i'm starting to see why most kids are doomed from day one

[backbreaker]

as most of you know my wife does not work. which means that our son stays home all day which is cool I get to see him all the time as i work from home. we have been debating this back and forth, i want to put joe in day care/ pre school, to let him get used to being around other kids and stuff, she wants to keep him at home, she basically just doesn't like the thought of not having him around. she works with him with his ABC's and stuff it's not like he's just sitting at home playing all day. actually he is lol, but you get the point.

so we decided, let's at least look and see what's out there and then come up witha list of pros and cons to each.

so yesterday we went to look at 3 preschools around town. lol i should have known what i was in for when not one of the schools listed their prices on the website. good lord.

how can i put this.. you know, say you are a male and you live in Los Angeles you are 23 years old. you have a job making 35k a year and you meet this chick, you "love her" and one thing leads to another. she decides she wants to have a child. you get her preganat have a baby... you will have to scrap by just to be able to afford the cheapest day cares around town. what you will probably end up doing is sending the child to grandma's house or something like that where the kid isn't going to learn **** and is going to be behind the 8 ball.

i guess becuase i was raised in arknasas one of the worst education states in america, they did not expect the kids to know anything when they went to kindergarten, i remember learning my abc's when i went to kindergarten. **** actually the first grade. now a days, it's just a given when you hit kindergarten that your kid knowws his abc's. they hit the ground running. my little sister who went to private school was learning Spanish in the 4th grade. they aren't playing around anymore, at least the good schools.

i wish there was a gude or someone to sit down and really explain to guys and women just how much money it cost to give your child a decent education. The two day cares we narrowed it down to cost 1,250 a month and 1,100 a month respectively. and these aren't even "top tier" day cares, i feel anything more than that is at a point of diminishing returns

god forbid you have twins. we have a friend who has a 4 year old and a 2 year old and we were talking to them yesterday and they pay 2300 for day care a month. 2300 fvcking dollars for day care.

mind you we live in LA i'm sure the price fluctuates depending on where you live. i know my sister's (in little rock) day care was 200 a week so 800 a month and it was decent enough.

we will probably end up sending him to day care just so he can get used to being around kids his age everyday.


while let's take the lower number, 1,100 isn't just a a ton of money, it isn't something that I believe two sub 25 year old's could easily afford. just stresses to me just how not ready most people are to have kids.

it cost money, a lot of it to successfully raise a child in America. you odn't have to be rich by any stretch but i mean, you need to be established. something most men aren't when they have children.

like i look at my cousin, she has 3 kids and she is 25 years old. she had her first when she was 14 years old. and my grandmother had to take care of him everyday today he is 9 years old and can barely read. breaks my heart. and i remember when she got pregnant everyone was happy to pitch in and help but the truth is the baby was doomed in the sense that he was destined to be behind the other kids his age from the start. he was never given a fair chance. and she just keeps popping out babies and handing them off.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Money spent on a child has absolutely no bearing upon my concept of "success." I get to be around a lot of doctor's kids at social functions, and they are the biggest spoiled brats that I have ever seen. I'm embarrassed for their parents; I couldn't imagine having children that behaved that way.

The social aspect of pre-school and interacting with other children is all that matters. The idea that paying someone $1200/mo to teach a toddler ABCs is somehow going to put him ahead is a scam to rip off well-meaning parents. The government had the "Head Start" program to give poor pre-k kids a chance at getting ahead on their education. Those kids were tracked for years, and although they did have a slight advantage in the first couple of years, by the fourth grade or so, whatever academic advantage they got from Head Start had disappeared.

I'm grateful that I grew up so poor. I had Sesame Street at grandma's house, and that was all I needed to learn to read at about age four. My teachers usually let me go read a book while the other kids learned shapes and colors. My public school was a white trash ghetto, and a violent place - teachers beat kids, bullies beat kids, there were lots of beatings and very little sympathy for tattletales. That description sounds like a horror story, but it actually taught a lot of valuable life lessons: fight back when picked on, don't snitch, and the world is not fair. Those are not the kind of lessons that can be purchased with money.

