{"id":1525,"date":"2022-05-13T17:36:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T17:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2024-05-28T22:39:14","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T22:39:14","slug":"the-kids-are-alright-children-and-some-grown-ups-explain-how-home-based-child-care-prepared-them-for-school-and-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/the-kids-are-alright-children-and-some-grown-ups-explain-how-home-based-child-care-prepared-them-for-school-and-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kids Are Alright: Children (and some Grown-Ups)\u00a0Explain How Home-Based Child Care Prepared Them for School and Life","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last month I interviewed childcare experts and parents to find out how home-based care meets the developmental needs of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers<\/a>. Home-based child care, they agree, provides a consistent, family-like environment where kids thrive and learn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as a parent who chose HBCC for my own kids, I also wanted to hear firsthand from the children who spent their early years in home-based care. What do kids think? In this piece I talk to Liam (7)\u00a0Cole (17) and Brooke (15), graduates of Benu\u2019s Preschool in Concord, California, as well as my own son Zak (24), who went to Ms. Patty\u2019s House in Cullowhee, North Carolina, and Venette (34), a Home Grown staff member who attended a home-based child care program in West Palm Beach, Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard for any of us to remember much from our toddler days, but these \u201chome-grown\u201d sages had a lot of wise words about their superhero caretakers. I started with my own son Zak, who is now a graduate student in biochemistry at Scripps Research Institute. He was in the lab when I called to ask, \u201cWhat do you remember about Ms. Patty\u2019s?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was stumped at first, hard-pressed to recall specific events from more than 20 years ago, but then he noted, \u201cI do remember that I loved being at Ms. Patty\u2019s. It was like home\u2013comforting and fun.\u201d That sentiment rang true for other children as well. Home-based child care was a place they loved to be, a place that generated what Venette calls \u201cwarm feelings and a hug, where people cared about you and you cared about them.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s also a place where these children learned essential social and emotional skills they still use in school, work, and life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feel Your Feelings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes in my little ages, like two and three, I was a little bit naughty,\u201d explains Liam Cobb, who is now a big kid of seven. \u201cIn those olden days when I got upset, my teacher Benu would ask me if I needed to go to the Crying Room.\u201d Taking a time out to express his feelings apart from the busy hubbub of kids playing in the main room helped Liam calm down and regroup. Now, he explains that he knows how to do that without a crying room. \u201cI just breathe and tell myself that, you know, Liam, your worries will be over in a few minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liam has learned Self-regulation<\/a>, a key social and emotional skill that helps children succeed in school situations that often involve waiting, taking turns, and talking through conflict. Liam learned it explicitly and early at Benu\u2019s Preschool, where Benu Chhabra has been taking care of children for 22 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be a Friend and Role Model<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBenu always said \u2018use your words,\u2019 explains Brooke Kemper, a smiling 15-year-old who attended Benu\u2019s Preschool for the first five years of her life. \u201cYou can\u2019t just be that one mean girl that sits in the corner.\u00a0She always insisted that we be kind to each other and work together and just like act like everyone was our friend, not just that one favorite person.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole, Brooke\u2019s big brother, now 17, agrees. \u201cI remember feeling some responsibility to be a role model for the younger kids, showing them how they should be acting by the time they were ready to go up to big kids\u2019 school.\u201d That sense of responsibility served Cole well in elementary school, though he also remembers being surprised that everyone in his kindergarten class was the same age and pretty much at the same skill level. \u201cSo what I learned was that if you\u2019re going to do something, you gotta do it right or at least try hard. You can be a leader by example, even with your same-age peers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cole and Brooke at Preschool<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Have Fun and Be Fair<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole, Brooke, Liam, and Venette all extol the value of the mixed-age setting of home-based care, where a family-like setting encourages them to learn from others, help others, lead by example, and value each person in a diverse community. They also note that the balance of free play and more structured activities like crafts in their preschool environment bolstered their creativity and sense of fair play.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benu\u2019s playground was a place to \u201ctry to ride the bike or play around with a basketball,\u201d says Cole. \u201cYou learned to make your own fun and create a game with other kids.