I am writing another $50 check, to another preschool … just for the chance to have my application reviewed.
The more I think about this game, the more it feels like a grift. I show up to a potential preschool along with a dozen other mommies and daddies to compete for a spot that may actually not exist. We’re all trying to look like the most interested, the most invested, and the best candidate — all while our 2-year-olds are running around putting things in their mouths with their finger up their nose.
Is this just an urban problem or modern problem? Is this really the lynchpin for my child’s entire future? If I choose the wrong preschool, am I dooming her to a life of, “Do you want fries with that?”
The stress is overwhelming. It was easier for me to get into college. It was easier for me to get an apartment in San Francisco at the peak of the dot com boom!
I never took rejection as personally, as I do now when it comes to my kid. I got a letter in the mail denying me from a preschool co-op that I applied to when my daughter was a few months old. My husband had to put ME on a “time out.”
The preschool hustle is making me a crazy person.
If I make it to the end of this process without choking out the obligatory suck-up mommy taking pictures of the potty area and asking philosophical questions about their educational structure…My baby may just learn how to make ants on a log and finger paint macaroni art.
Next stop, Harvard.
Kari,
Relax. Let your kid be a kid for a while. You will NOT be dooming her to a life of “you want fries with that?” Chances are, even if you do put her into an academically-oriented preschool, she might not be suited for that type of school. My daughter would not have been a good fit at all-we suspect she has ADD/ADHD, and we’re in the process of getting her tested-so it would have been a waste of a lot of money and time had we decided to enroll her in someplace like The Goddard School or Bright Beginnings, plus she would have learned to hate academia before she even got to elementary school. We put her in a partially academic/part play daycare that included pre-K, and she initially rebelled against the increasing structure as she moved up to preschool and pre-K, and then K. But she just finished kindergarten, and she can now read and write, count to 100, do simple addition and subtraction, ID money, etc. Kids learn lots of stuff by playing-go check out the 100’s of studies on that subject.
I promise you, she’ll be fine. She has plenty of time to learn all she needs to know to deal with the world when she grows up. Harvard is still a possibility!
Yours in motherhood,
Kathleen
Sounds like the makings of a Mythbuster’s segment. Do pre-schools actually exist or are they just urban legends? If they do exist, do they actually admit kids? What characteristics improve the odds of admission (assuming they really exist)?
Perhaps you could start with a small scale test before going full scale in the real world. (Tory might be a good ananlog for a pre-schooler.)
This is the funniest thing I think I’ve ever read. Kudos.
OMG! Our local school system holds a lottery for preschool. We were among the first to sign our daughter up for the lottery system, designed to fill two classrooms with 15 students apiece. Not only did our daughter NOT get selected for either class, she is ranked fourteenth on the waiting list, with at least another fifteen children behind her. We have enough kids in our town to fill FOUR preschool classes, but our town will only allow for two. The irony? We’ve been working with her so much on her reading and social skills, that she really doesn’t even need pre-K anyway.
First of all, breathe. No, it won’t be the end of the world if your little one doesn’t get into the top preschool. In fact, it probably won’t matter that much in the long run.
Second, I highly recommend picking up the book “Free Range Kids” by Lenore Skenazy. One of the things she addresses is the whole “baby Harvard” fad, as well as the fact that kids learn through play.
Like Kathleen said, let your kid be a kid for a while.
Great recommendation Shauna. Free-range kids!
I teach preschool in the Midwest, and I hear horror stories about getting children in to preschool in the ‘big cities’. Preschool is great for kids who need to experience being with other kids, who might have some issues with leaving mom and dad, and to get ready for kindergarten. I have a small center, and my half day program does tend to fill up quickly, but we take any child and we do our best for all of them. I love my job and I love giving children the best foundation I can to love learning! Good luck to you and your darling little girl!
Kari ,
RELAX!!!!!!
