Child in day care: COVID-19 Resources and Information | Childcare.gov

5 Reasons Why You Should Place Your Child in Daycare in 2021

Daycare centers are a popular childcare option where you drop off your child to be supervised, nurtured, and cared for by professional caregivers and teachers during the day.  They are well-structured, formal childcare environments with specific times for dropping off and picking up your child.

Most Chicago daycares focus on childcare services for infants and toddlers as well as preschoolers.  Others offer after-school, weekend, and before-school care services for school-going children. Regardless of your child’s age, it’s always difficult to put your little one in the care of someone else, let alone a center where many children are cared for in the same place.

Aside from a little case of separation anxiety, sending your infant or younger child to a daycare facility in Chicago can be incredibly beneficial to both you and your child.  As a Chicago parent here are five worthwhile reasons to seriously consider taking your kid to daycare this year.

Reason #1: Taking Your Child to Daycare is Far Less Expensive than Hiring a Nanny

If luck is on your side, a relative (I see you grandma!) may agree to watch your little one, so you can dash to a dental appointment, run some errands, go on a date, or even go back to working nine-to-five.  If you’re lucky, this won’t end up putting a major strain on your relationship.

Not everyone has a willing family member or relative who has the time to take care of your child, let alone for free. So, your next option is to hire a nanny, babysitter, or if possible, go dutch with another family for a nanny share service.  Unfortunately, nannies and babysitters can cost a small fortune — especially if you need full-time childcare.  The going hourly rates for a nanny in Chicago range from $11 to $20 (sometimes up to $25 per hour).

The cost of sending your child to a daycare center in Chicago, on the other hand, can often be more affordable than bringing in a babysitter or hiring a nanny. The center usually charges a flat rate for a full day of childcare and is capped at $46.49 per hour by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS).

The actual price of daycare in Chicago may vary from facility to facility, depending on the type of center, its location in the city, and what is included in their services package.  If you opt for family care (also referred to as an in-home daycare center), you can expect to pay the least for childcare.  Overall, you can expect to pay an average of $894 per month, which is much cheaper than hiring a full-time nanny who can set you back an average of $2,250 monthly.

Reason #2: Vetted Daycare Centers Offer Better Quality of Childcare

Here’s another plausible reason to send your tot to an accredited, licensed, and regulated daycare facility in Chicago.  In major cities, including Chicago, the state, federal government, and local authorities have outlined strict standards and regulations that govern child care facilities.

The state of Illinois mandates childcare requirements, such as a 1:3 caregiver-to-child ratio for daycare centers offering care for infants and toddlers under the age of 2.  The state also dictates the maximum group size and level of training for caregivers & teachers at the center.

Together, these strict guidelines ensure that Chicago’s state-licensed daycares offer the best quality of care for your child.  A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) backs this up. The research found that daycare centers that meet caregiver-to-child ratio, educational requirements, and maximum group sizes enforced by state regulators tend to have better outcomes, such as higher quality of care and increased social & cognitive development.

Reason #3: Daycare Helps Kids Kick off their Social Life on the Right Foot

At first, the highly interactive nature of the daycare environment may throw your child off, especially if your kid develops temporary separation anxiety. But when little ones get accustomed to the daycare setting, these interactions can make a significant positive impact on their social lives.

Learning, playtime, and generally interacting with their friends and caregivers can have huge benefits for your child’s social, cognitive, and emotional development. This high level of socialization can enable your child to grow and learn with peers, something that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.  After all, it’s been scientifically proven that early social relationships can have a big impact on shaping one’s future life skills in communication, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence.

Reason #4: Daycare Lays Foundation for Better School Life Ahead

Attending daycare not only provides opportunities for socialization and learning but can also lay a solid foundation for future school life. Children who attended daycare tend to be morally and educationally more disciplined — they’re less likely to act out, cause tantrums, or have behavioral issues in school.

This might have something to do with early interactions with others. In a daycare environment, kids usually learn to interact with adults and with their peers in a healthy way. This gives them the head start they need to develop proper social, emotional, and cognitive skills.  For instance, learning how to make friends and solve conflicts amicably at a tender age can stick with you from kindergarten all through to college and even beyond.

Reason #5: Daycare Provides you with Opportunities to Meet Other Parents

Kids, as they say, don’t come with a manual—and it really helps to swap notes with other parents who may have better parenting solutions.  It doesn’t hurt to meet, mingle, and perhaps strike up friendships with other like-minded parents.

For instance, if you drop off or pick up your kids with a certain Samuel almost every day, soon you will find yourself exchanging contacts. Who knows; the person might introduce you to the enchanting art culture of Chicago or get you a membership to an exclusive country club like the Ridgemoor.

That aside, surrounding yourself with other parents can provide you with the kind of support system you need to raise amazing kids.  It all begins with choosing the right daycare center for your family’s needs.

Are you looking for a trusted, state-of-the-art daycare in Chicago?  Schedule a tour at any of our locations today.  Serving the Edgewater, Irving Park, Lakeview, North Park, Lincoln Square, Edison Park, and West Loop communities since 2010.

The Uncomfortable Truth about Daycare

Summer 2016

Raising a child in America is more expensive today than it has ever been — more than $245,000, not including college tuition, according to the USDA — and supporting a family often requires two incomes. Even when it is not necessarily required of them, many women wish to use their educations to pursue lucrative, fulfilling careers. It should not be surprising that the majority of parents work outside the home, including the majority of mothers. Among married women, 57% with a child under the age of three worked at least part time in 2014, and nearly 74% of those women worked full time.

While there are obviously many good things to be said about the professional progress of women and the significant contributions they have made in their fields, good things tend to come with tradeoffs. More women in the workforce means that more children need some form of child care. (A small but growing minority of fathers in the United States stay at home with their children: 2 million fathers, or 16% of stay-at-home parents, in 2012. Over half of these men were either unemployed or disabled.) For many parents, decisions about work and child care are among the most difficult choices they must make.

These decisions are made all the more difficult by a lack of reliable research on daycare. There is more research than anyone needs on the dangers of certain fabrics used in car seats and backpacks or the risks of drinking from a garden hose or eating conventionally grown fruit. And sober examination of the actual findings of these studies consistently reveals that the risks are being exaggerated; unless a child eats the fabric on his backpack, he isn’t really at risk.

But when it comes to daycare — something that instinctively worries many parents — few are willing to take a hard look. The media, which seemingly report constantly on alarming new risks to children, rarely present the public with information from studies on the impact of daycare, especially when the findings suggest that daycare is associated with significant negative outcomes.

