Talking Toddlers

Ep 121 Is Daycare Really Helping Your Child? What Parents Need To Know

• Erin Hyer • Season 4 • Episode 121

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Should you homeschool through kindergarten or send your child to preschool? 

You’ll discover the truth about “socialization,” what’s actually happening in many early childhood programs, and how to confidently decide what’s right for your family — without guilt, pressure, or fear of “falling behind.”


From overworked teachers "managing" behavior, to the loss of play-based learning, to the social-emotional gaps that show up years later, you’ll learn why the most powerful learning still happens at home. 


Erin Hyer — speech-language pathologist with 35+ years of experience — breaks down what young children really need before age 6. 

From the science of brain development to the history of kindergarten, and the modern policies pushing earlier institutional care, Erin shows why everyday life at home is often the best classroom. 

👣 Next Step: Ready for more? Start small with The Tiny Challenge — a personalized way to create a learning-rich lifestyle for your child. Link in the show notes.

CLICK HERE NOW - Tiny Challenge for Moms 

✨ If this episode gave you something to think about, share it with a mom who needs encouragement today. 

And I’d love to hear from you — email me your thoughts or questions.

CONNECT WITH ERIN
contact@HyerLearning.com

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Podcast Disclaimer:
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique—please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.


Erin:

Friends, before we dive into today's prerecorded episode, I need to pause. Like many of you, I've been deeply shaken by the recent senseless assassination of Charlie Kirk. It feels like a watershed moment, not just politically, but spiritually and morally. No matter where you stand on the aisle, no one deserves to be shot down for their words for trying to open a forum where ideas could be debated and discussed violence silences, but conversation invites us to grow. And so I wanna say this upfront. I know some of my listeners out there may not share my faith or even my perspective on Charlie Kirk. That's okay. My hope isn't to convince you. It's to invite you to consider what virtues will you carry forward? What conversations will you open instead of closing down? How can you be the voice for life, for family, for truth? Right where you are today. Charlie believed in nonviolence. He often reminded us that when life felt dark and overwhelming, we need to put down our phone, read scripture, hug our family, and remember what matters most. I didn't know Charlie personally, but his courage to speak openly, even when unpopular stirred me to examine my own heart. For much of my life, I called myself a Catholic, but if I was honest, it was a quiet, lukewarm faith at best. 16 months ago. That changed. I chose to surrender, to be saved again, and to walk intentionally with Jesus. For the first time in my life, I began opening scripture, asking for guidance, and seeking his will. I am far from perfect, a sinful person in need of grace, but I know this, I cannot do this life alone. That's why this loss feels so heavy. It forces each of us to look into our souls and ask, do we want this cycle of anger, cruelty, and division to continue, or do we want something different? I remember Robert F. Kennedy sharing a story that when his brother died, he asked his mother whether the void of such a loss ever gets smaller. She said, no, the hole never closes. But we can grow around it. We can take the best virtues of the one that we lost, weave them into our own character, and strengthen ourselves in their absence. That's how the ratio changes. So today I want to honor Charlie Kirk by doing just that, by remembering his call to protect the vulnerable to fight for faith and family. And to seek truth with courage and compassion. That is also at the heart of this podcast, supporting overwhelmed new moms just like you, cherishing babies and toddlers, choosing presence over distraction and listening for that whisper of the Holy Spirit that points all of us toward love. Today, I send my prayers to Charlie's family. His wife and his two beautiful innocent children, may they be comforted in their grief. As I reflect, I'm reminded of the parable of the talents. Jesus tells us that each of us is entrusted with something precious, and we are called to be faithful stewards of it. To multiply what we've been given, not bury it in the ground. Charlie used his voice, his courage, and his platform boldly. That was his stewardship for me. In this season of my life, I believe my calling is clear to pass down what I know, to guide and support new moms and to help families raise healthy, happy, engage children. For parents that stewardship looks like embracing the role of nurturing your little ones, these beautiful gifts, they're children of God, and we can guide them with love and patience and intention. So, yes, today I grieve, but I also recommit. I want to honor Charlie's life by being faithful with what I've been given, my knowledge, my experience, my faith. My voice and I trust in the promise of Christ who welcomes his faithful servants into heaven with these words. Well done, good and faithful servant. May we each live in such a way that one day we hear those words too. Now, let's step into today's episode together with sober hearts, but also with Renewed Hope.

Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're gonna cover all of that, but here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. If you have ever wondered whether you should keep your child home through kindergarten or if you felt pressured to enroll him into preschool because they need socialization, this episode is for you. I'm Erin Hyer a speech language pathologist with more than 35 years of clinical practice, and I worked with hundreds of families across the country in Southern California. Vermont and now here in Florida, I've watched the slow, almost invisible shift from those play field nurturing early years at home to highly structured institutionalized settings for younger and younger children. And if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you already know what I believe and what I've taught for the past three years that children develop communication, social emotional skills, critical thinking, reasoning, and problem solving through everyday experiences and those skills grow best in a one-to-one natural moment throughout the day with a responsive communication partner. Usually mom, those moments are where you get to model language, help them navigate big feelings and encouraging their curiosity throughout the day, all in your natural flow of life. This is the way God designed development, not through rushing out the door each morning or wolfing down dinner just to move on to the big next task, but through steady. Unhurried connection in your natural rhythm of your home. Today, I wanna walk through what's really happening in those environments, the science of development, birth through six, and why you, yes, you are more qualified to give your child the best start often right at home. So let's dig in. Over the past four decades, there's been a huge cultural shift. Preschool used to be optional enrichment experience, maybe a couple of mornings a week for a three or a 4-year-old Now. It's marketed as a must have. And daycare, it's been rebranded as early learning, so parents feel like they're giving their kids a headstart. Somewhere along the way, moms, especially those who were home, were told that toddlers would miss out if they weren't in a group setting by age two or three. And let me be very clear, this is not developmentally accurate. At all. In fact, the science says just the opposite in her book Being there, Erica Commissar does a brilliant job laying out why the first three years require consistent, emotional available caregiving and how that foundation is what shapes your child's emotional regulation, attention, and even future academic success. And you know, it's not just that I've seen these changes in my own clinical practice. We have shifted dramatically from what was once considered normal for early childhood education back in the 1960s and seventies, and even throughout the 1980s, kindergarten was almost always a half day program. I remember it being very common. Even expected for many boys to start kindergarten at six, not five, simply because they needed more time to mature socially and emotionally. Back then, if a child wasn't quite ready, maybe they had trouble regulating their emotions or navigating peer interactions. I was often called in to assess whether they should wait for another year or push on. And truthfully, nine times outta 10, if those social emotional foundations weren't solid, the best recommendation was to hold them back for another year, wait until their sixth birthday. We knew that academic readiness was only one piece to the puzzle, and it wasn't even the most important piece. I've seen this in my own practice, as I said, in Southern California from 1999, all the way through 2008, and then in Vermont from 2008 through 2022. And now I'm here in Florida, and although I'm not affiliated with any schools, I'm working closely with new moms and moms getting ready for preschool. And unfortunately, I can tell you the trend isn't slowing down. I'm seeing more and more kids with complex issues, fewer skilled teachers, and even fewer skilled therapists since the pandemic. The truth is many have left the field entirely, and the children, unfortunately, they're the ones paying the price. One of the biggest arguments I hear for sending toddlers to preschool is they need socialization. It sounds reasonable. Okay, I get it. Until you begin to really peel back the layers and understand how social development actually works long before age six. Here's the truth, before three or four years of age, peer socialization is still mostly parallel play. That's where two children might play side by side, but they're not truly playing with each other. And yes, we are supposed to help them and guide them, but real cooperation, empathy. Turn taking those skills are learned best from attentive adults who model them not from other toddlers. Kids rarely pick up good social skills from other toddlers. I've watched parents truly breathe a big sigh of relief when they realize their child isn't quote unquote behind socially, just because they aren't in in a playgroup every day. And and I have been part of and witnessed innocent. Two, three and 4-year-old kids get kicked out