<p>
</p>
<p>Why? Why not just live life in the place that works for your family and the parents’ jobs and support your kids by staying involved in their schooling and offering enriching activities to supplement their formal education?</p>
<p>Yes, going to great schools can really help bright kids achieve their goals. But not all bright kids GET to go to great schools, and they still succeed in life. It just might take more vigilance on the parents’ part and more initiative on theirs.</p>
<p>“Are we seeing this in most large, diverse cities? LA, SF, Chicago, Boston, DC, as well as NYC?”</p>
<p>Yes, though no one has gone off the deep end like New York. There are only a couple of people in Chicago who do nursery/kindergarten admissions counseling. New York has a whole industry of those folks, and they charge more than I charge to help get your kid into Princeton.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>This all sounds like a kid-version of Stepford Wives…kids robotically trained to be what their parents want them to be…ivy grads.</p>
<p>=============
Well, I agree the ivy angle is crazy. But I think public schools are basically glorified daycare for preschool through kindergarten. You can let children play, and at the same time be introducing them to things. Education at that age doesn’t and probably shouldn’t be regimented.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>A well-run much-less-expensive pre-school, pre-k, an K program does integrate play with learning/developing. Play-doh, cutting and pasting, and finger-painting are to help develop fine motor skills. Jumping rope, skipping, and so forth, help develop gross motor skills. “Show and Tell” help kids learn how to speak in front of a group and tell a story. Using simple instruments (drums, cymbals, triangles) to music and clapping/keeping rhythm to a song are pre-reading skills. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Why do they do that?</p>
<p>Both my kids 5s programs had lots of science hands on activities. They loved it.
I think most kids would.
Many K activities seem like going backwards compared to what they did in preschool.
I first started looking for alternatives when the local kindergarten teacher suggested it when I asked if there would be other things for D to do, while the class worked on reading/alphabet.
( she was reading Little house in the big woods, in K)</p>
<p>
That’s what parents in NYC are doing. They work at high pressured/paying jobs. In order to keep those jobs, they require a lot more outside support and they pay for it… Rush hours around NYC is 6-8pm. I recently went for a job interview few hours outside of NYC, and their rush hours were around 4pm. </p>
<p>“Why do they do that?”</p>
<p>I can’t give you a deep why, but the shallow why is that NYC attracts and retains people who care about being at the top of whatever they do, objectively or symbolically or both. I actually think that the phrase, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere” is true. So that culture of striving for the top extends to all kinds of areas you might not expect, like nursery school.</p>
<p>Rush hour in Seattle is 3-7:30.
You don’t wanna move here.</p>
<p>The craziness for nursery school might stem from the difficulty to join later. For instance, the most prestigious K-4 in Dallas accepts 60 three years old, 20 four years old, and FIVE for kindergarten and first grade. There are several thousand applications. With siblings and legacies, the odds might be lower than at Stanford. </p>
<p>Every city has people who are fighting for the right to pay huge tuitions. And a bunch more who are massively disappointed when their toddler fails his or her interview and play date. I am NOT kidding! </p>
<p>My daughters school did have an interview & observation, but they also required an iq test,
She had just had one done, because she was participating in a study, but when I think about it now, it seems a tad over the top. ( she was 6)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have a feeling that parents who spring for $41k for nursery school, probably spring for the fulltime nanny too.</p>
<p>But they call them an * au pair*.</p>
<p>Au pairs are cheap. They are low-budget-live in help for middle class families. </p>
<p>I didn’t even go to Preschool (which everyone told my parents would put me behind in school) but I turned out fine. And I was ahead in school, for the record. Soooo, no, babies do NOT need to be prepping for the Ivies.</p>
<p>I went to preschool for about a week or two while my mom had my baby brother. It was great, I was so bored when I was pulled out.
They let me go to K early though.(I had a late birthday).</p>
<p>The families I knew with aupairs were not middle class, unless you consider couples whose work was volunteering on various charitable boards, middle class.
( they lived off family investments) </p>
<p>We actually had an au pair for one summer when S was very young (3?). It was actually pretty comparable or less costly than full-time daycare for him and full time day camps (especially if we used before- or after-care) for D. There was an upfront fee (discounted for summer au pairs) and we gave her a stipend of <$200 a week. She worked for 45 hours a week, and we also provided a car for her personal use. We are NOT by any stretch of the word wealthy. (I’m not even sure we make it to the donut hole.)</p>
<p>The hardest thing about having an au pair was having this stranger live with you and become one of the family very quickly. Some families are very good at this and able to welcome a new person into their home and family easily. Us? Not so much. So, we didn’t go the full au pair route.</p>
<p>Someone asked earlier about Montessori preschool costs. Pricing in our area is currently in the $12-15K range for an academic-length day (a little extra for afterschool, less for the half day).</p>
<p>Our Montessori school is about $11K a year for full-day (preschool through 8th grade). For comparison sake, the NYC Montessori school my nephew attended for preschool and elementary costs $32K for the preschool (full-day) and $35K for elementary.</p>
<p>We looked at Montessori kindergarten.
Oldest actually enrolled for a month, but I wanted her in the 5’s science based class but because she was the only girl, they moved her to the 4-6 yr old traditional class.
And this was the only Montessori school I even liked.( I looked at so many schools)
Luckily, we found another 5’s program that was a better fit.</p>
<p>So teachers in NYC ought to get paid the same as teachers in Tulsa despite the differences in cost of living, payroll taxes, etc. just so you can all feel righteous that nobody in NY pays an “outrageous” amount for childcare?</p>
<p>What a smug group today.</p>
<p>I have friends who are teachers in NYC private schools. They make a living wage; they get health insurance and retirement plans; they can afford to feed their kids. They should take a 50% paycut to bring the tuition down to what you guys consider reasonable? </p>
<p>I have neighbors who remember with great nostalgia going to Catholic schools where the nuns essentially worked for free (room and board). They are all up in arms that the local Catholic schools now charge a lot for what used to be a very modest tuition payment. I try to point out to them that the lay teachers (big shortage of teaching nuns right now) actually need to pay rent and put food on the table, hence the increase in tuition. They don’t get it. They want something for nothing (free education for their kids) which of course comes on the backs of someone else (once the free labor dries up, the schools need to actually hire chemistry teachers and math teachers and the like.)</p>
<p>SlackerMOMmd- I’m pretty sure no Montessori teacher in NYC is getting rich teaching preschool. But to deny those teachers a living wage to reflect the costs of living within commuting distance? Really???</p>
<p>@blossom, I’m just stating the difference in tuition. I think you’re reading WAY more into my post than what is there. I have siblings who lived in the NYC metro area (one in the city) - I know how much it costs to live there. </p>