The reasons for this are several, and are understandable. Many reporters may be reluctant to highlight such studies because of the politically charged nature of the issue. Some may worry that acknowledging any downsides to daycare would impede the cause of women’s equality, by inviting people to conclude that children would be better off if mothers dropped out of the workforce. And many journalists send their kids to daycare, and therefore may be predisposed to overlook negative findings about a choice they have already made for their own children.

A deeper reason may be that the psychologists who study daycare have attempted to downplay or put a comforting spin on troubling findings. Just last year, an important study found that the culturally liberal outlook of almost all social psychologists had biased the studies and conclusions they reached. It is likely that a similar outlook, and in particular an unwillingness to present findings that may interfere with women’s progress in the workplace, has similarly harmed the work of developmental psychologists regarding daycare.

This bias and lack of information does a serious disservice to parents, who need to know about the best research in order to make fully informed choices for their families — even, and especially, if that research does not validate their biases. Politicians also need to know what the full range of research shows, especially as they consider policy reforms that could lead many families to change their decisions about how their children are cared for. President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have both called for increasing government’s financial support of paid child care, but it is not at all clear that increased use of child care would produce better results for children.

In fact, the available research suggests that heavy use of commercial daycare leads to some poor outcomes for many children. Subsidizing this form of child care effectively discourages the use of other arrangements that have not shown these negative effects. A better policy would help parents in a broader way, providing financial help regardless of families’ child-care choices.

Acknowledging evidence that daycare may have drawbacks is not meant to demonize parents using daycare. One of the authors of this essay, a mother of five, currently uses part-time daycare for her own children. Like millions of other parents, she believes it is the best option for her family in balancing different considerations such as cost, convenience, and the desire to support a work life as well as ensure the well-being of her children.

Instead, by presenting research that deserves more attention from psychologists, the media, public-policy analysts, and the public, we hope to help parents and policymakers make better, more informed decisions about daycare and child-care policies.

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

The narrative accepted by the vast majority of current researchers has solidified in just the past decade or so. Earlier studies of daycare, even in the early 2000s, raised serious concerns about the greater risk of “externalizing” behavior — such as neediness, disobedience, and bullying — from children’s early and prolonged exposure to commercial daycare. Researchers now tend to emphasize how negative outcomes fade over time and are balanced out by cognitive gains for daycare children compared to those cared for at home.

One of the largest of the more recent studies, “First-Year Maternal Employment and Child Development in the First Seven Years,” was led by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University and Wen-Jui Han of New York University and published in 2010. As the title suggests, this study focused on maternal employment, not paid daycare per se, but the two subjects are clearly related, since women often use paid daycare when they return to work after the birth of a child. The report closes with this reassuring conclusion regarding the effects of first-year maternal employment on child well-being:

[Our results] indicate that, on average, the associations between first-year maternal employment and later cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes are neutral, because negative effects, where present, are offset by positive effects. These results confirm that maternal employment in the first year of life may confer both advantages and disadvantages and that for the average non-Hispanic white child, those effects balance each other.

This finding — that babies and young children essentially enjoy no benefit from being cared for full time by mothers — was reported by the press as good news. The Washington Post write-up of the study quoted Greg Duncan, then-president of the Society for Research in Child Development, explaining the new study’s importance: “[It] is ‘every bit as important as you might think,’ because it suggests mothers can decide, without guilt, ‘whether they want to stay home with their children.'”

Yet the details of the study paint a more complicated picture. The authors’ summary conclusions focus on the effects of any “maternal employment” in the “first year.” But the data in the report suggest that when mothers went back to work made a difference: Starting work in the first three months of the baby’s life (and, in some analyses, in the first six or nine months) led to more externalizing behavior. Since 70% of mothers in the sample who worked at all in the first year went back to work in the first three months, highlighting the risks for mothers who go back to work early seems important.

It also mattered whether mothers worked full time as opposed to part time. The authors write, “When we contrast the effects of [full-time] vs. [part-time] employment in the first year, we find that in several instances, [part-time] employment is associated with significantly lower levels of child externalizing behavior problems at 36 months, 54 months, and first grade.”

These findings would support the results of earlier studies on the impact of maternal employment and daycare on externalizing behavior. In a 2002 study titled “Quantity Counts: Amount of Child Care and Children’s Socioemotional Development,” Jay Belsky concluded that “early” and “extensive” non-maternal care posed “developmental risks for young children.” Much of the evidence in the 2010 report seems to support Belsky, though, as presented, the general conclusions of the report seem to suggest the opposite.

When asked what he thought, Belsky was quite critical of both the study and the reporting:

All investigators have to make decisions when it comes to analyzing data, but so many of theirs were questionable. What to me was striking was that while the Post and other papers played up this report, they virtually ignored the one we published 2 months earlier showing both good and bad child care effects on adolescent functioning at age 15 years, including more time in child care through the first 54 months of life, irrespective of quality or type of care, predicting more risk taking behavior and impulsivity.

Both Belsky’s 2002 study and his more recent report on daycare’s lingering consequences contradict popular assumptions about daycare’s neutral or fading effects — and have been largely ignored. In fact, many of the most interesting, persuasive, and methodologically sound studies get very little attention.

RESEARCH CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The problem is due in part to the methodological challenges presented by the subject matter. It is difficult to get reliable data about the effects of child care: Researchers will never be able to perform controlled experiments because parents will never agree to randomly assign their children to home care or institutional daycare. Therefore, most American psychologists use data provided by the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), which is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The SECCYD is a prospective, longitudinal study that includes detailed assessments of child care — including the amount and timing, quality, and types of care settings — for more than 1,300 children who have been studied from birth through their teens.

Much time and money has gone into the SECCYD research, which is impressive in many ways. Nonetheless, what results from the use of this data set are observational studies, which are unfortunately not very strong methodologically. For example, the Washington Post recently reported that observational studies seemingly showing that eating breakfast helps one lose weight have been overturned by more controlled experiments. As reporter Peter Whoriskey explains, this is a common phenomenon:

Relying on observational studies has drawn fierce criticism from many in the field, particularly statisticians.

S. Stanley Young, former director of bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences has estimated that for observational studies in the medical field, “over 90 percent of the claims fail to replicate” — that is they cannot be replicated later by more exacting experiments.

Because of the unreliability of observational studies like those based on the SECCYD data, scientists prefer randomized, controlled trials. But, as mentioned above, such experiments on daycare will never occur because parents will never agree to subject their own children to a randomized trial for child care. But there is research that, while not randomized, yields many of the benefits of strict experimental design, and those studies deserve serious attention.

