On Daycare and Preschool

I’ve seen some parents insist they want to send their children to a “real preschool,” not a mere daycare. I’m not sure what they’re talking about and am fairly sure they don’t know, either.

Now, I’m referring to the realm of families that need full-time child care because there is no stay-at-home parent. If you’re a stay-at-home mom or dad and have found the mythical preschool that starts at age three and operates for only a few hours a day, possibly for only a few days a week, and your child is happy there, bravo.

If, on the other hand, you’re a parent with another job, and you need to find a good place for your child to spend most of his or her waking hours during the week, I suggest dispensing with labels like preschool and daycare and figure out what happens at these child care centers and which ones will be the happiest, safest, most helpful place for your family.

The little girl spent much of her babyhood and toddlerhood at a daycare with little pretensions of being anything but that. The place was nurturing, the children happy and thriving. While most of the staff did not have advanced degrees, they by and large knew and liked children. The children had circle time, music, activities that helped develop their fine and large motor skills, story time, and free play indoors and outside. The management was flexible, open to suggestions, accommodating to schedules that sometimes had us bringing the little girl to daycare as late as lunchtime or naptime.

Was it perfect? No. No place is, and sometimes I second-guessed whether we should have moved her to one of the preschools in our area that have more buzz. We were pleased overall, though, and she loved her teachers, so we didn’t have many regrets. Then the place underwent a sudden and significant change, and we reluctantly left.

What I have seen since reinforces what I suspected.

There are places with the word “preschool” in their names that operate, essentially, as daycares. They take infants, are open from early morning to the evening, five days a week, and employ staff with backgrounds similar to those at daycare centers. They have similar activities. Some may be superior to daycare centers, or on par with them, or inferior to them, just as all daycare centers are not established and run equally.

These preschools may or may not adhere as well as other daycares to activity schedules, staffing needs, children’s needs. Here are questions to consider. Does a preschool concern itself as much as a daycare with the cleanliness of your newly potty trained child’s bottom? Is it more rigid than a mere daycare about your child’s arrival time? Will it support your busy family’s needs or will you all be rushing about more to meet its requirements?

Visit the daycares/preschools/nursery schools/learning centers, read their parent handbooks, look how the children there behave, interact with each other and their teachers. Would you want to spend your day there?