be read-aloud to. I want them to play all day. I want them to receive positive attention, learn how to speak kindly and take turns, and play outside as much as possible.

You feel me?

We see the blogs and videos daily that address the over-academisizing of our youngest. I totally get that children who get early access to literacy tend to be more successful later on. Programs like Head Start are great. I just wish they weren’t so literally academic. We’ve forgotten that Free Play really is a child’s work. It’s extremely productive for them to just explore. Remember that many European countries don’t do real schooling until age seven.

In urban areas, we’re seeing a real rise in alternative preschool programs that meet in parks or the forest and the like. And some schools really do pull off a play-based preschool. If this could be the norm, I think a lot of parents would be really happy. Working parents have to send their children somewhere. When children age-out of Daycare, the only next option is preschool.

We’re going to send our kids anyway, for whatever reasons we have. But we need to create more of a win-win scenario where parents don’t feel caught between earning a paycheck and sacrificing their children to lose their love of learning by age five.

There’s a lot of systemic change that goes into this of course. But I just wanted to get us all thinking about it.

We’ve all gotten a little lax in our acceptance of preschool and kindergarten academics. Time to think about how to tone it back down.