For Parents

When I was a toddler, I was privileged enough to be able to enroll in a local preschool program. Truthfully, I don’t remember much about my time there (I was, after all, only four years old). I don’t remember any of the friends I made, the activities I did, or the course material I learned. Honestly, the only things I remember about this time are the playground in the front of the school and the swimming pool in the back. However, there is a ton of research that shows none of that matters — preschool’s effects are larger, yet more low-key, than I could have imagined. If you’re a parent who only wants the best for your little ones, fighting to convince the city of Ann Arbor to provide universal preschool to all children of all backgrounds may be the best move for you!

To begin, there is an abundance of research that highlights the long-term positive effects that enrollment in preschool programs has on children. Children who attend preschool graduate high school at higher rates, earn more money, and commit less crime than children who don’t attend preschool. And these effects are even more amplified for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The results speak for themselves: preschool is a great long term investment to make in your child.

However, in my opinion, the more surprising positive effects that preschool has on children start much earlier than adulthood — and many occur in less quantifiable ways. This is because research shows that preschool also has positive impacts on childhood social development. The first of these impacts is on the development of a child’s interpersonal skills. For perhaps the first time in their young lives, children are forced to form relationship with other children and adults. Lee Venditti, the director of a Montessori school in Ontario, spoke about this. “High-quality preschool programs,” Venditti said, “nurture warm relationships among children, teachers, and parents.” In a preschool environment, as opposed to simply staying at home, children are encouraged to mingle with others who are different from themselves — teaching them lifelong lessons in interpersonal communication. Luckily, if the child has any struggles with attempting to socialize with their classmates, teachers and staff are present to provide the necessary help. As a result, in Venditti’s words, preschools are a safe environment for children to “learn to make friends and play well with others” while “minimizing congestion and conflicts.”

In addition to fostering strong interpersonal skills, attending preschool also instills a sense of independence in children. Stacy Paton, a preschool manager in British Columbia, stated that one of the large “social benefits of preschool are that it encourages children to gain independence from their parents and trust in a new environment.” Furthermore, the blog Mom Maven listed six ways that preschools teach young children how to be independent. The reasons ranged from having children clean up after themselves to allowing kids to become risk-takers and problem solvers. All told, the structure and rules of preschool help ween young children away from their parents and mold them into independent individuals — all within the confines of a safe and inclusive environment.

The final personal benefit of preschool is that “children learn how to show respect—to adults, other children, and their environment,” according to Dr. Irina Valentin. This is largely because children in preschool must work with their classmates and teachers in order to get things done. As a result, preschool teaches children that they must be respectful of others in order to work successfully on a team. If a child stayed at home with their parents, however, this lessons might not be learned until much later.

All told, while access to preschool has dramatic long-term benefits for children who attend, it also offers less quantifiable term, but equally important, advantages. Currently, the state of Michigan offers the Great Start Program: a well-intentioned initiative that aims to give preschool to all low-income children in the state. However, the program has not been adequately funded. As a result, thousands of qualifying children across our state now sit on a waitlist for these programs. To combat this, I believe it’s time for the city of Ann Arbor to join the list of cities across the country in implementing universal preschool for all of our children. If you agree, please contact your representative to start the conversation on the necessity of this program!