of not one school, not two schools, but three schools because of social behavior. They aren't ready for that. And to me it was heartbreaking. In fact, some of the most socially confident kindergartners I've ever met were kids who stayed home until age five, and they walked into kindergarten. They felt like. Uh, they had solid skills. They spent years with consistent one-on-one interactions with people who loved them, guided them positively, reinforced them, and built their, their human communication and understanding of this world from the ground up. Socialization isn't about being surrounded by peers or people your own size. It's about having the safe and trusted relationships where you learn through them how to communicate and you learn how to compromise and you learn how to connect and you can do that beautifully at home, at the park, in the library, through small play dates. And even those play dates need to be supervised. This is why I always come back to the power of your everyday routines. What are you doing in your day-to-day life to help support and nurture this development? When your mornings and evenings aren't a mad dash to meet somebody else's schedule, you have space for connection. You have space to talk about what's coming next and plan together. You can share silly moments at breakfast and extend it if that feels like the right thing to do, and you can read together anytime throughout the day, not just rushed at bedtime when everybody's tired. And I tell you, I've said this hundreds of times, reading at bedtime It's a nice part of your ritual, but that's not pre-literacy. That's not learning. That's not even language-based richness. That's connection. That's beautiful. That's necessary, but you need a lot more of that sprinkled throughout your day, those little pockets of time. Sprinkled throughout the day are actually where the most powerful social and communication skills are built. So let's take a moment here. Let me give you a peek behind the curtain, because I've worked as a consultant and a direct educator in dozens of preschools and daycare settings, as I said, across many states. First. Let's look at the ratios. One teacher for 10, 12, sometimes even 15 children, even with the most loving, well-intentioned teacher, there's no way each child is getting the individual attention they need. Teachers are often managing behavior. That's what they learn in college. Keeping everybody safe. I respect that. But they also have to follow a schedule and, and overall it's not deeply engaging with each child. They don't have time for that. They have an agenda that they have to check off each and every day. Second, the pressure for early academics. Many programs are now pushing pre-reading, pre math skills in ways that are simply developmentally inappropriate. And as I said, I have been in the thick of it for over 35 years. This ends up creating stress for some of the children and then boredom for others. Either way. It is not rich, exploratory play in which their brains, our brains are wired and hungry for during these developmental years. The third piece to this is that there's an illusion of engagement. And believe me, I've walked into numerous classrooms where the kids look busy, they even looked happy. But when you look closely and when you know what you're looking for. They're following rote routine. They're doing cookie cutter crafts, hurry up, get done, and then rotating through these activity stations without any deep or well-meaning engagement. Right? It's all superficial. So then the teacher can check these off. They're they're occupied. Yes. But as I said, there is not deep learning. There's not even deep attention. Part of the problem is that the culture of kindergarten itself has changed and then that has trickled down to everything else. We've lost the whole sense of play, right? That play-based learning within kindergarten classrooms has been growing, I think ever since 2001, for when we had no child left behind, that legislation placed high stake, high stake demands on the districts. Because they included scripted curricula. That's the first time I've ever seen that ongoing testing with three, four, and five year olds. And then these rigid, unrealistic state standards. When you push those requirements down into kindergarten, the space for imaginative play, exploration, social learning, it all shrinks. It's no longer about learning through play. It's about meeting these benchmarks. It's, it's, so to me, unhealthy, unnatural. That shift started affecting children earlier and earlier because the shift keeps trickling down. First grade looked. Uh, it was pushed down to kindergarten. Kindergarten was pushed down to kindergarten or preschool, sorry. And preschool was pushed down to daycare and you know, I'll be honest. Are there exceptions? Sure. I've seen a few here, there, but it's mostly an individual teacher, not necessarily a full program. And you know, I can meet some remarkable adults who really mean well, and maybe they are blessed with less ratio, but not in recent years and. And I do have to clarify, that was always the exception, not the rule, not in these systems, these institutionalized