While it is understandable why new parents don’t want to leave their children in the care of strangers, there are numerous benefits to childcare for both the parents and the child. A reputed and highly vetted childcare facility will ensure that your child is constantly supervised and nurtured by professional caregivers.
Even parents need a little downtime or the freedom to pursue new jobs and hobbies. A childcare facility can help you relax a little after the tumultuous first years of handling a toddler. Aside from a bit of crying and separation anxiety on the first day, your child will quickly transition into this new schedule, making childcare a viable and beneficial option.
Here are a few reasons why you should be considering childcare.
- It will teach your child about routines and schedules
Small children are not aware of how time works. At home, they are used to doing things their own way and it can be difficult to teach a child to follow a schedule alone. At a child carecentre, however, they are surrounded by other equally-minded kids doing fun activities at allotted times.
They are exposed to following a set schedule for entering class, activities, lunch, and leaving for home. This will help shape their intellectual growth and behaviour, making it easy to create a schedule at home as well.
- It will improve their confidence
Having lived most of their life at home surrounded by family, children are not exposed to social situations that can be stressful. By sending your child to childcare, you are allowing their caregivers to teach them how to behave in social situations. They will learn to mingle and talk to their new classmates, thereby increasing their self-confidence a little at a time. This is an invaluable skill in life.
- Childcare helps lay the foundation for school life
Attending and learning in school is a different ball game to learning at home. It is not a comfortable situation to be thrust into when your child knows nothing about that environment. Child carecentres can help your child ease into the environment. They will teach the children about following rules, social etiquette, and how to behave while learning.
Your child will also be interacting with their peers and other adults, aside from their family members. This will help develop their cognitive skills and emotional vulnerability before they enter school. For example, they can learn how to make friends with their peers, which is going to be an essential skill for years to come.
- It can help them with communicating and independence
Until this point, your child would only have been communicating with people they are very familiar with, and all their needs would be satisfied by you, the parents. In a childcare centre, they will be surrounded by kids who have different personalities. Your child will learn to navigate through these personalities and improve the way they communicate with each of them.
Also, your child will become accustomed to not always having their parents and family around them. By taking care of small tasks themselves, they will start to learn about independence, which will make your job as parents much simpler in the future.
No matter where you live, Australia has an abundance of choice when it comes to reputable local childcare centres (like those in Hurstville NSW), and sending your children can enhance both their academic and social development.