No matter how much you love your job, it’s never easy to say goodbye to your children when dropping them off at childcare or preschool. However, take heart, for an array of studies show that high-quality, educational childcare benefits your child in a variety of important ways -- into adulthood and beyond!
Check out these surprising perks of enrolling your child in high-quality childcare or preschool this fall.
All backed by research, you can breathe a little easier at drop-off this school year.
1. Daycare improves your child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Children in daycare are exposed to a greater variety of social situations and tend to be better communicators and exhibit more advanced social skills and fewer peer-related difficulties than their counterparts.
In an early education class, your child will participate in activities that require them to take turns, share, adjust to routines, and even face small conflict. Exposure to other children and a variety of situations helps your child develop these important emotional and cognitive skills.
While many children must wait until kindergarten to encounter these experiences, a child in childcare will have already mastered (or, at least, practiced) these behaviors. Positive relationships with daycare or preschool teachers can also nurture cognitive and emotional development.
2. Children in childcare are better prepared for school.
A 2016 study found that by age 5, children who attended high-quality formal childcare programs had substantially stronger reading and math skills relative to similar children who attended informal, home-based daycare settings.
In 2006, the National Institute of Childhood Health and Human Development found that children in high-quality daycare had better language and cognitive development during the first four-and-a-half years of life. Even better, the benefits remain at least through the age of 15!
3. Children in quality daycare programs are more likely to graduate college, stay employed, and earn higher incomes.
Quality childcare and preschool programs help set your child up for success later in life. Children enrolled in high-quality early childhood programs are 80% more likely to attend college and earn 33% higher salaries, according to readynation.org.
A 30-year study led by FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that infants enrolled in a high-quality childcare program were four times more likely to have earned a college degree. They also had significantly more years of total education than their peers.
Further, at age 30, children in high-quality daycare or preschool were more likely to have been consistently employed. 75% had worked full-time for at least 16 of the previous 24 months, compared to 53% of the control group.
4. Children in childcare have stronger immune systems and are less likely to get sick in elementary school.
While it’s nearly impossible to prevent your child from ever getting sick, there’s good news for what comes later. Classrooms in daycare centers expose your child to a lot, but it actually builds your child’s immune system for later on.
Children who attended childcare are less likely to get sick as they get older. Do you know what that means? Less time out when attendance is taken in grade school!
Bottom line? Children in high-quality daycare settings gain better social and behavioral skills that give them a leg up in life. That’s reason enough to enroll your child in childcare or preschool this school year.
At The Sunshine House, your child will build a strong educational and social foundation – with all the fun of childhood mixed in. Our programs focus on school readiness, social, emotional and intellectual development, and what every child needs – love and care!