All of these school oriented day cares drive me crazy
Let her be a kid, preschoolers learn best by play and exploration. These “preschools” today are taking the imagination out of our kids. Let her be a kid. Let her play and be crazy and do what she wants to do. There is no advantage to these crazy educational preschools. In these things kid get punished for being toddlers. Um she is a toddler , she’ supposed to run around all day discovering new things on her own. That’s the best way for her to learn. And definitely don’t fall into the ” your baby can read ” trap. I know kindergarten teacher that HATE that program because they have to reteach your child to read. Because it’s not actually reading it’s memorization. Anyway my oldest went to daycare a couple of days a week at 4 yrs old then pre-k there. She’s now 9 and is twice exceptional ( ADHD and Gifted) . It was nothing I did, it’s all her. I let her be a child and it has come back in spades. She is brilliant in her own way. My 6 yr old never went to daycare/preschool, and he’s studying, on his own, black holes.
The moral of the story is LET HER BE A CHILD.
I think we need to step back and think about Geek Mom Byron’s perspective as a resident of San Francisco. The circumstances there, and a few other major urban areas in this country, are so far afield from what we experience in the rest of the country that they’re largely inapplicable. Whether or not pre-school is necessary, it’s essentially the only ticket into the private kindergartens in SF. There are a smattering of decent public schools in the city, but the lottery to get into them makes relying on them bad planning for one’s kid’s future. So, you either play the game described above, take your chances on the lottery (with the less lucky sent to schools that many consider inadequate), or pick up stakes and move to the suburbs. I know many who despaired of choices one and two and ended up moving (and now need cars and an extra hour or so each day to get to their jobs).
Until urban districts can resume putting up widespread decent education, something I’m not holding my breath about in today’s environment, we’re going to see more of these stories as well as more flight to the burbs (with the consequential impact on our lives and the environment).
So true, so sad, so true.
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My folks sent me to a preschool attached to a private school. From what I recall, they paid the money, dropped me off, and that was that.
I’m not sure what it is with people nowadays, that boutique preschools have become a “thing.” But I suspect it’s a sign of some sort of apocalypse.
I imagine you are awesome a mom as everything else; and in the end, speaking as someone with a divorce and a teenager, all we can do is the best we’re able.
We do everything we can for out children, send them out into the world, and hope they outstrip us.
The best inheritance we can give them, the best preparation, is to teach them how to love and be loved.
What a fabulous comment!! I agree completely… and the last sentence speaks volumes.
Let the kid be a kid, remember what counts in life family first…
I think she needs time with Mom and Dad
Believe me i know I am a stroke survivor…
I went through this with my daughter back when she was ready for preschool and did manage to secure a spot for her at an excellent private school but it was a headache and it still is every year when I jump through all of the hoops for financial aid to keep her there. But when I see how happy she is and how much she is learning, it makes every late-night session with an application the size of a textbook worth it.
Good luck and stick with it, you’ll find the right place eventually.
You will still want to choke out the ubermoms from time to time – they don’t get any better after the application process – but they’re a minor annoyance if your child is happy and getting a good education.
My youngest child just started college. She’s the only one of my children who went to preschool, and it wasn’t a competitive entrance process at all. Your child is going to learn and develop anywhere he or she is. To put pressure on your child is to do a disservice to him or her. My daughter got into a lot of impressive colleges, and was offered scholarships at every one– although she was only offered three full rides. She went to public schools that weren’t the best. But she was intelligent and serious about her studies. When it was time to apply to colleges, I know she was up against kids who’d gone to the best schools their whole lives. But you know what? When a child has every advantage, an awful lot is expected of him or her. When a child has had to adapt to less-than-perfect circumstances, college admittance committees see that, and they count it as a plus, especially when the child has earned good grades.
I recommend you read this recent article, which doesn’t take very long to finish. Let your child have some struggle in his or her life, or you’re not letting them develop. Think back: your life wasn’t easy, and that’s why you’ve become so capable.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/
P.S. All four of my “children” (it’s hard to call them that now that they’re grown) are HUGE Mythbuster fans.
