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Off to School We Go
Should You Send
Your Toddler to Preschool? By Lisa A. Goldstein
Your Toddler to Preschool?
Quinn feels that for a vast majority of moms, preschool is a wonderful opportunity for children to learn from professionals who know how to teach in a fun and age-appropriate way. "And even if we stay at home, every mom needs a few hours a day for herself," she says. "When your child is at preschool, it can be 'Mom's time.' And everyone benefits."
Quinn does concede that it might not be 100 percent necessary to start a child in preschool at age3, but she believes it becomes important by age4. "In the end, I'm convinced that children who go to preschool are more confident and better prepared when the time comes to go to kindergarten," says Quinn.
more academics," says Axness. "Yes, it's still wrong even when delivered with loving, sing-song voices: learning numbers and letters is considered academics requiring a very young child's brain to work with abstractions when it isn't yet ready! I also have strong feelings about the appropriateness of 'preschool' of any kind for toddlers; let's call it what it really is daycare!" Truly developmentally appropriate preschools are hard to find, Axness says. What about preschools that have a focus on play with integrated learing? "There's a central misconception right in that phrase and misapplication of the very notion of what learning is at this young age," says Axness. The idea of "integrating" a more abstract, academic kind of learning into the play is silly, she thinks. Activities that relate to a particular letter, for example, are fine, as long as there's no pressure in any way on the children to turn around and "demonstrate the learning," says Axness.