Stranger Danger of a Different Kind in America’s Daycares and Pre-Schools

 Leaving our kids with strangers in their pre-school years is good preparation for school, where they will experience more of the same until adulthood.  But is it good preparation for becoming emotionally stable human beings?

Strangers will be handling the bulk of our kids’ education from kindergarten through high school, so why not get them used to being with strangers from the very beginning in day-care and pre-school programs? The academic benefits are endless…they enter school, for the most part, as readers; their basic math skills get a huge jumpstart; and they are much more able to hold their own conversationally with other children. Success in school is really only a good stranger, or two, or more…away.

But is being cared for by strangers for most of their waking hours until it’s time to enter school the best thing for our kids’ basic emotional health? Or, would it be better if our kids stayed at home and learned from us, their parents?  Experts say that the drawbacks are significant, especially with regard to social-emotional functioning.  Success as a human being is really only a good parent, or two, or more…away.

What Studies Say

A 2007 study, begun in 1991, by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, focusing on the effects of childcare, remains the definitive answer to both of the above questions. And researchers in that study concluded that for at least 60% of the millions of children in daycare or pre-school, the care-giving provided by the caregivers is “neither sensitive nor responsive” to kids’ needs.

Ongoing studies show that the quality of the personal care provided by caregivers is important between daycare programs, that it does make a difference in children’s emotions and resulting behavior, but it is not significant enough to have even a modest effect in a positive direction.  The latest results show that although children in daycare programs have improved vocabularies as a result of being with better quality care givers, and other such improved academic skills, because of the lack of personalized attention or individualized guidance, problem behaviors continue to persist when groups of children are together.

Hara Estroff Marano, in her 2017 article in Psychology Today, entitled “Daycare: Raising Baby,” reported that “even high-quality care did not reduce the number of behavior problems among those in childcare. More time spent in center-based childcare led to reports of more conflict [w/re to] how skilled children are with peers and how well they solve problems with them was negatively impacted.”

Lee Banks, in her 2016 article on Livestrong.com, entitled “Effects of Daycare on Child Development,” admits that parents are usually the best caregivers for their children, but circumstances dictated that they seek alternative care provisions. She reports that then “when left with a daycare provider, some young children frequently exhibited range of negative emotions and behaviors, including crying and clinging to parents, screaming or hiding from the provider after the parents have left.” She explained that some children developed insecure attachment issues and separation anxiety.

“Day care environments sometimes contributed toward children developing negative behavioral issues, including aggression and noncompliance, simply by virtue of many different children spending substantial time together, separated from their parents,” Banks added. “Students who regularly spent ten or more hours per week in day care tended to be more argumentative, disobedient and unruly in class.”

What Experience Tells Me

Not all parents are good at parenting, but over my 18-years as a classroom teacher, and my 17-years as a school administrator, it is my observation that students of strong parents, and students who stayed home until it was time to begin kindergarten, were by far and away more emotionally healthy than their pre-school counterparts. What they lacked in academic readiness, they more than made up for in emotional stability.

Maybe this grand experiment of “daycaring and pre-schooling” our kids to kindergarten these last 40 or so years has done more harm than good?  It is said that 50% of our “babies” took part at one time or another in a stranger (not a parent) facilitated pre-school program.  I can say it sure seems from a school perspective that half or more of the student population I worked with was at-risk for one or more emotional disturbances.

Have we unwittingly traumatized our babies nationwide by leaving them with strangers before they were capable of dealing with being separated from parents for long periods of time?  And, not recognizing what was happening with our kids emotionally, and not doing anything for years on end to intervene on their behalf, have we doomed a generation or more to a lifetime of medications, therapy and coping strategies just to survive?

Maybe Headstart, and the like, was not a good idea afterall.