No matter how much you love your job, it’s never easy to say goodbye to your children when dropping them off at 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 perks of enrolling your child in high-quality preschool this fall.
All backed by research, you can breathe a little easier at drop-off this school year.
- Child Care improves your child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Children in child care 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 a preschool setting will have already mastered (or, at least, practiced) these behaviors. Positive relationships with preschool teachers can also nurture cognitive and emotional development.
- Children in child care are better prepared for school.
A 2022 study found that by age 5, children who attended high-quality formal child care programs had substantially stronger reading and math skills relative to similar children who attended informal, home-based daycare settings.
In 2022, the National Institute of Childhood Health and Human Development found that children in high-quality preschool 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!
- Children in quality child care programs are more likely to graduate college, stay employed, and earn higher incomes.
Quality child care 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 child care 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 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.
- Children in child care 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 preschool 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 preschool settings gain better social and behavioral skills that give them a leg up in life. That’s reason enough to enroll your child in child care or preschool this school year.
At Rising Stride Child Care Centers, 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!