For example, nearly two decades ago, Quebec instituted a major shift in child-care policy, which created an opportunity for researchers to examine the impact of the policy change and resulting changes in daycare use on children and families. In 1997, Quebec introduced full-day kindergarten for all five-year-olds and heavily subsidized daycare for four-year-olds, so that parents only had to pay $5 per day out of pocket. The provision of $5-a-day child care was extended to three-year-olds in 1998, two-year-olds in 1999, and all babies up to age two in 2000. The program increased child-care use in Quebec by more than one-third.

There have been several studies assessing the impact of this program. The first article, “Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being,” went on to win the 2009 Doug Purvis Memorial Prize for the most significant written contribution to Canadian economic policy. The article concludes as follows:

We report striking evidence that children’s outcomes have worsened since the program was introduced. We also find suggestive evidence that families we study became more stressed with the introduction of the program. This is manifested in increased aggressiveness and anxiety for the children; more hostile, less consistent parenting for the adults; and worse adult mental health and relationship satisfaction.

The 2010 study on first-year maternal employment and child development, discussed earlier, which concluded that early maternal employment had a neutral effect on children, cited 250 articles. It is remarkable — and suggestive of a disturbing selectivity by the researchers — that this article on Quebec daycare published in 2008, and disseminated as a National Bureau of Economic Research paper in 2005, was not among the 250.

More recent studies confirm the profound negative effects of the Quebec child-care program. For example, a March 2014 study published by the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network explored how age factored into the negative effects observed from Quebec’s daycare program. These researchers (like others) uncovered widespread negative consequences, but they emphasized that earlier exposure to the child-care system resulted in larger problems. They wrote:

The estimates indicate that on average, children who gain access to subsidized child care at earlier ages experience significantly larger negative impacts on motor-social developmental scores, self-reported health status and behavioral outcomes including physical aggression and emotional anxiety.

Only children from lower socio-economic backgrounds who started child care at age three appeared to benefit in terms of development scores; the authors note that this suggests society would benefit from targeting assistance for early-education and care programs at less-advantaged children especially after age three, rather than universal daycare subsidies.

The results of the first of these two Quebec studies were confirmed by a 2015 follow-up study by the same authors, which found that some of the negative effects observed among younger children exposed to the Quebec system persisted and even increased into the teen years. While the researchers found that the introduction of the Quebec daycare program had “little impact on cognitive test scores,” they found that the program’s negative effects on non-cognitive skills appear to strongly persist into school years, and in many instances grow larger as children get older. Problems such as anxiety, aggression, and hyperactivity were worse in older children than younger ones exposed to the Quebec system. Moreover, there was “a worsening of both health and life satisfaction among those older youths exposed to the Quebec child care program.”

The study’s most startling discovery is that the program appears to have driven an increase in criminal behavior among teens:

[A]s cohorts in Quebec were more exposed to the program, their crime rates rose relative to the rest of Canada….More exposed cohorts have higher differential crime rates at every age….The estimates…indicate sizeable effects on crime rates. For accused, we estimate a rise of 300 crimes per 100,000 children, compared to a mean of 7,970 crimes. This is a rise of 3.7 percent. The result is slightly higher in percentage terms for convictions per 100,000 (4.6 percent).

These troubling findings from rigorous, scientific research should not be ignored, especially as politicians in the United States consider instituting daycare subsidies for everyone. It is clear that there is something about daycare, especially for very young children, that is not as neutral as we’d like to think.

THE BIOLOGICAL DIMENSION

So what could explain these profound, lasting negative effects of daycare? One potential explanation comes from studies of the stress hormone cortisol.

Professors Harriet Vermeer and Marinus van IJzendoorn conducted a meta-analysis of nine daycare studies examining trajectories in the stress hormone cortisol. Their article concludes:

Our main finding was that at daycare children display higher cortisol levels compared to the home setting. Diurnal patterns revealed significant increases from morning to afternoon, but at daycare only….Age appeared to be the most significant moderator of this relation. It was shown that the effect of daycare attendance on cortisol excretion was especially notable in children younger than 36 months. We speculate that children in center daycare show elevated cortisol levels because of their stressful interactions in a group setting.

Further discussion of one of these nine studies shows why cortisol may help explain the worrying findings on stress, behavior, and daycare. A group of researchers at the University of Minnesota studied 55 children in full-day daycare centers. They monitored the levels of cortisol in children’s saliva when they spent the day at the daycare center and when they spent the day at home. The authors found a “significant effect of setting (home vs. child care),” with cortisol rising significantly when children were in daycare, while no similar increase was seen among children at home. Toddlers appeared particularly vulnerable, as the authors found: “Among the infants (3-16 months), 35% showed a rise in cortisol across the child care day, whereas among the toddlers (16-38 months), 71% showed a rise.”

Should we be worried by these findings? On the one hand, the authors note,

Elevated cortisol levels are often interpreted as boding ill for physical and emotional health. During periods of rapid brain development, contact with parents prevents elevations in cortisol, and this has been interpreted as nature’s way of protecting the developing brain from the potentially deleterious effects of this steroid.

Moreover, in research on animals, “there is strong evidence that early experiences shape the reactivity and regulation of neurobiological systems underlying fear, anxiety, and stress reactivity.” Daily exposure to even relatively minor stressors in infant animals leads to adult animals who exhibit heightened fearfulness and greater vulnerability to stressors.

On the other hand, the authors find it somewhat reassuring that the older daycare toddlers show smaller increases in cortisol throughout the day than do younger toddlers and older preschool children, and that when daycare kids are at home on the weekend their cortisol does not rise throughout the day. Disturbingly, the authors are also reassured by the misleading conclusions of the many published reports claiming that daycare provides cognitive and social benefits. They write:

Potential negative impacts on social or cognitive development seem unlikely given the overwhelming evidence from studies of center-based child care showing that these settings, when of good quality, stimulate cognitive and social development.

On balance, the authors conclude that “we do not know if there are adverse effects from chronic but small context-dependent elevations in cortisol for young children.” They call for more empirical research.

Taken together, the studies on the Quebec child-care program and on cortisol levels show negative effects from daycare at the time of children’s daycare experience as well as lasting negative outcomes that persist into the teen years, which certainly calls into question the commonly offered conclusion that daycare appears to be “neutral,” with positive and negative effects cancelling each other out. Rather, this research suggests that younger children in particular are vulnerable to lasting harm from daycare, especially when exposed early. That is something parents and policymakers deserve to know.

OPTIONS FOR PARENTS AND POLICYMAKERS

The Washington Post opened an August 2015 article with the following finding: “More than three-quarters of mothers and half of fathers in the United States say they’ve passed up work opportunities, switched jobs or quit to tend to their kids, according to a new Washington Post poll.” Readers are invited to view these facts as evidence of a crisis rather than a description of parents making work-family decisions that best meet their needs and those of their children.