\u201d\u00a0\u201cFor me, it was the crafts she did with us, and coloring,\u201d remembers Brooke. Ten years later, Brooke shares her creativity with younger kids by helping her former teacher prepare for an annual summer barbecue. \u201cActually providing some help rather than being a nuisance is important,\u201d says Brooke. \u201cI guess I learned that from Benu and I\u2019m still learning it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Zak \u201ccreativity,\u201d has the added bonus of \u201chelping you get out of a rut and get motivated again when things go poorly.\u201d In Miss Patty\u2019s woodsy backyard, Zak experimented a lot with dirt, sticks, and bugs.\u00a0\u201cFree play forces you to organize yourself,\u201d he concludes philosophically. \u201cYou don’t have any rules to work within, so you\u2019re in charge of yourself and you have to choose your own direction. Having that agency has really been important in graduate school because I can maintain a sense of direction and purpose and keep going even when a big project gets pretty messy. . . . Which it always does.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try Something New . . . then Try It Again<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A small and consistent group in a family setting taught these young people to be kind to others and responsible for themselves.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s where I learned to value community,\u201d says Venette. \u201cThat sense of community has shaped how I view everything from work to personal relationships, just how important it is to stay connected and to build community with those around you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut what do you remember about learning your letters or numbers, the bread and butter of packaged pre-school curricula?\u201d I inquired.\u00a0\u201cI remember we had Spanish lessons,\u201d chimes in Cole, \u201cwhich was a good exposure to another language.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd Benu always shared her Indian culture as well as all the holidays and culture,\u201d adds Brooke. Cross-culture content delivered through holiday celebrations, reading aloud, and valuing children\u2019s own heritages and languages was a hallmark of many home-based providers I talked to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wise seven-year-old Liam notes that being \u201copen-minded\u201d goes beyond exposing children to new ideas and cultures. \u201dIt also means that I\u2019m willing to try new things now that I might have a problem with at first.\u201d Trying new things, and persevering through the unfamiliar and even through first failures is a critical skill all of these kids learned in home-based care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liam, who spent his kindergarten year doing virtual school, explains that having to do homework and stick it out through the full day of in-person school for first grade has been an adjustment, one he is still working on. With \u201cperseverance,\u201d he\u2019s made it through the first grade and even made friends with some of the kids who \u201cwere in the bully group\u201d at afterschool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Benu\u2019s care, Liam, whose mom describes him as an anxious and timid toddler, has grown into a confident upstander among his peers. \u201cEven some of the kids who are in the bully group were getting bullied by each other,\u201d he observes. \u201cAnd maybe they learned some things from me because I stood up for the younger kids who were in kindergarten and now we are even being friends.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For teenagers Brooke and Cole, transitioning from adolescence to adulthood is a big step into new and bigger challenges. \u201cTo make it through,\u201d says Brooke, \u201cI need to have a game plan, and I need to make friends and kind of network. So those collaboration skills I learned way back in preschool, those will help me.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find the Best Part of Everything<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her big brother\u2019s game plan in the short term is college. \u201cI think you\u2019ve got to have some perseverance skills and some grit. You\u2019ve got to be able to overcome your problems, like not having the best teacher or professor in college, and work through them, or else you’re gonna drown. You\u2019ve just got to find the best part of whatever it is.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding the best part is something all of these kids learned all the way back in preschool from home-based caregivers who created places where little people experienced kindness, creativity, responsibility, and community. \u201cIn preschool,\u201d Zak notes, \u201cyou can learn how to put blocks into block-shaped holes, which develops your spatial awareness, and that\u2019s good. That kind of thing is important, but it doesn\u2019t prepare you for a totally new situation. What helps you more, and will always help you in your life, are the coping skills. When I get really stuck, I take a step back and look at things from a broader perspective and try to figure out why I’m trying to do something or, you know, if there’s a completely different strategy I can apply. You might not hone that skill as much in a one-size-fits-all child-care center where everyone just follows the leader.\u00a0So you have to struggle, and a place like Ms. Patty\u2019s gives you a safe and encouraging place to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five former home-based child care attendees – ranging from ages 7 to 34 – share about their experiences and why that time was so transformative and instructive.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":2,"featured_media":1526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"resource-categories":[53,56],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","resource-categories-family-child-care-fcc","resource-categories-quality"],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"resource-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-categories?post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}