WELCOME TO PARENTHOOD —-LOL
Stress not. You’re a smart, capable person who works with smart, capable people and Tory, and are quite capable of creating an instructional environment for your children that will be better than any private school experience. Homeschooling is legal even in SF, and it’s not just for crazy people anymore.
I had to go through this for preschool, kindergarten and first grade, which my son starts next week. Hopefully it will be the last time! And he is going to a public school in Chicago! Our hoop jumping included applying to 20 different schools for first grade and having to wait and wait and WAIT for the acceptance/rejection letters. There wasn’t even an interview, just a “random” lottery based on some nebulous geographic/economic factors that even the people who administer the lottery don’t understand.
We invest a lot in our kids because we want them to have better than we did. I sometimes wonder if we do them a disservice. Maybe we should teach them about “good enough” too.
Take a listen to the Planet Money podcasts where they discuss preschools. It turns out that there has been a LOT of research on this and the most important things a kid can learn in a preschool are “soft skills” – the ability to get along with their peers, negotiate for what they need and want, etc. Turns out that what preschool is really good for is keeping your kids out of jail!
I send my 3 year old daughter 3 days a week to a good, play-oriented preschool. Of course we read to her at home, play with her, stimulate her, but there are social skills that I can’t teach her, that she must learn in a setting of her peers.
Don’t sweat it too hard, Kari. I never went to pre-school, and at Kindergarten Round-up I tested so far above my peers the school wanted to put me in second grade – my mom just refused to have her five-year-old in with a classroom of seven-year-olds. I was a 4.0 student from K-12, graduated Valedictorian, and I have three college degrees, one of which is a Master’s Degree.
In this economy, my job options right now are stocking shelves at Target or “do you want fries with that” – provided I’m not rejected again for being “overqualified.”
You have all the skills and talents you need to make sure your daughter can succeed academically – the most important of which are that you’re motivated, you’re educated yourself, and you’re already interested in her education. Those things go a lot further than expensive pre-schools that teach kids how to not throw blocks at each other.
As a foster parent, I can tell you that kids are extremely resilient when it comes to development and education. We’ve taken in kids that were truant and had a D average, and within months they are B average students with perfect attendance; not because we are awesome, but just because they got the attention they needed and felt secure in their home environment.
Even with the worst pre-school around…even with none at all, kids can do alright if they get the after-school attention and help they need throughout their school years. Their parent’s relationship and their home environment is 100 times more important than what their school is like.
I had no preschool, no “educational playthings,” no after-school specials, and was picked on throughout school. Yet I graduated as an “A” student from high school, paid my own way to a Bachelor’s Degree, and started a successful career in real estate. It has everything to do with home environment and little to do with which school you get into.
Kari,
You sound like all first time mommies sound. We had 5 kids and our youngest (5 years old) just went into kindergarden. I can promise you that time you spend with your little one reading books and doing puzzles, etc. is much more beneficial to her than going to a pre-school. We tried different things with our 5, out of all of them, the one who did best at most things (speaking, reading, writing, math) was the one that “we” spent time with him on, not that one who went to the best pre-school. Pre-school was convenient for the other ones, and we chose a great one, but it was the one who stayed home and got more time with us who did best.
Uri
Kari, if this ‘husband’ thing doesn’t work out for you, give me a doodle…
My daughter never went to preschool, I just read to her whenever she would sit still to listen. She didn’t start school until kindergarten other than regular old day care while I worked. Now she is a freshman in college in the honors program at a top university. I don’t think preschool would have made the slightest difference.