I would not wish wealth upon any child, because I have rarely seen it work out well. The only rich people I know who have been good parents were complete hard-a55es on their kids. I ran a tutoring business in college, and one thing I noticed about the parents who paid me is that all they ever seemed to care about was the fact that they paid me. They had paid for private tutoring lessons, and in their mind that made them good parents by definition. None of them ever really showed much interest in what actually occurred at the tutoring or the actual progress of the kid's education. They had thrown money at the problem - to me - and now they felt good about themselves, so that was all that mattered. That's why the day cares you looked at can be so expensive. They are selling the emotion of feeling like a good parent because you pay them a lot of money.

 

[backbreaker]

i usually agree with pretty much everything you say but i think your first paragraph is a vast generalization.

I mean, we are in the same boat. we were not poor but we weren't well off either growing up. i went to my church's day care growing up and we didn't learn anything. it was just a place to go while our parents were at work.

i was so far behind when i went to school the teachers wanted to hold me back and put me in resource classes. i did not learn how to add/subtract until the 3rd grade. honestly it's probably part of the reason i'm such a horrible speller.

by the third grade something "clicked" and by the time i was in 4th grade i was in alpha/talented and gifted classes. but for me to get toi that point it took my third grade teacher literally keeping me after school a few days a week and my parents picking me up. every year she picked a few kids who she thought had potential and kept them after school to do extra work and it paid off. if not for her i don't know where i would be honestly. i actually flew her out to my wedding we stil keep in touch.

I'm grateful that I grew up so poor. I had Sesame Street at grandma's house, and that was all I needed to learn to read at about age four.

when i wasn't in day care i was over my granddad's house watching him get drunk and playing the price is right and watching all his soap operas. you make the assumption that everyone that stays home is getting an education. id did not know what sesame street was until i was like 8 or 9 years old. but i knew all the characters on the bold and the beautiful actually i was named after a soap opera character.

I mean, my son stays home and he's smart as a whip. there is no doubt that education wise i think he is ahead of the curve. he will be 4 here in 2 months and knows his abc's and is learning to write. we speak french as well and he knows what certain words in french mean as well. very very bright. I mean he was smart enough to figure out where the ice cream in the house was being held and try to steal it and also smart enough to realize that i need my phone and try to flush it down the toilet. also little things like i have a salt water fish tank and he knows already what fish eat what food. he cdan feed the fish all by himself at 3 years old. but we are all on the same page with his education. he stays home with purpose. when my cousin drops her kids off my grandmother not only doesn't care, even if she did she couldn't do much to help him. she has to watch her TV and she can barely read her self.

i agree with your assessment on kids with money more than you can imagine, but at the same time there is something to said for having a good education , paying for a good education. I do agree that paying for an education does not make it better.ll i went to a public high school, though it was the best in the state and one of the best in the country, the girl that brought me here, who went to a private school asked me for help on understanding a book (she did not feel like reading) and the book was a book (Siddhartha) that we had read in the 10th grade and she was a senior. i remember thinking IOU are paying 600 dollars a month to read **** i read 2 years ago for free. and i understood it perfectly s a 10th grader, so paying for does not necessarily equate to being better. I agree with that. but at the same time, i was lucky enough to go to a really really good public school.. and i was in all ap classes in high school. it would be silly for me to conclude that all private schools are not worth it because i was able to read a book in the 10th grade that my old oneitis was reading in the 12th. paying for a good education does not equate to being spoiled rotton


and all this to simply put in perspective just how much it really cost to raise a child.. even the cheapest day cares are not really cheap so we are splitting hairs. my point being that most young adults just aren't ready. even if i chose not to put my son in day care, i have a choice to do what i want to do. i don't have to do antyhing. a lot of people don't have choices to do that. my parents didn't have a choice but too me me in free day care.

