Sometimes it seems that if we want our son or daughter to learn or if we want him to be with other children, we have to take him to nursery school.
But is it really necessary for the correct development of the child to go through nursery school? If we decide not to take him, will he learn something? Will he not miss being with other children?
Let's see if that step through nursery school is really necessary.
It is true that children need a rich and stimulating environment in order to develop their abilities and skills at all levels. They need an environment in which they feel safe enough from the affective point of view to dedicate themselves to exploring, playing… As a general rule, the family environment offers all of this, it is the first educational context: adequate stimuli and emotional security with mother, father or a person of the child's total confidence, to freely indulge in play and exploring the environment.
Also is true that boys and girls need to socialize, share play spaces with their peers. It is a stage of development that is reached by maturation, it is not learning. By the age of 3 or 4, when they are able to understand the pleasure of shared play, the child shows interest in playing with other children. Before this age, they hardly have a genuine interest in sharing games, for the evolutionary moment in which they are, in full self-centeredness.
Thus, attendance at nursery school is not an essential requirement for the correct development of the child.
So what role do nursery schools serve?
For many families, it is the only way to reconcile two irreconcilable worlds such as family life and work life. In a society with so little real support to exercise motherhood and fatherhood, nursery schools are one more resource to try to reconcile, to be able to go to work and provide our little one with the care he needs.
We have at our disposal other resources, such as leave of absence and reductions in working hours, although both have an impact on the family economy. We can also value that a person of our absolute trust takes care of our little one at home, a space that our little one already knows. Or we can turn to a day mother, a person with specific training who will take care of our little one at home, conveniently prepared for this purpose.