You were supposed to pick up Uzbek language from your babysitter.
Fail. No Ivy-bound pre-k for you.
That’s hilarious. And sad, and stupid.
Read to your kids! Do things with them. Put the phone AWAY while they are awake and up and spend all your time with them. That will help them more than anything.
I have a friend from college who has a couple young kids. When his kids were born, they were living in Manhattan (don’t know which neighborhood). They were very involved parents - had travelled out of the country with their kids a few times and were raising them to be multilingual (both parents spoke a different second language), had their kids involved in music and arts programs, and athletics. I remember reading his story on FB about his son interviewing to get into pre-school. The concept was a little foreign to me being in rural America where I got to choose where to send my son, but in some cities the demand is so high that the schools are the ones that get to be selective. (He’s since moved to the west coast and I believe his kids are now public schooled).
I can’t imagine paying for a boot camp to prep my child, but I think parents who put forth that kind of money are probably very well intentioned. IMO, it says a lot more about the public education in some of our cities and the fact that some parents are willing to pay this kind of money because they fear if their child isn’t competitive enough to be admitted to these private options, they might have to put their kids in their local public option.
How much can these kids take out in loans on their own without their parents having to co-sign? 
I admit to standing in line at 5am to register my child into the SECOND BEST preschool in the city where we lived. In order to get into the BEST one, you pretty much had to register your child at birth and then wait to be tested and interviewed at the age of 3 to be admitted at the age of 4. It’s very competitive in some cities, but now that my kids are grown, I’m sure they would have done just fine at the THIRD or FOURTH best schools, from preschool on up through college.
All the pre-school based ways I messed up my kids’ chances for a happy and successful life:
Oldest went to a “Mom’s Day Out” in the basement of a church one day a week when he was a pre-preschooler because I was pregnant with his brother and honestly needed a break. The kids were safe, fed, and had fun. He did go to a Montessori pre-school, but mostly because it was in a cute little cottage three blocks from our house and I liked the teachers.
With the last two, we moved a few times and I was a lot more tired. As a result,
My second went to a preschool at a church, based solely on the recommendation of the first neighbor I met when we moved in. (Again, I was pregnant, tired, and just wanted to be able to go to the grocery store alone. I also wanted him to make some friends in a new town.) It was a classic preschool plus a little religion. They did classic oldtimey preschool activities. Sang, played games, played outside, had circle time, made messy art projects, had snacks.
My third went to what she still calls pre-school when she was pretty little. It was a couple of babysitters in the basement of a bowling alley (!) who we paid to watch our little ones while we had a morning bowling league. (I was, and am, a lousy bowler, but treasured that league,) it was sort of dark and dank, but all her little friends were there. They had snacks and did art projects and played with donated toys. Later, she attended pre-school at the local YMCA, which offered a lot of physical activity and swimming lessons, and art and snacks.
I like to think they were not permanently harmed by their pre-school experiences, but based on this artilce, i wonder.
P.S. I was a stay-at-home parent through all these years, so there wasn’t pressure to find perfection in a pre-school or prep for kindergarten.
“Read to your kids! Do things with them. Put the phone AWAY while they are awake and up and spend all your time with them. That will help them more than anything.”
You don’t know that the parents who send their kids to these bootcamps aren’t doing the same with them. It makes us all feel good to believe that these are people who have just pushed care onto nannies while they spend their time on frivolous things, but really, you don’t know that. I think the name “bootcamp” deliberately connotes intensity, but really, for all you know, it’s not THAT markedly different from a nursery school / preschool, program run by a church, or mom’s day out.
No, you don’t.
I don’t get this comment. Why would only parents who work outside the home be the only ones looking for a “perfect” preschool? I willing to bet this isn’t so.
It was the stay-at-home mothers who used preschools – because they wanted a break and they wanted their kids to socialize with others. Not a thing wrong with that. The working parents already had other daycare arrangements in place.
Eastcoascrazy - your post is interesting because it seems you feel the need to justify by saying you were pregnant, tired, just wanted to run your errands in peace, etc. What if you just wanted to send them to preschool / mom’s day out / whatever? As long as it fit your family’s budget, you didn’t really need to justify it by being tired or pregnant. If the kid is in preschool, it doesn’t really make that much difference to the KID whether mom is finally doing the grocery shopping in peace, perfecting her abs in pilates class, or closing a multimillion dollar deal at work. (It makes a big difference to the other moms at times, but that’s different.)
Can we go back to making fun of people who spend $1k to send their toddler to bootcamp? That was was way more fun.
Why are we assuming that nannies can’t provide high-quality care? I see no reason why it would be less valuable for a nanny to read to a child or take the child to a playground than for a parent to do those things.
Not all of my nannies were able to provide age appropriate education for my kids, and that was why I sent my kids to pre-schools for few hours a day to get additional enrichment. I was working 12-14 hrs a day.
Again, true, it may all be very appropriate level activitites. But to pay $1,000 for a week of this? To pay $200/hr on one on one tutoring? To pay college tuition prices for kindergarten? All of that is too intense.
I had a nanny. I don’t assume they can’t provide high quality child care! I was just speaking to the assumption that it was “uncaring parent foisting child off.”
Many of them have already spent considerable money and time for this already, while the kids were in the preschool. Admission to the kindergartens are highly competitive, requiring well written parents essays (that are edited by kindergarten consultants at the kids’ preschools) and and high scores on play-interview sessions which the kids were trained to play like gifted children, showing off intellectual curiosity.
The $1000 boot camp is a just a minor details for the kids won this highly competitive and prestigious kindergarten admission.
It depends on where you live to determine what’s too expensive or ridiculous. Many private schools around NYC area charge 35-45K/yr for K, and summer programs can cost ~900/week. Again, in reading what the “boot camp” is offering is very similar to what many pre-schools and daycares are doing. It is the cost that’s freaking people out, but if the same program was offered at a low cost area then it wouldn’t be news worthy.
So sorry for the attempted humor up thread. Clearly Seversl people didn’t find it funny.
I have zero need to justify anything in my parenting decisions, and there is no defensiveness in any of what I wrote.
Carry on.
$1000 a week is a typical summer day camp cost in places like NYC? I don’t believe this for a nanosecond. What is wrong with a Y Camp?
http://www.ymcanyc.org/association/pages/camp-registration-information
Well, @BunsenBurner Little Muffy or Dakota can’t just mingle with any old riffraff offspring, can they?