 

[Desdinova]

My kid didn't go to day care either. Before kindergarten, he spent his time with the grand parents. He learned a few things, but I couldn't rely on them to teach him what he needed to know.

I work a full time job. My ex... well... whether having a social life WITHOUT her kid counts as a job or not is beyond me. Anyway, bedtime was when I'd read to my kid and get him to sound out the letters and the words. He started to read at age 3. To 'socialize' him, I'd take him to the park, to the McDonalds play structure, and even dated women with kids. It took him a bit of time to adapt to a group setting (which is more of what's expected with kids in kindergarten) but I can't afford no fvcking day care every month for that 5hit.

My kid is way ahead in his kindergarten class when it comes to reading. While the teacher is trying to get the other kids to read specific words in a sentence on the board, my kid will read the whole fvcking thing. The teacher is blown away.

I've been teaching him how to add by teaching him how to play Yahtzee

Anyway, I can understand where your wife is coming from. Letting your kid go spend time with other kids is fvcking terrifying. What if he gets hurt? What if the other kids beat him up? You gotta jump that hurdle sometime and make yourself go outside that comfort zone with your child.

 

[speed dawg]

There's nothing wrong with the schools in this country. I'm not sure if I'm agreeing or disagreeing but I feel that us adults are very spoiled ourselves. We've got the best schools in the entire world here, man.

I point towards the parents. We're teaching the wrong things. My lessons to my kids center around motivation, self-confidence and spirituality. All the other stuff is about as significant as the homosexual marriage debate in a presidential election...just useless. It doesn't matter.

Like Bible Belt said, day care is a complete rip-off. It's the social aspect I'm after.....learning to interact with others. Any K-12 school will teach the basics. Are some better than others? Sure. I went to public school and know many people that went to private. Are some of them smarter? Yes, but some aren't. But it's not the school they went to, it's the fact that they are more talented and more motivated to use that talent.

It's all about the person and the values we as parents instill in them. And THAT is where we are lacking in this country nowadays. NOT the schools and their curriculum. I went to a public university and I'm doing just as well as someone who went to MIT. College is basically ALL self-motivation anyhow.

 

[PrettyBoyAJ]

You know daycare is designed to be more expensive to keep a majority of black kids from entering. If you look at history the reason that more white people are more wealthy than black people is because that the government allowed white people to get loads while declining people of colored the same priviledge. So white people had the priviledge of living in better neighborhoods thus having better jobs while people of color weren't as fortunate.

Not to stir the pot but think about this for a second when you think of why something like pre-k education is so expensive yet could be crucial for a child.

However if you haven't noticed some home school kids are the smartest kids period. The school system has changed vastly in the last 30 years. Twenty years ago if a kid got a math problem wrong the teacher would say no your wrong. Now a days if a kid gets a problem wrong the teacher would say "at least you tryed." I honestly think more kids would be better off if they were homeschooled.

 

[backbreaker]

Anyway, I can understand where your wife is coming from. Letting your kid go spend time with other kids is fvcking terrifying. What if he gets hurt? What if the other kids beat him up? You gotta jump that hurdle sometime and make yourself go outside that comfort zone with your child.

that's part of the con's.

our son is mixed and doesn't look like other kids (though he is quite handsome ). he has friends around the neigherhood you put him in a new place like that and i can see him being picked on.

also he's tiny. very small for his age.

so it's not set in stone but we have to cross that bridge sooner or later

 

[Desdinova]

our son is mixed and doesn't look like other kids (though he is quite handsome ). he has friends around the neigherhood you put him in a new place like that and i can see him being picked on.

You can't protect him forever. Also, I find that kids generally don't pick on other kids in that way. They may comment on it, but they won't beat the fvck out of them for looking different.

My kid doesn't care about skin color nor disability.

The only way to find out what's going to happen is to throw him into the real world and see what happens. Take action when something happens. If anything, it'll toughen him up.