Mothers and fathers value time spent with their families, and they think the time spent together is good for their children’s well-being. They are also skeptical about daycare. For example, a 2014 Pew survey found that 60% of Americans think it is best for children if one parent stays home. And a March 2013 Pew study found that just 16% of parents say having a mother who works full-time is best for children. In 2000, Public Agenda surveyed parents with children five and under, and 63% disagreed with the following statement: “A top-notch day care center can provide care as good as what a child would get from a stay-at-home parent.” Public Agenda also found that

80% of young mothers ages 18-29 — women who grew up when mothers worked outside the home and nonparental child care became more commonplace — say that they themselves would prefer to stay at home to care for their young children rather than work full-time.

Rather than incentivizing the use of paid child care, policymakers ought to focus on providing more support for parents, particularly those with lower incomes, to make it easier for them to raise their children based on their own preferences, whether that means keeping a parent at home or paying for child care.

Robert Stein has argued persuasively in these pages that parents currently receive too little tax relief, given the expenses that they incur in raising a child and the importance of that investment for society. He estimates that the average middle-class household gets about a $1,550 tax reduction for each child, which is a small fraction of the considerable expenses associated with childrearing. A substantial increase in the dependent-child tax credit would help parents across the board, regardless of the type of child-care arrangement they prefer. This financial relief may make it possible for some parents working full-time to switch to part-time work or even stay home, while also providing financial assistance to those paying for daycare.

Since the odds of the aggressive behavior that can result from time in daycare go up as the hours of daycare increase, this movement toward more part-time work would not just please the parents directly involved. As more full-time working parents become part-time working parents, the stress, anxiety, and aggression in some children may ease, and classroom disruption later on should become less likely.

An increase in the dependent tax credit would also support stay-at-home mothers — a group that has grown from 23% of all mothers in 1999 to 29% of mothers in 2012. Since two-parent, single-earner families make substantially less income than two-earner families, and since these families are making financial sacrifices to make possible what they think and what the public thinks is the best child care for young children, why should they not benefit from any increased subsidies for families with children?

Increasing the dependent tax credit substantially would be expensive, and policymakers should consider how to further target that relief to those who need it most. Under current law, most of the working poor do not benefit from the existing dependent tax credit because they do not earn enough to pay income taxes. Making the credit apply to Social Security taxes, as well as income taxes, as has been proposed by Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, would support the needs of the working poor. Moreover, since concerns about daycare are focused on children under the age of three and the youngest children often require the most financial sacrifices, the dependent deduction could be increased solely for families with children under age three.

There are many forms such new policies could take to create significant benefits for families, especially those with young children. But it is clear that any good policy should offer flexible assistance to families so they can make their own decisions about work and child care.

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY

Parents care about their children’s well-being and must balance the benefits associated with more income against the benefits of staying home to take care of them. But good decision-making on the part of both families and policymakers depends on clear-eyed, honest assessments of the best scientific research — no matter how difficult the conclusions may be. Researchers must be honest with themselves and with their readers about what their data really show, especially when the results contradict popular opinion. The well-being of future generations is too important to continue making individual decisions and public policies with skewed information.

The media have an important role to play in this, and shouldn’t shy away from presenting reliable research, even if the findings make them and their readers uncomfortable. Ignoring studies like those we’ve highlighted here is a disservice to policymakers, the public, parents, and — most importantly — the children themselves. The public deserves to have a robust debate about the best ways to help parents and create an environment for children to thrive.

Carrie Lukas is the managing director of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Steven E . Rhoads is professor of politics emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Taking Sex Differences Seriously and The Economist’s View of the World.

Daycare Benefits – 7 Reasons Kids To Enroll

November 6, 2019December 18, 2020
Abby StepanekPrograms & Activities, Youth Development

Studies have shown that children, including babies and infants from the ages of 6 months to 4 years, benefit from the daycare environment, including its quality instruction, structure and social lessons.

There are many benefits that daycare provides to your little ones, but we’ve compiled a list of the top seven.

Regular Schedule and Activities

Daycares follow a consistent schedule every day, even for the youngest children.  Structured times for eating, playing and napping make up part of the daily routine here. For the slightly older kids, fun activities like songs and storytelling help stimulate intellectual growth and development. The structured day ensures that once you pick your kid up from daycare, their behavior isn’t all over the place. This is because their whole day has followed a structured and organized schedule.

Academic Advancement

Children participating in a daycare program are exposed to a structured curriculum that follows guidelines set forth by the state and helps improve their academic development. The National Institute of Childhood Health And Human Development found that children placed in daycare had better language and cognitive development during the first four-and-a-half years of life. And a 2016 study found that by age 5, children who attended formal childcare programs had substantially stronger reading and math skills relative to similar children who attended informal, home-based childcare settings.

Behavior Improvement

Studies have shown that children who attend high-quality childcare exhibit better behavior than kids who don’t. Children who attend daycare learn social skills through constant interaction with other children all day. They develop problem-solving skills and experience fewer peer-related difficulties. This doesn’t just stop at daycare. The social skills they learn in daycare “may improve children’s emotional and cognitive development, prevent later emotional difficulties and promote prosocial behaviors” according to Dr. Maria Melchior, author of a research study on the effects of daycare on children’s behaviors. These skills last into grade school and beyond.

Stronger Immune System

It may seem like kids in daycare are always sick and rightfully so with all the germs that are being carried by multiple children, all sharing the same toys. But all those early childhood sniffles pay off down the road by toughening up your child’s immune system. Similar to vaccines, exposure to germs and diseases when they are in daycare helps your kids to be better able to fight off illnesses as they grow older. In short, they’re getting it all out of their system now so they can grow into healthy adults.

Social Interaction

While the dream may be to stay home every day with your kid and spend quality mommy-me time with them, the social interaction they will get from a daycare center is far more valuable. In daycare, children learn to share, resolve arguments and play well with others. They also make friends and adopt skills that help them later on in life. They also learn to become better at communicating. One key to effective communication is adjusting your speech based on who you’re talking to. A study found that kids who were placed in daycare were able to adjust their communication style to peers when playing a two-person game—likely because of their exposure to a greater variety of social situations.

Easier Transition to Grade School

Daycare is a structured and supervised environment. While it may be more laid back than traditional schooling, it still follows a schedule including snack times, engaging learning activities and playtimes. Your kid will follow a similar schedule once they start Kindergarten and progress through grade school. Research has found that after going to daycare, kids found it easier to adjust to formal schooling.