organizations. I also look at that, even the best setting, there is no substitute for the unique connection between a parent and her child. And I know all family situations aren't perfect and ideal, but at the end of the day, that's what we've been designed to learn through our parents to learn at home and prepare us for the outside world. So at this point, I, you might be shaking your head, you're saying, you know, but I'm not a teacher. I know nothing about child development. I don't know how kids learn to learn. Let me tell you something. Very, very honestly, teaching in these early years is not about having a degree in education. It's about modeling, demonstrating, as I said, through real life experiences using language based learning. Guiding their behavior and shaping it in a natural, positive, reinforcing, gentle way, and then sharing real life moments in real time and doing it again and again and again. You already do this when you read a story. When you bake cookies, when you take a walk outside in nature, when you just chat with each other, standing in the grocery line or checking things off on your shopping list, these are the real quote unquote lessons of early childhood, and they are far more powerful than worksheets or structured group activities. Research consistently shows that responsive, engaged caregiving has more impact on a child's cognitive and emotional development than formal instruction before age six, and we've known this. For decades, which is exactly why I continually go back to my three P's, that structure framework to be present, purposeful, and playful. It works. Be present in everyday moments, choose activities with intention, and then keep learning in this joyful vibe. It's a win-win situation. If you choose to keep your child home with you. Through kindergarten. You don't have to replicate school either. And in fact, I beg you not to do that. That was a huge mistake for so many families during the pandemic. They tried to just model the classroom and it was a royal failure. This is your chance to create a new rhythm that works for your family in your style. Start the day, unhurried build in plenty of outdoor play. Read together a lot. Explore music and art and nature. Let math happen in the kitchen. Let science happen outside in the garden, and then let literacy happen throughout your day through everyday events. In my work, I have seen again and again that children's thinking skills, their ability to reason and problem solve and to communicate at higher and higher levels, really grow from being actively involved in their everyday life. And that's what I share with you each and every week. On this episode, cooking together, right, and sharing dinner, fixing something around the house, sorting laundry, tending to the garden, going to get the mail. All of these things create real world situations where you're using language, asking questions, figuring things out, and they're right there alongside with you. It's a team effort. It's natural learning, and I believe it is really exactly how God wired us children, your children and my children to develop. That's how we've learned for hundreds and hundreds of years prior to these institutional frameworks that somehow we got lost or got convinced that that was better. This is closer to how childhood used to unfold. Half day programs, unhurried mornings, afternoons at home with your siblings or neighbors or friends. That pace gave kids time to breathe, to play, to develop the emotional maturity they would need for the academic years that are out far, far ahead of them. So go ahead, use your library, meet other families at the park. Find low cost activities in your community. This isn't about isolating your children either, and that's another big complaint. It's about giving them a rich, real world education in the context of secure relationships and appropriate developmental expectations. So now I just want to acknowledge that I understand not every family can keep your child at home full time. I get that. You have work schedules, finances, personal circumstances, and real factors that inhibit you to do that. there's something else that troubles me about the current landscape. Many states that offer so-called free daycare now actually mandate that it's only available as a full-time care. And I've seen that trickle down over the years too. That works against healthy development for so many children. It also limits your ability, mom to create a slower, more natural rhythm to your life. And, and it inhibits your ability for more intentional life practices. Right? Not to mention that it stops. A two, three, 4-year-old from easing into this big, overwhelming world of ours. It was very, very common even back in the 1980s and 1990s and probably early two thousands for kids to go for to two half day mornings. That was it. It was a nice introduction to more classroom based learning. And if you've ever heard of Gabor Mate, he talks about, he's a clinical psychiatrist and he talks about the importance of raising children in a tribe like environment where you. The, your child is surrounded by a number of different consistent relationships