The Best Mother, the Best Preschool

As long as a child is young enough to need mothering, she needs her mom.

If daycare is better for children than staying home with Mommy, this means that total strangers make better parents than the child's natural parents.

The humanistic, hedonistic and materialistic society in which we live today repeatedly broadcasts the messages that women need to find fulfillment and financial independence in the workplace and that paid caregivers make better ‘parents’ than a child’s own mother.

‘They’ also tell us that our babies need to become independent and that they need the stimulation of being with their age-mates or they will be lacking in social skills. However, the evidence continues to pile up that the role a mother plays in the life of her child during the first years of life has a crucial, lasting effect on her intelligence.

Consider the following media snippets:

Mothers May Have to Weigh Job VS Tot IQ

…Newest bits of evidence linking a young child’s intelligence with the quality of mothering and the amount of mental stimulation in the home comes from the Journal of Educational of Psychology …Most important elements include the mother’s involvement with the child, the verbal and emotional responsiveness of the mother and the provision of appropriate materials, this research shows. Also important are opportunities for variety in daily routines, the avoidance of restrictions and punishment, and the organization of learning opportunities in the home. These finding on the effects of early learning and mothering back up other continuing studies on babies and toddlers at Harvard and elsewhere. All show consistently that intelligence, competence and creativity develop best when a young child has plenty of stimulating things to do and a mother nearby to keep feeding him appropriate words almost continually.

Research Indicates Adverse Effects of Daycare, Preschool

Two new studies indicate parents might want to reconsider sending their children to daycare or preschool. In one study, Stanford University and University of California researchers found that children who spend more than six hours a day in center-based care outside the home showed poor social skills. According to the researchers, the children in the investigation showed "diminished levels of cooperation, sharing, motivated engagement in classroom tasks, and greater aggression. And in another study, this one conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a researcher found that kids who spent long hours in daycare and preschool exhibited "poorer work habits and poorer social skills through third grade." These children, according to the study, tended more than others to have trouble concentrating and completing their school work.

The Universal Preschool reports:

In fact, Mary Eberstadt, research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, offers hard evidence of this phenomenon in her book, Home Alone America, and warns that institutionalizing young children can damage them psychologically, emotionally, socially and physically. That damage to children extends to the society at large." ( www.universalpreschool.com)

Who is Best? A Day Mother or You?

As long as a child is young enough to need mothering, she needs her mother.

“Even the best, most humane and personalized day-care environment cannot compensate for the feeling of rejection which the young child unconsciously senses when he is unnecessarily sent away from home for care by others.” Martin Engel, former director of the US National Demonstration Center for Early Childhood Education (DCE) in Washington, D.C.

Dr Jack Raskins, psychiatrist at the University of Washington, Seattle says: “The key is the child’s close, unbroken attachment in the early months is to the people who care for him. Too much disruption of this imbeds in the personality traits that can be disruptive for a lifetime.

People are hyped up over adolescent drug abuse, pregnancies, suicide and the cults children join. But the same roots underlie them all. The roots are depression and emotional deprivation. These are laid down in the personality in the early months of life. They grow out of poor attachments and inadequate affection and contact for the child in the first months. Attachment to the people who love him and who respond to his needs is nothing less than the foundation of the child’s personality.”

The way a child is raised in the early years accounts for at least twenty points of his IQ. Emotional stability from loving secure relationships related directly to intellectual capabilities.”

Would mothers of very young children be willing to work full time outside the home if they knew it could lower their youngsters’ intelligence measurably?

Tim la Haye, says in his book The Battle for the Family: “I predict that this trend will produce millions of future adults who have problems with self-image, emotional security, depression, and hostility – a high price to pay for working, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

To go back to the opening question: Should your child have any other mother but you?

I hope by now, you will have agreed that staying at home with you, rather than attending preschool or daycare is the best option for your child, now what about YOU?

Stay-at-Home-Mom?

• Does staying at home seem like a hard decision to make?
• Are you afraid of losing part of your identity, your salary, your independence, your second car or having to move to a cheaper neighbourhood?
• Does staying at home sound boring and less stimulating than an outside career?
• Do you fear you won’t have the patience required to be with your child/ren all day? (Do you really think that an overworked and underpaid caregiver will be more patient and loving than you?)
• Is the potential damage to your child’s self-image and emotional development worth it? And what about the guilt you will carry now that you know the effects of a mom’s career on a child?
• Or, in your mind, does SAHM still spell SLAVE and does JOB spell FREEDOM?

“Feminists have foolishly claimed that woman’s role as a homeworker is the result of male patriarchal bias. The opposite is true. Non-Christian male patriarchal societies have always enslaved women outside the home.” Mary Pride, The Way Home

I know that many married women say they HAVE to work, but do they really? I think many just can’t stand picturing themselves as ‘just a mom’ with no other job description, no paycheck, no independence, no economic or social status and very little respect from society in general. Motherhood is hardly considered a glamorous career, yet it is a highly challenging and rewarding vocation.

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." Sir Winston Churchill

“We must wake up and look ten or twenty years into the future. What will we wish then that we had done today? Many mothers over forty hanker for another baby – because their nest emptied too soon. They experience regrets for letting years with their children pass by without savouring them to the full.” Ann Robinson, Mother’s Teach Your Babies and Toddlers the Bible.

The Bible has the ideal option. Titus 2:4-5 says that younger women are “to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home…”

It is not a question of whether wives work, but where we work!

Once you enter the season of motherhood, you become a teacher. This is one of your primary tasks and God has chosen you to be the mother for your little one. You are the right instructor for your child. Even though you may feel inexperienced in this field and ill-equipped, God has chosen you to be your child’s parent, teacher and life-coach. As you take on this role, you will soon realise that you also need to take on the role of student.

You are an amateur parent and so you need to learn as much as you can about what you are required to do in this season of life. Not only do you need to learn about early childhood development and education, but you also need on-the-job training in patience, compassion gentleness, kindness and don’t forget self-control!

Like many other stay-at-home-moms, you are bound to find studying this relevant and much needed subject matter stimulating, rewarding and beneficial to both your and your child/ren.

The information, free weekly e-zine and other resources on this website are intended to help you and equip you for this high calling.

It goes without saying that a SAHM is also a Work-at-Home-Mom (WAHM) in charge of home management. Most job-holding wives are too, only they do it part-time, after hours.

I have Good News. There is more to staying at home than just doing laundry and scrubbing bathrooms! There is a way that you can be a full time mom without sacrificing your self-worth, your need for mental stimulation and your need for fulfillment, but this work-at-home-mom option also needs careful consideration as it is also presents a cost to you and your family. The pro’s and con’s must be weighed.

You could start a home-based business . With the birth of the internet, this option is becoming easier and easier and it presents some exciting options for a creative and determined woman wishing to contribute to the family finances and to use her gifts and talents . BUT, first you need to decide to do what is best for your child, no matter the cost.

Will you be your child’s daymother, as well as her night-time Mommy?

Henry Ward Beecher said: “The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.”

So where is your heart?

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