Increased Parent Involvement

Dropping your kid off at daycare may feel like the opposite of being a caring and involved parent, but researchers at the University of Texas at Austin studied 1,300 children and found that moms whose kids were cared for in daycare centers were more likely to be involved in their children’s schools starting in kindergarten—even more likely than mothers who cared for their kids themselves. That participation included everything from being in regular communication with teachers to attending an open house and forging friendships with other parents. So, daycare can provide you more benefits than just allowing you to work a 9-5 job!

Choosing a daycare may be a difficult decision for many parents, but the benefits are clear. The YMCA has multiple full- and part-time daycare options available all across the Greater Cincinnati area. Contact us see how the Y can help give your child the best daycare environment to grow and thrive in.

daycare, ymca care, kids care

Measuring the Long-Term Effects of Early, Extensive Day Care

In 1997, when Quebec, Canada, launched full-day, year-round child care for all children under age 5, the title of its policy brief read, “Children at the heart of our choice.” The assumption, of course, was that government-subsidized, universal day care would provide all children the potential for a “healthy start” in life, while simultaneously enabling many more women to enter the workforce and increase their earning potential.

Within 10 years, comprehensive analyses of the universal, “$5 per day childcare” program, including its impact on child care use, employment patterns, and children’s and parent outcomes, suggested cause for concern. Social development among children, as indicated by both emotional and behavioral measures, had significantly deteriorated in Quebec, relative to the rest of Canada (10% of a standard deviation lower). Comparisons between children ages 2 to 4 who had been exposed to the program, with older children (and siblings) who had not, revealed significant increases in anxiety, hyperactivity, and aggression in those exposed to the program. And the analyses found more hostile, inconsistent parenting, and lower-quality parental relationships among parents of children exposed to the program. But it was hard to predict whether the negative outcomes identified for 2- to 4-year-olds would persist across their development, or simply dissipate.

For decades, early intervention programs for children from high-risk environments, such as Head Start, the Perry Preschool Project, and the Abecedarian Project, had explored whether intensive positive intervention in a child’s early years actually carried through to adulthood by improving economic outcomes and lowering incidence of criminal behavior. Evidence suggested that some of these positive effects did persist in adulthood. But would the same be true of negative outcomes associated with exposure to programs in early childhood?

Twenty years after the Quebec program’s implementation, a second set of comprehensive analyses were conducted by Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan (forthcoming, in the American Economic Journal). After replicating the previous results for children ages 0 to 4, the authors explored whether the negative outcomes associated with exposure to Quebec’s early, extensive day care program persisted into ages 5 to 9, the pre-teen years, adolescence, and young adulthood.

Their research confirmed that the negative effects did continue, and in some cases became stronger across development. Among 5 to 9-year-olds, negative social-emotional outcomes not only persisted, but in some cases increased, as indicated by 24% of a standard deviation increase in anxiety, a 19% increase in aggression, and a 13% in hyperactivity. The impact on boys and children with the most elevated behavioral problems was stronger, especially in measures of hyperactivity and aggression.

Using a specific type of regression analyses based on what is called “The Recentered Influence Function” (RIF), Baker, Gruber, and Milligan found that the “primary impact” of the Quebec program was to increase behavioral problems especially “for those who already had high scores.”  

Source: M. Baker, J. Gruber, & K. Milligan, “The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program,” 11/8/18 
Copyright American Economic Association; reproduced with permission of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

 

For youth and young adults, ages 12 to 20, analyses of self-reported general health and life satisfaction indicated that negative social-emotional outcomes associated with exposure to the daycare program persisted into young adulthood. The most striking finding was a “sharp and contemporaneous increase in criminal behavior” for those exposed to the universal day care program compared to their peers in other provinces. Though crime rates in Quebec are lower than the rest of Canada, there was a significant increase in crime accusation and conviction rates for those cohorts exposed to the Quebec child care program. There was an increase of 19% in the average rate of criminal accusations and an increase of 22% in the average rate of criminal convictions. As with the 5- to 9-year-old measures, the impact on criminal behavior was greater for boys, and for those who already had elevated behavioral problems.

Source: M. Baker, J. Gruber, & K. Milligan, “The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program,” 11/8/18 
Copyright American Economic Association; reproduced with permission of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Baker, Gruber, and Milligan acknowledge that there is some evidence of positive impacts from universal child care programs in certain nations for children of certain ages. But in most cases, the benefits are primarily for less-advantaged children. As they conclude, “There is little clear evidence that these programs provide significant benefits more broadly.”

The timing and extent of the Quebec child care program provided the unique opportunity to comprehensively evaluate the implications of a universal day care program on many children from childhood to young adulthood. Importantly, the findings from the Quebec program are largely consistent with findings from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s comprehensive evaluation of day care in the United States. That study, which followed the same 1,364 children every year from birth, found that extensive hours in day care early in life predicted negative behavioral outcomes throughout development, including in the final assessments done when the children were 15 years old.

By age four-and-a-half, extensive hours in day care predicted negative social outcomes in every area including social competence, externalizing problems, and adult-child conflict, generally at a rate three times higher than other children. In caregiver reports of behavioral problems, only 2% of children who averaged less than 10 hours per week of day care during the first four years of life had at-risk scores, while as much as 18% of children who averaged more than 30 hours per week did. Family economic status, maternal education, quality of child care, and caregiver closeness did not moderate these effects. But would those effects persist?

By third grade, children who had experienced more hours of non-maternal care were rated by teachers as having fewer social skills and poorer work habits. More time in day care centers specifically predicted more externalizing behaviors and teacher conflict, too. Hours spent in day care centers specifically continued to predict problem behaviors into sixth grade. But by age 15, extensive hours before age four-an-a-half in any type of “nonrelative” care predicted problem behaviors, including risk-taking behaviors such as alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, stealing or harming property, as well as impulsivity in participating in unsafe activities, even after controlling for day care quality, socioeconomic background, and parenting quality. And much like the findings for the Quebec childcare program, the statistical effects linking day care hours with problem behaviors at age four-and-a-half were nearly the same as the statistical effects at age 15.

As with the persistence of negative effects across development, there is also evidence for the persistence of positive effects when children are exposed to the highest quality daycare. Higher adult-child ratios and more sensitive and positive caregiving in day care have consistently been associated with better cognitive performance and fewer behavioral problems in children. Some of those positive effects appear to be lasting. Findings from the NICHD-SECC found that higher quality child care was associated with a significant increase in cognitive-academic achievement scores at age 15 for children who experienced the highest levels of quality. And later research evaluating a subsample of these students found that the highest quality child care predicted higher grades and admission to more selective colleges after high school graduation. The effects were small but consistent across the outcomes from kindergarten through 12^thgrade, confirming that the positive effects of high-quality child care can persist across development.

