Son, can mom take you to school early?

Author \ Mama Bear

Recently, a mother left me a message with anxiety, saying that her child was three years old and she had not completely succeeded in giving up diapers, but she was exhausted by taking her two children and was afraid that sending them to kindergarten too early would hurt them ... She asked: How old is it suitable to go to kindergarten? In fact, this is not only a matter of age, but also the situation of caregivers.

Take my family as an example: all my three children go to kindergarten at the age of three. When the second child was born, the boss was just three years old, and the diaper training was 7~8% successful. I was in the United States at that time, and there was absolutely no one to help me! It's very hard to take care of two children alone, so Dad Xiong decided to send Little Bear to kindergarten (Pre-K3).

Pre-school in the United States are different from Day-care. Basically, Day care is full-time and serves dual-income parents. The normal Pre-school only allows children to study for half a day, during which they can play with other children and learn group life and new things.

Brother Bear is introverted, and he will cry silently for a few weeks before he goes … but because a sweet sister from childhood is also in the same class and has friends, he quickly adapts. When the second little bear was three and a half years old, he also decided to let him go to kindergarten for half a day because of my serious waist injury.

The child was so angry that he didn't know the situation for the first few days. He rushed into the classroom with joy and didn't even look back! (Mom will feel hurt) ... Later, he finally found out: Mom will not show up for several hours, and she will become dead and refuse to go to school. When she is delivered to the classroom door every day, she will stage 18 tearful gifts. More exaggeratedly, she will hold my thigh and cry!

American teachers are very experienced and always hold him and tell me to leave quickly. Of course, there was still some guilt in my heart at that time … but every time I picked him up at noon, I found that he was playing happily in the classroom and wanted to stay in school for a long time … I knew that at the moment of separation, he was reluctant to part with me, but after I left, he had learned to cling to his teacher safely and began to adapt to school life.

Mini Bear is going to be three years old. Because of the recurrence of his back injury, I decided to let him go to the kindergarten (two years old) for half a day and take it home to take care of himself in the afternoon, so that I can heal my back injury and some Me time.

According to the research, a young child can adapt to six security dependents at most, so as long as he chooses an appropriate babysitter or kindergarten and gives the child some time, he doesn't have to worry about the shadow and trauma of his mind. There is a problem of insufficient immunity. After all, sending children to crowded places is easy to spread diseases, so if children can really go to kindergarten at the age of four or five, there is no problem of getting sick. However, if the mother has another child to take care of, this is a dilemma.

sending the boss to school too early and coming home often makes both children sick-this should be the most common problem. On the other hand, mothers really need to take care of their children, so it is necessary to send older children early. Personal suggestion: If the mother can take good care of her two children within her ability, it doesn't hurt to let the children go to kindergarten later. However, if the mother is too tired to take care of the parenting quality of the two children, it is actually a good choice to send the children to kindergarten. (Maybe you can also try a nanny, because there will be less cross-infection if you care for people. )

Recommended reading: Is it ok for children over two years old to attend "kindergarten classes"?

Kindergartens in Taiwan Province are rarely open for half a day, and most of them have to (force) their children to attend full-day classes for profit. But look at the schedule carefully: the afternoon is the time for sleeping, eating snacks and listening to stories, which can also be done at home. So my family decided to pay for the whole day and let the mini bear go for half a day until he wants to stay in the park until the afternoon!

To be honest, compared with the kindergarten fees in the United States, the tuition fees of kindergartens in Taiwan Province (unless they are aristocratic kindergartens) are relatively cheap. The two benefits are the most important, and the two evils are the least. Personally, the quality of life of mothers is also very important-if you blindly sacrifice your physical strength and energy and barely take care of multiple children, I believe the quality you take care of will be bad. Full-time mothers are also human beings, so it is a bad vicious circle to burn their lives for their children's families 24 hours a day all year round. It is time to let mother rest and give her a chance to breathe.

The above are personal experiences and thoughts for your reference.