Raising children is one of the biggest challenges in life. While there are plenty of books that have been published on raising children, even the best book can only give you a basic outline of how to make sure your child makes it to adulthood with as little issue as possible. Every child is a little different, they’re people after all, and that’s where the challenge really takes hold. One great thing that you can do to help your child be prepared for the future is enrolling them in child care.
One thing that nearly every child psychologist agrees upon is the importance of enrolling your child into some sort of enrichment service before they start going to regular school. It has a lot of well-documented benefits that can help your child both in the short term and in the long term. We’ve gone ahead and done a bit of digging so that we can give you an in-depth analysis of some of these great things that enrolling your child in a daycare can teach them. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll also see the marvelous side of these programs so you can move on to the next part of the process.
Advanced Social Skills Learned Earlier On
One of the greatest things about school, in general, is giving your children an opportunity to learn how to interact and adapt to social situations. These social skills are something that we use for the rest of our lives, whether in personal, professional, or other aspects of our lives. Learning these skills early can give you an edge because your child will have that much more time to master their social skills when they’re still in a big developmental phase.
Of course, every child learns their social skills when they go off to school. That being said, the first day of kindergarten can be incredibly stressful for children that have never experienced this kind of a social setting before, especially without their parents. By enrolling your child in a daycare beforehand they’ll already be used to this kind of environment, so they won’t have to worry about the stress involved with a huge transition from home life to school life. That can save them a lot of trouble for their entire academic career, as well as their life after they finish schooling.
It’s also been shown that getting these kinds of settings involved in your child’s life earlier rather than later can result in increased confidence throughout the rest of their lives. That confidence won’t only help them with their academic career but also with any sports they play, their love life, professional life, and even personal life. The saying “confidence is key” is an old adage for a reason, and the saying has stood the test of time because of the truth that lives within it. The more comfortable someone is with their social skills, the more likely they are to act confidently.
Get a Head Start on Learning the Basics
Your children are like sponges. They absorb a ridiculous amount of information. The young and growing mind is learning about the world around it and how to interact with it. How things work, how to create, destroy, and much more. Your child’s natural curiosity is one of their greatest tools, as well as one of their greatest liabilities. It’s also what makes daycare such an effective tool for your child care to help them succeed in their future academic career. That’s from Kindergarten to even any post-graduate programs they might find themselves in in the future.
Any daycare program that’s worth its salt is going to be jam-packed with all sorts of activities that will not only give your child something to entertain themselves but a way to learn some basic concepts before they go off to kindergarten. These activities are commonly referred to as “educational enrichment” and can help your child a lot more than you realize. The first benefit is actually something that’s been proven that you’re probably already aware of on some level. You retain more information when you’re having fun while learning than when you’re feeling bored and learning.
The way that most daycare centers are able to accomplish this is actually pretty easy. They’ll usually have toys that also teach basic concepts. That includes things like alphabet blocks, the shaped holes that you put blocks into, and a lot more. These toys create the foundation on which your child will be able to build off of for the rest of their academic career, as well as in life in general. These toys provide a slight challenge while also giving your child a learning experience that will shape their mind for years to come.
Teach Your Children Problem Solving Skills
One of the things that we use the most in our daily lives as adults are problem-solving skills. For example, you’re on your way to work and your normal street is closed down for construction. You know that the people doing construction don’t usually send you down the most efficient detours, so following the signs is going to make you late for work. How do you get to work on time? That’s just a basic example of the complex problems that we face as adults on a daily basis, and sometimes the consequences are far worse than being a few minutes late for work.
Our daily lives are pretty much just a giant game of Tetris. Trying to make everything that needs to fit in a single 24-hour cycle fit perfectly. The problems that we face at home, work, and everywhere else can have enormous impacts on everything in our life, depending on the problem. Of course, the problems that your children that are too young to be in kindergarten aren’t likely to have dire consequences just yet, but one day they’ll be an adult and have to figure out how to solve their own problems.
That’s one of the places where daycares shine. By giving children little puzzles throughout their day, the children automatically learn to think critically and solve the puzzles using the tools available to them. For example, most daycare centers have toys that children are able to access without any adult interference. That puts the children into a position where they are forced to figure out how to get into the toys. In some places this is a pretty easy task, for example, they just have to pull out a cubby. Some places have the toys locked up and the children have to find the key to get it open.
In the latter example, children are also learning teamwork on top of problem-solving. This is a basic example that is most common. When you go out to look at daycare centers there’s a good chance that you’ll see a lot of different tactics employed to help children learn some problem-solving skills. The better children get at problem-solving at a young age, the more likely to have it down to a science by the time they’re adults. Having good problem-solving skills can help them with their academic and professional careers as well as help them get through any relationship troubles that they might face.
Sick Kids Make For Healthy Adults
One of the least spoken about benefits of daycare is the exposure to new germs and illnesses that your child’s body hasn’t had to deal with yet. This allows for their immune system to be strengthened at a young age, and that can greatly lessen the risk of them getting seriously ill as adults. That can make a huge difference, especially if calling in sick too many times could still be a threat to their gainful employment in the future.
Kids get sick. Kids are also great carriers of germs. That means that putting them all in a room together will allow them a chance to trade those germs around and get each other sick. That will probably mean having to take your child to the doctor a little more just to make sure that everything is ok but other than that your child getting sick is a great thing. The earlier your child starts having to deal with new types of germs that they would deal with at home, the sooner their bodies can have a big game plan for keeping them well in the future.
Give Your Child the Best Start Possible
We all had to go to school at some point. It’s not an easy thing, especially for children that are just starting out on their academic path. Young academics arguably have the most to deal with because they’re starting from knowing nothing and need to learn the fundamentals of all of the subjects in just a few short years. Fortunately, you can enroll your child into a daycare program so they can have the headstart they need to be as successful in both school and life as possible.