But, as research on the Quebec program found, the highest level of quality can be hard to secure. In 2005, 60% of the universal day care program sites in Quebec were judged to be of “minimal quality.” Just one-quarter of the sites provided care that met the standards necessary to qualify as good, very good, or excellent. Such findings are comparable to many other developed countries, confirming just how challenging it is for children to have access to the quality of care necessary for persistent positive gains over the long run. And these small gains have to be weighed against the risks of spending extensive hours in day care. The comprehensive evaluation of day care quality done in the NICHD-SECC found that extensive hours in day care early in life predicted negative behavioral outcomes throughout childhood and in to adolescence, even after controlling for day care quality, socioeconomic background, and parenting quality.

If our children are “at the heart of our choice,” then the research confirming that children exposed to early, extensive day care are at risk for social-emotional and behavioral challenges must be taken seriously. In the last decade, more sophisticated analytical methods have allowed social scientists to identify “cascade effects” showing how social behavioral challenges in early life predict challenges with academic competence in adolescence, which then predicts other social-emotional challenges in young adulthood. Other research identifying “cascade effects,” found that lower academic competence at ages 4 to 5 predicted social-emotional problems at ages 6 to 7, which then predicted social-behavioral problems at ages 12 to 13, followed by greater depression at age 16.

Clearly, more research is needed to understand the implications of extensive hours of day care in early life across development and into young adulthood. What we do know suggests that extensive time spent in non-maternal care in early life has effects that persist across the entire course of development. Though the effects may appear small, they matter in the lives of individual children, and they matter in the collective consequences to communities and society at large.

Jenet Erickson is an affiliated scholar of the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University.

Child Care Definitions and Exemptions – New York

Definitions

Child Day Care

Child day care means care for a child on a regular basis provided away from the child’s residence for less than 24 hours per day by someone other than the parent, step- parent, guardian or relative within the third degree of consanguinity of the parents or stepparents of such child. A relative within the third degree of consanguinity of the parent or step-parent includes: the grandparents of the child; the great-grandparents of the child; the great-great-grandparents of the child; the aunts and uncles of the child, including the spouses of the aunts and uncles; the great-aunts and great-uncles of the child, including the spouses of the great-aunts and great-uncles; the siblings of the child; and the first cousins of the child, including the spouses of the first cousins. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(a)(1).

Child Day Care Centers

Child day care center means a program or facility which is not a residence in which child day care is provided on a regular basis to more than six children for more than three hours per day per child for compensation or otherwise, except those programs providing care as a school-age child care program as defined in this Section. The name, description or form of the entity which operates a child day care center does not affect its status as a child day care center. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(b)(1).

Family Day Care Homes

Family day care home shall mean a program caring for children for more than three hours per day per child in which child day care is provided in a family home for three to six children. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(b)(2).

Group Family Day Care Homes

Group family day care home shall mean a program caring for children for more than three hours per day per child in which child day care is provided in a family home for seven to twelve children of all ages, except for those programs operating as a family day care home, which care for seven or eight children. A group family day care program may provide child day care services to four additional children if such additional children are of school age and such children receive services only before or after the period such children are ordinarily in school or during school lunch periods, or school holidays, or during those periods of the year in which school is not in session. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(b)(3).

School Age Child Care

School-age child care program means a program or facility which is not a residence in which child day care is provided to an enrolled group of seven or more children under 13 years of age during the school year before and/or after the period such children are ordinarily in school or during school lunch periods. School-age child care programs also may provide care during school holidays and those periods of the year in which school is not in session, including summer vacation. Such programs must operate consistent with the local school calendar. The name, description or form of the entity which operates a school-age child care program does not affect its status as a school-age child care program. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(b)(4).

Small Day Care Centers

Small day care center means a program or facility which is not a residence in which child day care is provided to three through six children for more than three hours per day per child for compensation or otherwise. The name, description or form of the entity which operates a small day care center does not affect its status as a small day care center. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(b)(5).

Exemptions

General Exemptions

Waivers

1. A written waiver of one or more non-statutory requirements of this Part or of Part 414, 416, 417 or 418 may be issued by the Office to an applicant or a licensee or registrant at the time of application or subsequent to the issuance of a license or registration. Licensees or registrants must operate in full compliance with the regulations at all times prior to the issuance of a written waiver.
2. An applicant or licensee or registrant must submit to the Office a written request for a waiver on forms provided by the Office, or approved equivalents. This written application must include:
   1. the specific regulation for which a waiver is sought;  
   2. the reason the waiver is necessary; and
   3. a description of what will be done to achieve or maintain the intended purpose of the regulation and to protect the health, safety and well-being of children.
3. The Office may require the applicant, licensee or registrant to make physical plant modifications or adopt special methods or procedures to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of children before a waiver is granted pursuant to this subdivision.
4. Written approval for a waiver will be granted only upon a determination by the Office that the proposed waiver will not adversely affect the health, safety or well-being of children, and that the purpose of the regulation which is waived will be met. Waivers may be time limited, at the discretion of the Office.
5. Failure to adhere to the terms of the waiver will result in rescission of the waiver and may constitute sufficient cause for the Office to deny, revoke, suspend or limit a license or registration. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.6.

Child Day Care

Child day care does not refer to care provided in:

1. a summer day camp, traveling summer day camp or children’s overnight camp as defined in the State Sanitary Code;
2. a program for school-age children operated solely for the purpose of religious education, sports, classes, lessons or recreation;
3. a facility providing day services under an operating certificate issued by the Office;
4. a facility providing day treatment under an operating certificate issued by the Office of Mental Health or by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities; or
5. a kindergarten, pre-kindergarten or nursery school for children three years of age or older, or a program for school-age children conducted during non-school hours, operated by a public school district or by a private school or academy which is providing elementary or secondary education or both in accordance with the compulsory education requirements of the Education Law, provided that such kindergarten, pre- kindergarten, nursery school or program is located on the premises or campus where the elementary or secondary education is provided. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 413.2(a)(2).

See General Exemptions above.

Child Day Care Centers

The provisions of Part 413 of this Title apply to this Subpart. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 418-1.1. (See Exemptions for Child Day Care).

See General Exemptions above.

Family Day Care Homes

The provisions of Part 413 of this Title apply to this Part. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 417.1.  (See Exemptions for Child Day Care).

See General Exemptions above.

Group Family Day Care Homes

The provisions of Part 413 of this Title apply to this Part. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 416.1.  (See Exemptions for Child Day Care).

See General Exemptions above.

School Age Child Care

The provisions of Part 413 of this Title apply to this Part. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 414.1.  (See Exemptions for Child Day Care).

