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from Natural Life magazine, July/August 2009 Preschool or Not? Q: Our daughter is four and a very curious and social child. Even though we are planning to homeschool and I am at home with the baby (her brother), we signed her up for a wonderful small alternative preschool so she can have social experience and learning opportunity. They are very respectful and provide free play and group activities. After a short adjustment period in which she cried when I left, our daughter became comfortable and happy there. Yet, after Christmas break, she refused to go back and it has become a struggle every morning. I know she enjoys herself once she is at school but she doesn’t want to leave me. I don’t want to deprive her of a learning and social opportunity but I also want to listen to her choice. What would you suggest? A: What do you recall from age four? If you are like most, you remember close to nothing. What you recall are feelings, sensations, faces and fragments of visuals. Nothing you know today relies on what you learned in these early years in a class or a school. Instead, it relies on how you felt about yourself. Your wish to respond to your child’s choice is worth trusting. What else can be more valuable for her than learning that the way she feels inside is right? From school, your daughter will not remember the learning or the play, but she will remember the pain of separation and of learning not to trust what she feels inside. Learning to follow external guides and ignore her own, she will later become susceptible to media influences, peer pressure and other external forces. You also say you don’t want her to miss social and learning opportunities. How can socializing with family members who love her the most be called “missing” something? When with mother, she does not miss school. When at school, she misses mother. Preschool is socially unnatural. By taking young children away from their source of power – mother – and putting them together in a group of similar ages (unable to help each other), we . . . To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's digital edition, which includes access to this and other back issues. Naomi Aldort is the author of Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming parent-child relationships from reaction and struggle to freedom, power and joy. Her advice columns are published in progressive parenting magazines worldwide. She offers phone guidance and counseling by phone/Skype internationally regarding all ages, babies through teens: attachment parenting; natural learning; peaceful and powerful parent-child relationships. If you have a question you'd like Naomi to consider answering in this column, please email it to her at naomi [at] aldort.com. However, she regrets that, due to the large volume of mail received, she is unable to provide individual responses. For further information, about her work, including products, counseling and a free newsletter, visit www.authenticparent.com. |
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