This is an urban thing….same on the east coast as well…in NYC it’s just as hard, I gave up, my daughter is two, she’s smart and healthy…I dismissed the jones’ race with material items years ago, and I refuse to get flustered because my daughter can’t go to school with the cast of mob wives kids…
Don’t care….you shouldn’t either, They didn’t have this stress 100 years ago, and the two year old children grew up to do some pretty amazing things….as i sit on my mac book pro, in amsterdam, via WI-FI, after getting here in 7 hours at 600 miles an hour, 7 miles over the earth’s surface propelled by a turbine that is made from metal combinations alchemists can only dream of…
let them play, scrape their knees, and let them explore they will make it just like we did….
you are a sexy milf! and you are great on mythbusters! love your hair
Try Brownstone Brooklyn! We camp out the night before to get on line, not for an iPhone, but for a good morning program spot.
Amen to living in England… You wouldn’t pay to look at a non existent place and with our pre schools, although you may have to pay a little bit of money between the ages of 2-3 years normally around £50 per week, by the time they are 3 every child has the right to a free place in school. In fact they don’t pay for schooling again until they are 18 and going to university. We do have private nurseries which will take babies as young as three months and they have hefty fees but that’s more daycare for people that work and need childcare.
Good luck with your pre school place Kari xx
I was a preschool teacher and a nanny for years and I have to say that its a big city thing. I live in Rockin Ca and we have a hard time getting class to fill up. When moms and dads didn’t have jobs anymore the first thing they did was to drop child care.
Get a nanny with preschool teaching experience and your little girl will know more than any of the other kids thanks to the one on one attention. Just be sure the nanny takes her to play with other kids so that she knows how to be social when she starts school.
PS I’m available for nannying … just a though
I was a preschool teacher and a nanny for years and I have to say that its a big city thing. I live in Rockin, Ca and we have a hard time getting class to fill up. When moms and dads didn’t have jobs anymore the first thing they did was drop child care.
Get a nanny with preschool teaching experience and your little girl will know more than any of the other kids thanks to the one on one attention. Just be sure the nanny takes her to play with other kids so that she knows how to be social when she starts school.
PS I’m available for nannying … just a though
Kari,
I totally agree with Meg. I’m a teacher’s aide at a grade school in the Midwest. The 4 year old Pre-Kindergarten classes have some learning of A, B, C’s and numbers, but is more for learning to be around other children the same age. We have kids coming in knowing the alphabet and to count, but have trouble playing with others their own age. Don’t sweat the pre-school thing. Check into community center/park district programs that may be just as good, or better, then the “college prep” pre-schools. As for getting into college, if she’s anything like you, colleges will be begging HER to go there! Good Luck!
Whoever impregnated Kari is one very lucky guy. I wish it would have been me.
Kari, you need to come down to SouthBay! We’ve got TONS of preschools, good ones that are developmental, play based, co-op or not, with room.
Seriously, I know you don’t need to drive an hour or so down to Palo Alto or San Jose, but you do have options.
From what I hear, Reggio based or Developmental Play based preschools that are co-op fill up fast in S.F., so you can always put your kid down for NEXT year! In the meantime, depending on the schedules you and your husband have, partner up with the other families who are in the same situation you are (waiting for Preschool Godot so to speak) and do play dates, parent and child classes (Music Together rocks if you haven’t tried them) and other outings together.
You can also do a nanny share, almost a mini-class with four to six kids and rotate it between different parent’s homes so that way it’s not all one parent’s shoulders. I did that with some friends when our preschool closed down three months early! We all paid for the nanny (one of the former teachers) and chipped in for snack. It won’t be preschool with a full time teacher, but it will be something for you all to do in the meantime.
I am giving you a very important link here:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html
Vital points to note:
— Finland’s schools — best *in the entire world*. Above France and Germany but make the USA look sick — at a much lower cost. And yes they do have imirants, poverty, etc.
— NO formal education before age 7. Many kids learn to read and write a little in kindergarten before that, but they do not stress the young kids.
— NO stress on testing, grades, NO standardized tests. As a long-term professional teacher I can tell you tht there is a paradox: the more you teach to the test, the worse the kids do on it.
– They DO however put a high stress on learning and mastery of skills. Teachers and students are rated on whether or not they can actually perform arious tasks. Academic standards are extremely high.
