A child's life

 

I was once a private preschool teacher. Our students came for two hours a day, two days a week when they were three years old. Four year olds came two and a half hours a day, three days a week.

That is a huge difference between preschool and day care. Day care includes preschool skills, but it also lasts up to nine hours a day which is a huge portion of a child's life.

The children are the same as they always were, but now those hours spent one on one with mama, or grandma must be shared with seven to nineteen other children!

It makes a huge difference when a day care hires more people to support these classes. Two teachers can handle the job, but three, or four make it much less hectic and allows much more time for children to have one on one attention.

If children sleep ten hours and go to day care nine hours,  That means all but five hours of their day is spoken for. 

They need to learn to play with other children and follow rules, but they also still need cuddles and hugs and someone who listens to exactly what they are saying and helps them articulate their feelings.

A good preschool allows for all of this in their curriculum and staffing, but that takes money and it makes it expensive for parents, who are often young themselves and just starting out. Still, all children deserve this kind of care.