well I don't fit in this category anyway, so not feeling judged.....

I'd say - again, my belief is about Balance, a key word I use for many major life decisions - but I hear what you are saying. Again it would be the back's against the wall and the choice is majority of time with a babysitter or one of the parents.

but I also suspect there is a level of learning "how to be a man" by the boy too, because he will grow up to understand his dad sacrificed alot to make sure he was taken care of by mom? - pure speculation, because if there is one thing I have come to understand about kids, and wives...... You could give them a gold brick and they would complain about the shape.

well, the dike - D'uh..... :p

It has been proven that children who go to preschool perform better academically and get along better with other kids.

It is great that parents can stay home but it benifits the child more if they do go to preschool.

Anymore, it seems if you don't put your kids into preschool they are behind when they start kindergarten.

My oldest went to 2 years of preschool before starting kindergarten. I'll be sending the others as well when they are old enough.

I agree again most of the poster opposing daycare also claimed for balance as the overall driving force. I even suggested the same thing you are saying, but the main arguement against daycare was for the parents that put the kids into daycare at 6 months of age, you lose alot of connection time, touch, love, etc.

But I also understand everyone is different and you have to make the choice you can live with. I won't do it...... I will stay home if I have to, but I'm not putting a 6 month old into daycare for 8+ hours a day, won't let it happen, that's me....

But what you just said, yes, an education program 1-2 years prior to starting public education, gets the kids ready to interact with other children and prepares them to be learners, I'm on board for that too.

=

BALANCED...... :)

"Missing the firsts" isn't the point of the article. If you are interested in child behavior for single parent stats, there are a ton available with a google search. Again, the article this post is about is the effect day care has on your child. A single parent has no choice, unless they wan't to be a stay at homeless parent.

Is it better for kids to be with both parents? Yes, but I would rather my kids to share all mpst their growing up with a parent rather than a day care worker. My wife was a nanny type babysitter for 2 years in VA Beach. She went to their house at 8am, and left at 6pm. If we were in port I usually worked 9-3 so I would drop off the wife. The kids she watched were very well behaved, but both of the kids (4 and 1) were more exicted to see my wife in the morning, than they were to see their parents get home at night. The parents had high paying jobs, drove nice cars and had a huge house, and they didn't seem to mind the kids liking my wife more. My wife loved them and took good care of them, so in the long run does it matter who the kids are loving or loved by, as long as they are being loved? I don't know, but seeing that had a big impact on our decision to have my wife stay at home.

I think you have to distinguish between a daycare center and a preschool. All of our kids went to preschool for two years before kindergarten. Mon-Fri for three to five hours a day. They hit the ground running when they entered first grade and didn't have any glitches in academics until after Elementary School.

BTW, my wife and I switched jobs and got our schedules screwed around so we wouldn't have to use a daycare. Having less money sucks. Not having as much time for our marriage sucks. But we love our kids and we do what we have to do.

I'm not sayin' you're completely wrong here. I just know that those parents who taught their kids how to read very, very early like age 3 can still lose ground after a certain number of years in school.

There is strong evidence that those who learn to read starting at a later age learn it faster and it's less difficult to teach. I've seen this and was told this by a friend of mine who is a teacher and taught his kids to read very early. What seems to be the pattern is the others who start later catch up by age ten to the others. Now from that point on, things can change again.

Per my kid's school, they have graphs using the CA Achievement Tests that show how it averages off by age 10. Then it can change. In this school the kids start reading in pre-school. So the the graph shows them well ahead in the first grades after. Then it averages, with them being just slightly ahead bu age 10. However by 15 their graph changes showing them significantly ahead. Their curriculum is so rich, and they do a lot more work that by age 15 they are done with HS...in relation to standard public schools. Some even get entrance into college full time. That is in relation to the CA Achievement Test. So the school's program also matters, not just the age or preschool or so it seems to me.

BTW Isaac Newton hated school and didn't do that well. It was a tutor later in life, think it was age 12, who got him excited in intellectual pursuits which took hold of him then. Einstein didn't even talk to age 5. People, then, thought, he was dumb. There's more than a few stories like that. In fact some of our most renowned geniouses had a non-conventional education path. Schools today are a cookie-cutter approach and don't necessarily align with the child's interests or abilities.