Day Care and Preschool
I definitely subscribe to the mantra “It takes a village.” Kids thrive when they are exposed to other children, other caretakers, and lots of cool new experiences.
Day care centers and preschools are great mini villages for our infants and toddlers. They are often the first places our kiddos develop friendships and learn awesome new activities and skills on a daily basis, but don’t feel too pressured into sending your kiddo to a day care or preschool. As long as families provide daily varied activities and time spent with other children and adults in fun social situations, kids can gain those lifelong skills just as well at home. With day care, bigger does not always mean better. Kids will get the same life-building experiences with 4-6 kids as they would with 20 kids. Vice versa, smaller is not always better when it comes to infection control for kids. Don’t expect your kiddo going to a daycare of 6 kids to have less runny noses than one going to a program with 20 kids.
As a pediatrician, the small exposures to minor coughs and colds after 6 months of age is a great way to build up the immune system while kids are young and less likely to remember how crummy they feel with colds. A kiddo starting at day care or preschool for the first time will most likely get a new fever every 4 weeks and have a constant runny nose for the whole year, but that is OK. We’d much rather that they get these minor coughs and colds before they develop sinuses that make for harder-to-treat sinus infections and before they have a tendency to develop pneumonias like their older siblings in middle and high school. They are going to need to develop immunity to these widespread cold viruses at some point, might as well be now rather than later when they would be missing reading and math lessons in elementary school.
In terms of different preschool educational styles, whether it is Montessori or Reggio or whatever, that does not matter as much as the fact that there are opportunities to interact and have imaginative and child-directed play with a caring group of consistent caregivers to build trust, and with it, a willingness to try new things and explore in a fun and judgment-free way.