Look for a place for you child where (a) she actually gets to be a kid, and (b) they really *teach*, they don’t play the pretend game of building up paper poundage and lists of marks. European style schools, especially those with second-language immersion programs such as many French schools, can often be good.
as a mom of a Kindergartener and a 3rd grader, both of whom attended our church’s preschool, don’t worry about it. i saw preschool as an opportunity for socialization and getting used to a ‘school’ setting. preschool just re-inforced what i was already teaching them at home academically.
This must be a big city thing. I totally wouldn’t worry about it. My brother and I both went to an expensive Montessori school. I had straight A’s, scholarships, etc and now have a pretty good job. My brother failed out of community college three times. It really just depends on the kid and what you do at home, anyway. Also, my three year old is in a home based daycare with a PK curriculum and one on one time and is doing really well and knows a lot more than the three year olds in our town who go to some of the pricy private PK’s. She can sound out many 3 and 4 letter words, knows many words by sight and can count to 100. Many who go to our local Carden and Montessori who are around her age can’t count to 10 or say their alphabet in order, much less sound out words. I agree with our daycare owner; at this age, it really all comes down to what the PARENTS do when they’re at home with their kids. I work with my daughter a lot when I’m at home and always have, but I always make sure it’s fun. I’m sure you’ll do a great job with or without the primo preschool.
its very busy for preschools cause everybody wants their child in it. Our preschool at our church just keeps on growing every year and soon we will be busting at the seams just like how our academy is.
Don’t stress about the “right” preschool. There is no such thing. Love your kids, and have fun. I am lucky enough to be a freelance illustrator, so my schedule allows me to see and play with my kids more often than a normal 9-5 would, and I am loving every minute of it. Well, maybe not EVERY minute, they can be a handful. We chose a school with lower test scores on purpose, because the average score on how the families liked the school were greater than the school with the higher test scores. I want my kids to be happy, not freaked out if they don’t get into the “right” school.
Kari, check out sfwaldorf.org. If you can get there, you will NOT be disappointed.
Find a program where the staff will love her, and where she will love to be. A program that encourages her to explore and experiment. One that teaches compassion and teaches her to negotiate for the things she wants.
The result will be a curious, caring and confident child who loves learning and is ready to take on the world!
I am the oldest in my family, but never passed the local school board test to take AP classes. At age 45 I earned a Masters degree in Biochemistry (after earning two Bachelors degrees) while working full time. A relative has her daughter at Boston Latin School, but she said the school isn’t all that. A colleague from Auburn, Al (yes, THE Auburn) is pursuing a PhD in Microbiology from U of Louisville, not really known for Microbiology. His reasoning: it doesn’t really matter where you get your education; what really matters is what you put into it, and thus get out of it.
Your work on MB has shown us that learning takes place no matter where we are, and only if we want to learn. The best pre-school in SF is no guarantee that your daughter will succeed. That is up to her and her parents. If you approach parenthood like you do busting myths (explosions excluded), you are already an amazing parent and your daughter will be an amazing child, no matter where she goes to school.
Kari,
I must be a really laid back mom compared to you. I recently pulled my soon to be 2 year old out of a daycare that was multi-lingual, had a structured environment where kids did crafts, sang songs, had snacks, ect. Sounds amazing right? Except my Davie was miserable, and what sounded like the perfect daycare was really just another daycare that was understaffed and over-compensated.
So I pulled him out for the summer, since my mom’s a teacher she wanted to watch him. The change was amazing. He wasn’t in a “structured learning environment” half the time I wasn’t certain if he DIDN’T spent all day chasing bugs in my mom’s backyard. But he was sooo happy, and he started to actually speak WORDS! He was excited to see Grandma and Auntie Em every day, even if they were just going to go grocery shopping and run errands all day. He didn’t cling to me and cry like he used to every morning I dropped him off at the daycare.
Well, August rolled around and my mom is back at school, but I found the greatest mom through my church who offered to babysit Davie for some extra cash. She has three daughters and Davie LOVES going over there every day. Plus they completely wear him out running him around everyday that he sleeps through the night every night. It’s been a real blessing.
