This much I can tell you for certain. When my daughter, now 12, was a toddler, the conventional wisdom among parents in our neighborhood (which trickled down from the schools themselves) was that at two years of age it was perfectly normal and developmentally sound to keep your child home for another year. If anything, the encouragement was that most kids benefited from another year at home before being put in a new social setting.
Some schools had “twos programs,” generally for kids who were closer to three than two, but those programs were in the minority.
Now, a lot of nursery schools have classes that begin at two, which has created another layer of consternation for parents thinking about applying to nursery school.
Why? Because you have to consider the real possibility that schools with active twos programs may have fewer available spots when the threes roll around. Plus, private nursery schools in the city are expensive; some already exceed $25,000 for their 4s programs. Adding another year of tuition to the mix is a significant expenditure for many families.
In this city, you have to apply to nursery school a year ahead of time, so, right now, families are applying for admission to nursery schools in the fall of 2013. This means that families with one-year-olds have to decide whether to apply now for twos programs—and who could possibly assess a one-year old and know whether they’ll be ready for nursery school at 2?
On the less worrisome side, nursery schools are almost universally nice places run by nice people, and, from what I hear, most two-years-olds learn to adapt to their new social settings and enjoy being there.
However, when our second child, a boy, was two, he used very few words—and we felt that putting him in that kind of setting, regardless of how capable the teachers were, would have made him even more self-conscious and frustrated. So we waited until he was three. Much better. (These days he is eight, and, like I always say, he went from being The Boy Who Wouldn’t Speak to The Boy Who Won’t Shut Up.)
Likewise, your child’s well-being will be your ultimate guide as well. Unfortunately, the nursery school admissions system in the city requires that you decide whether to apply before you know your child well enough to know if that’s a good idea.
Just keep in mind that most parents muddle through and end up appreciating their nursery school communities as much as their kids enjoy them.
Eric Messinger is Editor of New York Family. He can be reached at emessinger@manhattanmedia.com