One of the first times I took my kid to the McDonalds play place, there was a bigger kid about 2-3 years older who grabbed my kid's arm and swung him down to the floor. You know what my kid did? He got up, laughed at the bigger kid, and went off to play some more.

They can surprise you.

 

[Rubirosa]

Whether it's business or education, the only way to truly advance in this country is to work harder than the next guy. If early pre education equals working harder, then so be it, but that's not my opinion.

 

[speed dawg]

You know daycare is designed to be more expensive to keep a majority of black kids from entering. If you look at history the reason that more white people are more wealthy than black people is because that the government allowed white people to get loads while declining people of colored the same priviledge. So white people had the priviledge of living in better neighborhoods thus having better jobs while people of color weren't as fortunate.

I think it used to be this way, even up until the 80's. I think it's more nowadays people just wanting to be more 'elite' than their neighbors.

 

[backbreaker]

Whether it's business or education, the only way to truly advance in this country is to work harder than the next guy. If early pre education equals working harder, then so be it, but that's not my opinion.

while true, i will be damned if my son does not have every advantage that i can afford for him to have, and you would do the same for your kids and don';t say you won't.


that's one of the reasons if not the reason my wife doesn't work. her job so to speak is to raise our son and everything that comes along with it. i can't put a price or a dollar amount on that. she will always be there to make sure he does his homework to make sure he is taking his school seriously and stuff along the like.

i'm going to make sure he gets the best education i think he can have and if that means paying for school that's what's going to happen.
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but the point of this thread is not to say that if you can't afford private school you sohuld not have a child. it's that, I am at a point in life, where I can sit down, and have a rational discussion with my wife about which one we thnink is best, and it not be about the money. if we feel that pre school is best that's what we are going to do. if we don't we aren't. but the money isn't going to factor in the decision it will cost what it cost.

it's about OPTIONS. we have the option to do either or. you want to give your child / or yourself options to do what is best. not do do what you can afford or not do what you can't afford.

 

[Desdinova]

i'm going to make sure he gets the best education i think he can have and if that means paying for school that's what's going to happen.

Money isn't going to make the difference when it comes to your kid's education. What's going to matter is what he's being taught and how he's being taught.

I honestly believe that there's no better teacher than the child's parents. These are the people who should already know what their child responds to and what doesn't work and use that to teach their kids what they need to know.

My kid's off to a better start than I had when I first went to school, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. She didn't teach me a damn thing, so I had to learn how to read in school. My parents thought I was incredibly smart, but I honestly felt like I was way behind my peers when it came to school. My kid's going to be the opposite.

Another thing, my kid is a tough little 5hit. He gets hurt, he'll complain about it, learn from it, and go back to playing. Whenever he hurts himself, I don't make a big deal out of it. I help him learn the lesson, and he toughens up just a little bit more. Whenever I hurt myself as a kid, I cried like a little bytch and became needy.

So my kid's going to be tough and smart. Eventually, he's going to be spinnin' plates too

 

[mrRuckus]

Not to stir the pot but think about this for a second when you think of why something like pre-k education is so expensive yet could be crucial for a child.

I find it very difficult to believe that people care about keeping the black man down more than just the very easily acceptable idea of just wanting to line their pockets.

 

[zekko]

Not only the cost of day care and schooling, add in the price of family health insurance. I honestly don't know how regular working people can afford to live. Although I do know that if you have children, you net yourself a very large tax return, so maybe that explains it.

I never went to day care. I was an only child, and I only played with some family members and some neighborhood kids. When I got into kindergarten I had a very hard time adapting. Nothing to do with learning, I did well in school. But I wasn't used to being around a big crowd of peers like that, and it messed me up for years.

I'm sure it would have been hard on me going to day care too. But it probably would have given me a head start, and I probably would have adapted sooner. But you're right Backbreaker, the real issue is him learning to play with the other kids. It's about the social, not the academic side of things.