See General Exemptions above.

Small Day Care Centers

The provisions of Part 413 of this Title apply to this Subpart. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 18, § 418-2.1.  (See Exemptions for Child Day Care).

See General Exemptions above.

Current through August 2017. For a PDF of the 50-state dataset, click here (this is a large document – you may need to use the zoom function in order to read it).

Making it a Good Experience

Day Care: Making it a Good Experience

No. 20; Updated October 2017

Child and adolescent psychiatrists recognize that the ideal environment for raising a small child is in the home with parents and family. Some experts recommend a minimum of six or more months leave for parents after a child is born to promote bonding. Intimate daily parental caretaking of infants for the first several months of life is particularly important. Since the ideal environment often is not possible if parents have to return to work, the role of day care has to be considered. Experts agree that when day care is used in the first years of a child’s life, the quantity and quality of the day care have significant impact on the child’s emotional and physical development.

Before choosing a day care environment, parents should be familiar with the state licensure regulations for child care. They should also check references from other parents and observe the potential caregivers with the child.

Parents sometimes take their young child to the home of a person who is caring for one or more other children. Infants and children under the age of two-and-one-half need:

• More adults per child than older children require
• A lot of individual attention
• The same caregiver(s) over a long period of time
• A caregiver who will play and talk with them, smile with them, praise them for their achievements, and enjoy them

Parents should seek a caregiver who is warm, caring, self-confident, attentive, and responsive to the children. The caregiver should be able to encourage social skills and positive behavior, and set limits on negative ones. Parents should consider the caregiver’s ability to relate to children of different ages. Some individuals can work well only with children at a specific stage of development.

It is wise for parents to find out how long the individual plans to work in this day care job. High turnover of individuals, several turnovers, or any turnover at critical points of development, can distress the child. If parents think or feel the day care they have chosen is unsatisfactory, they should change caregivers. All parents have the right to drop in during the day and make an unannounced visit.

Many children, particularly after the age of three, benefit from good, group day care, where they can have fun and learn how to interact with others. Child and adolescent psychiatrists suggest that parents seek day care services that have:

• Trained, experienced teachers who enjoy, understand and can lead children
• Appropriate number of teachers and assistants, ideally, at least one for every five children, small rather than large groups if possible. (Studies have shown that five children with one caregiver is better than 20 children with four caregivers)
• Staff that has been there for a long period of time
• Opportunities for creative work, imaginative play, and physical activity
• Space to move indoors and out
• Lots of drawing and coloring materials and toys, as well as equipment for physical activity such as swings, wagons, jungle gyms, etc.

If the child seems afraid to go to day care, parents should introduce the new environment gradually: at first, the mother or father can go along, staying nearby while the child plays. The parent and child can stay for a longer period each day until the child wants to become part of the group. If the child shows unusual or persistent terror about leaving home, parents should consider consulting a child and adolescent psychiatrist to discuss their concerns and develop strategies to help the child to talk about his or her fears. Parents can help make day care more positive and less stressful for their child by being actively involved with the day care staff and proactively talking to their child about daily activities in daycare.

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How do you know if your child is doing well in kindergarten?

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How do you know if your child is doing well in kindergarten?

• Tags:
• Expert advice
• 3-7 years
• child in society
• 3-6 years
• kindergarten

Kindergarten is the first place for the socialization of a little person. Sending children to preschool institutions, where they will have to get acquainted with new rules and requirements, all parents are worried: are their children doing well in kindergarten?

Kindergarten age

By law, one of the parents can be on maternity leave for up to three years, but situations are different, and if a child is taken to kindergarten earlier, then in most cases he does not like it there: according to age standards, these kids they are very painfully experiencing a break with their mother, and the need for a partner for games has not yet been formed. Psychologists determine the peak of attachment to the mother from a year to a year and a half, and it decreases by the end of the second year of life.

Readiness to attend kindergarten is influenced not so much by the child’s real age as by his psychological age and elementary skills. To make it easier for a child to get used to and feel more confident, it is necessary to teach him to eat on his own, use the toilet, dress and undress. Often children are afraid of kindergarten because they cannot solve elementary problems on their own, and they are embarrassed to seek help.

Adaptation

Adaptation is a difficult period, and at this time it is impossible to judge whether the child is good or bad in the garden, because all the reactions of the baby are associated with the stress experienced. For the most part, children cry and refuse to go to kindergarten, not because it is bad there, but simply because they feel uncomfortable there after the familiar home environment. At such moments, it is very important to discuss what is happening to him, why he behaves this way, what he feels.

Situations are different

It happens that in the morning the kid throws a tantrum, refusing to go to the garden, and in the evening the situation changes 180 degrees: he, happy, plays with the children, and it is not easy to pull him out of the group. What’s this? Perhaps the baby simply does not get enough sleep, and getting up early is too hard for him, but after a daytime sleep he is alert and wants to play. In this case, you need to reconsider the mode of the child.

The reverse situation: the child does not resist going to the garden, does not cry or hysteria, but it turns out that he is completely uncomfortable there. This happens when the baby tries to please his parents, because “good children go to kindergarten.” Try to avoid such attitudes in advance, do not accustom the child to socially desirable behavior and attempts to please the elders, let him show his emotions violently, but you will always know the truth – good or bad for him.

Read also

Kindergarten: a note to parents

Happy child: Adaptation in kindergarten

Diagnostic methods

One of the best ways to diagnose a child’s condition in kindergarten is observation. Come for the baby early (or, conversely, bring the child in the morning, stay unnoticed by him) and observe his behavior: what the baby is doing – selflessly playing with children or sitting alone in a corner and waiting for your arrival. Talk to the teacher, with the psychologist, because they observe your child throughout the day.

Invite your child to play kindergarten at home. Let him lead the process himself, then you can see what stories he plays and what excites him. Ask questions, but be careful: from interrogation with passion, the child may become alert and demonstrate not a real, but a desirable situation.

Art methods can be used – a garden can be drawn, molded from plasticine, the main thing is to discuss his work with the child later, find out who is good in the drawing and who is bad, what needs to be done to make the one who feels bad feel better, etc.

Having found out the cause of a child’s sadness, one must work either on eliminating this cause or on the child’s attitude to the current situation.

Any drastic changes in a child’s behavior are alarming, but not always a problem in kindergarten. They may be associated with a disruption of the usual way of life – moving, divorce, the appearance of a brother or sister, the death of a dog, etc.

colds, headaches, disorders of the gastrointestinal tract), the child has become more capricious and tearful, then you should seek help from a psychologist to find out what is happening in the kindergarten, why the baby’s stay there has become a stressful factor.