and, caregivers, but it's shared, right? that's what we could create as, as playgroups, right? but when our systems push institutional care all day, every day. Starting at two 18 months all the way through three, four, and five, we're moving in the opposite direction. We're not thinking about what's truly in their best interest. I want you to think about creating perhaps a learning pod. I think that was a phrase that came out of the pandemic and, and some families and communities were quite successful with this, They're small groups or cohorts of students, moms and young children who gather together and learn together. Not five days a week, but on Tuesday we meet at my house on Friday, we meet at the park, but you create your own little learning pod Like your own little tribe, right? Depending on the age, you can focus on academic, but I, at this age group at 3, 4, 5, and six social activities and fun games and building things and forts and obstacle courses and learning how to swim. The sky's the limit, but start to build your community now. When your kids are really, really little, look in your community. Look on Facebook. Look, of other nonprofit organizations or playgroups. Can you start to build your own little tribe? You don't need 15. You need two or three. But if you do need outside care,'cause as I said, I totally respect that some people aren't in that position. Please do your best to look for small groups, a low ratio, and really meet with the caregivers and try to see how they interact with other children. Do they just supervise them and keep them safe or are they really trying to. Build a relationship with them. And please, I know this is hard in this day and age, but walk away from any site that uses a TV as part of their program. I, I've seen that more and more and more over, I think since the pandemic and we've all kind of accepted more screen time. But ask how much time is spent outside? How do you handle Conflicts with other children, right? A two, three and 4-year-old are not good sharers and they're not expected to be good sharers, but at home you can guide them through that and navigate and give them practice. How do they handle that in their classroom? And it's, it's really important to support, first and foremost, that emotional and social growth based in language. They, they understand things and then their emotion matures with it through language. That's what language-based learning is all about. But if. Hopefully if you're able to keep your child home, I want to encourage you to do that. I want you to think about it. You are giving them something that's priceless Your time, your presence, and the secure base from which the whole world then opens up to them. Yeah, but they need that foundation first. The early years are about laying a solid, solid base, not racing to the finish line. You and your child really are. In it together, and you're the most important teacher they'll ever have. No matter what happens on the other side, whether you homeschool through KI kindergarten or you simply hold off on all formal schooling, what matters most is that your child feels seen and safe and connected with you, and then anything's possible. The choice to keep your child home through kindergarten. Isn't just about avoiding negatives in those institutional settings. It's about embracing the positive of what you can provide at home. And it won't be perfect. And yes, it will be messy, but it'll be fun and enriching and you'll learn as much as they do. Ask any, you know, homeschool mom on the other side, you'll have more time. For conversations, you'll have more time to work through problem solving skills, there'll be a bunch more hands-on experiences that really shape your child into the character that he was designed to be. Our children thrive when they are anchored in consistency and they know that they're building skills through a loving relationship. And when their days are calm and they feel connected and unhurried, anything's possible. That's H how I believe. I believe in my heart of hearts, that's how we were designed to raise the next generation. And I believe also in my heart of hearts, it's still possible even in today's fast-paced world. That there is a shift, and I know not everyone will be able to shift, but if you can or if you're thinking about it, if you wanna have this conversation, then please do. And before we close, I want to give you a little heads up. Next week on talking Toddlers, we'll be outlining exactly what your toddler or your preschool a preschooler really needs at home with you, because I don't wanna give you this big pep talk and get you to shift your mindset without giving you some tools. So, um, I will outline what your little one, your little one, your 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5-year-old need long before school. Long before formal reading ever enters the picture, you won't wanna miss this. So come back next week. Thank you again for spending your precious time with me today for being open to learning what's possible and for showing up each and every day for your little ones. God bless you, and I'll see you in the next episode of talking Toddlers.