I think the moral of this story is that if you’re child is unhappy with wherever you put her, even if it’s the “best structured learning environment” she isn’t going to learn. Davie, the minute he was out of that daycare, started using words, understands so much more, and knows what a marker is (my tile is testament to that learning experience). He’s so much more bright and involved than what he was.
Its not entirely necessary for a child to go to the most prestigious preschool ever. In fact, parents can sometimes do a better job at early education for their children. The key is to make sure the kids are in an enriched environment and to make sure they are learning something instead of sitting in front of a television.
Another key issue is socialization. Kids should be around other kids so that they have some variety in their social exchanges. This can be addressed by going to a park or making play dates though.
All in all I think Pre-schools are great rescources, but most definitely not required to get kids off on the right foot. After all, before we had pre-schools people managed to get along just fine.
Kari,
Do not sweat it. People have been having children for millenia, with (gasp!) no preschool, and the human race hasn’t died out yet. It will all work out. It really will. I know that with your first-born, it’s easy to freak out about the little things because this is your first time doing this and you want to do everything perfectly. Just love your kid, encourage her, and if you can’t get her into a preschool, go buy some alphabet letter and number magnets for the fridge, and after she learns those, go to a book store and pick up some BOB books, and teach her yourself. You can probably do a better job anyway. No preschool knows and loves your kid better and more than you do.She learns more from you and her dad, than anyone else in her world anyway.
Kari,
I home schooled my daughter and for us it was the best experience possible. We allowed her the chance to be a child and play. There are many home schooled children, everywhere and the dreaded how will they socialize becomes obsolete. We took her to work with us each day. What about taking her to work with you and allowing her to see you doing what you love, but of course a nanny or some such thing would have to be utilized. We wouldn’t want her to get hurt
I’d love to see baby Byron on the show sometime! Just keep her away if there are going to be explosives in use! Don’t want her missing an eyebrow–or worse!
Don’t bid for them, make them bid for you. Your critters are worth it, and honestly, you might be happier with a sitter. YOU screen the sitter, YOU give THEM the task list. A lady I know has a way with words. “I want a baby INTERACTOR, not just a sitter.” It’s time we started holding these overpriced places to account, and to OUR standard.
Kari, I work in a Special Day Class preschool that serves children with special needs, and I was a professional nanny for 15 years. Socialization, language development, exposure to colors, shapes, numbers, letters and art mediums, routine and stability are first and foremost for ANY preschooler. The best preschools are the best not because of *where* they are, what they are named, or even how much they cost, but because of WHO is interacting with your children… Trust your instincts, visit several places, and know that the right fit for your child is out there. She already has a great example of learning in action! 🙂
A superior read is “The well trained mind” by Susan Wise Bauer. Excellent text for any parent raising students of any age.
Read through it, and come to data-informed conclusion that a couple of spoonfuls of data-informed strategic direction on your part trumps a couple thousand gallons of preschool.
Home school her. She will thank you for it! 🙂 It’s been the greatest gift for our entire family.
Wow, that sounds like a scam. Charge a $50 application fee and only select children whose parents are the most likely to promote the school as the best thing since fire.
Skip the crazy preschool rat race and find a loving family child care home. I’ve been a preschool teacher and there is too much pressure put on kids. I couldn’t believe that the kids were doing test prep at age 4 so they could get admitted to a private kindergarten! A home-like environment is far superior for your precious little one while you’re at work.
Hey everybody. While I myself am not a mom, just a big fan of Kari, I think all of you should move to a small country called New Zealand. Yes, think Lord of the Rings. Down here we have kindergarden and kohanga (for Maori kids whos family wants them to have a base in Maori language) Kindergarden here starts with a half day from age 3, progressing to mornings to full days before starting school at 5. And, aside from a donation to help with supplies and maybe some volunteer parents, it’s completely free. I love living in a small country. 🙂