Children tend to fantasize and embellish, but one should not treat his words with disdain. If the kid honestly says that he is afraid of the teacher, do not belittle his feelings: “oh, why are you afraid of her, stop it, she’s not scary!”, Work through this fear with the child, help him cope with it. Be attentive to your child, help him and go forward if he asks to skip one day of kindergarten or leave after dinner, because he has his own reasons.

Author: Ekaterina Golovina

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How a teacher should behave with his child in kindergarten

own child. And here a dilemma arises: to send the baby to your group so that he is always there, or to another so as not to interfere with the work of mom / dad? With the help of psychologists, we figure out what difficulties await the parent-educator and how to act in this and that situation.

A teacher and his child in the same group: what is the risk

In some kindergartens, teachers are officially forbidden to work in the same group with their children. Muscovite Ekaterina, whose daughter now goes to one of these kindergartens, explains why she considers this restriction justified:

“There was a situation when my daughter was still going to a nursery: one teacher worked in a group with her daughter. The rest of the parents constantly complained: this girl was the main one in the group, sometimes commanding children even bigger than her mother. She was forgiven a lot, and other children did not like the girl very much.

The most remarkable thing in this story is that the situation in which the girl (the teacher’s daughter) was not to blame turned against her: the other children disliked her. This is the first step towards bullying, which in the future can have a strong impact on the child’s self-esteem and relationships with peers.

Psychologist Elena Borisova, who works at Kindergarten No. 101 in Tyumen , explains why this happens:

“If a child sees his mother or another parent in kindergarten, he will think that he is at home, which means that he can behave like at home. But kindergarten has different rules. There is also a risk that other children will become jealous of a child whose parents are always there, while they are all alone. Moreover, this can result both in bullying against the teacher’s child, and in resentment towards their parents, who cannot be near the children during the day.”

Thus, the constant presence of the baby next to the parent in the kindergarten harms not only the adult (reduces the quality of his work), but also the child (spoils his relationship with other children). However, sometimes problems can arise even if the teacher’s child goes to another group. Here are some tips to help prepare your child for a new kind of parent-caregiver interaction.

If the teacher and his child are in different groups

Teacher-psychologist, Associate Professor of Mordovian State University Tatyana Belova:

1. Tell your child what kindergarten is, why children go there, why you want the kid to go there too. Take him to kindergarten so that he can imagine what it is.
2. Talk to him like an adult. Explain that he will go to a kindergarten where there are many children to play with and many new and interesting toys.
3. Explain to your child that a kindergarten is not a home: you go there to work, there are different rules of conduct.
4. Try not to show your child too often, do not come to his group, so as not to provoke an unnecessary reaction once again. The child may stop obeying the educators, because he will think that everything is possible next to the parent as at home. And for the rest of the children, whose parents work elsewhere, this can cause envy.

If a child goes to a group where the caregiver is his mom/dad:

Child psychologist Olga Luptova, who works at the Little Sun kindergarten in Tallinn:

1. Try to explain to your child that spending time with a parent in kindergarten is not the same as at home. Explain that this is your job and you have certain obligations. Tell us what rules of conduct apply here, how and why they differ from home ones.
2. Explain to the child that in the group all children are equal, that he is no worse or better than others and must follow the same rules as the rest.
3. If a child boasts to other children that his parent is a caregiver, or demands special privileges, do not immediately chastise him in front of other children. Try to explain that the rest of the guys in the group are his closest friends, almost brothers and sisters. So it will be easier for him to understand his new role and come to terms with the fact that they need as much attention from the educator as he does.
4. If a child requires increased attention from a parent, is naughty, cries, then it would be best to ask him to take an example from other children whose parents are not in the kindergarten at all, but they do not cry and are not upset. Explain to the child how lucky he is that his parent is always there, although he cannot give him as much attention as at home.

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How can a child adapt to kindergarten?

“I don’t want to go to kindergarten!” – these words from their child are often heard by parents every morning. How to help the baby get used to the new environment?

How might a child’s experiences manifest?

The child throws a tantrum

During the period of adaptation to kindergarten, this is normal. This is an outlet for anxiety. By the way, children who can throw out the accumulated tension from themselves are less likely to have neuroses.
Tantrums are difficult to endure for both the child and the parents. Sometimes it is a shame for a screaming child in front of the teachers or in front of passers-by on the street. If you do not find the strength to sympathize with the child, just try to understand that this is not bad behavior, but fatigue, anxiety. Silently hug the child or say that you understand him.

Shows aggression

The child may start to fight, break and throw toys. Calmly take him by the hand, hug him, take pity on him.

Refuses to go to kindergarten

The best and easiest way is to sympathetically agree: “You don’t want to go to kindergarten, I understand you…”. And keep dressing the baby.

“I’m small”

The child can babble and say “I’m small”, ask to be picked up, spoon fed, shake before going to bed. Do as he asks. It will pass.

Laughs unnaturally, hyperactive

Relax the child, use tactile contact.

Difficulty sleeping and eating

In this case, talking about how the child feels, talking about kindergarten, relaxing practices help.

Pretends to be ill

First, of course, check if he is really ill? If there are no visible signs of illness, suggest going to the doctor. Look at the reaction of the child when you offer him not to go to kindergarten.

What does it take for a child to get used to kindergarten?

Mode

It will be easier for the child if he knows who will bring him and who will pick him up from the kindergarten. Tell him when you pick him up. For a child, time is abstract, so measure time in moments of the regime that are understandable to the baby – after an afternoon snack, from an evening walk, after dinner. It is advisable to take the child to the kindergarten and pick him up from the kindergarten at the same time.

Stimulus

It is good if, during the morning farewell at home and later in the garden, mom or dad will not talk about how good it is in the garden (concentrating the child’s attention on the kindergarten and parting), but how you will meet and what will do together in the evening. And the child, bored, will cling to his thoughts precisely for this – for the ice cream that you promised to buy, or for the cupcake that you bake together.

Caregiver

Ideally, hand the child over to the caregiver in kindergarten. On the first day, meet the teacher and introduce the child to her. Your child depends on this person. Greet the teacher in the morning with a smile and call her by her first name and patronymic. In the evening, ask how the child is doing: how he slept, ate, cried. Thank you for being such a caring teacher.

Acquaintance

Form a positive attitude towards kindergarten in your child. Explain what good awaits the child in the group, how many new friends he will find, what interesting games he will play. Get to know the teachers and the situation in the kindergarten in advance, play on its territory. At least in 2-3 months, start rebuilding the child for the kindergarten mode: getting up, breakfast, walking, lunch and daytime sleep at the strictly allotted time.