Childcare centres ‘institutionalising’ children

Preschool is “institutionalising” children, says an early childhood educator.

Play, Observe, Record, Support, Extend & Evaluate (PORSE) managing director Jenny Yule says, at 93 per cent, New Zealand has the highest percentage in the OECD of children in centre-based early childhood care.

Yule says she believes if babies had a voice they would probably say, “how would you like to go to a new social event with strangers every day?”

PORSE is a home-based childhood care service with about 3000 children enrolled nationally, and Yule has been working in the early childhood education sector for 30 years.

She says studies into neuroscience and attachment raise serious concerns about young children becoming stressed when spending long hours in large centre-based childhood care.

“When babies are under constant stress all day the cortisone at the base of the spine releases high levels of [the hormone] cortisol into the blood, and that is actually damaging for the brain.”

She says young children need a caring one-on-one relationship with an adult who understands the basics of teaching through play.

“When you have 20 plus children running around, they [the children] are not getting that one-on-one support needed to develop their fine motor skills.”

However, Early Childhood Council chief executive Dr Sarah Farquhar says attachment issues for young children are the same in home-based and centre-based settings because the caregivers are not the child’s actual parents.

Farquhar says there is no evidence that children will be better prepared if they attend home-based childcare.

“An advantage with a centre-based setting is that you have qualified teachers, whereas anyone, providing they are a legal age and pass a police check, can be a home-based caregiver.”

Last month, Children’s Commissioner John Angus launched an inquiry into childhood care (both centre-based and home-based) for children under the age of three.

Ministry of Education figures show enrolments in centre-based care for under two-year-olds have increased by 23.5 per cent since 2004, and Angus says he wants to find out the consequence this is having on children’s wellbeing.

He says he has not received a lot of information about new entrants unable to count or hold a pencil, but says he is concerned because “children who enter school with lower skills than their peers start behind the eight ball”.

Barnardos advocacy manager Deborah Morris-Travers says it is important for parents to spend more time with their children, particularly babies, at their own home.

“If children are in large groups it is quite possible basic skills like counting won’t be acquired before they go to school,” she says.

But Morris-Travers says we may start to see more people in a situation where they are able to spend more time with their children at home.

“In times of economic recession the pressure is on everybody to be working as many hours as they can, but with unemployment going up we may see some rebalancing,” she says.

Debra Hunt, 23, says her one-year-old son likes playing with other kids, but thinks centre-based childcare would exhaust him.

Hunt’s son Sean attends Fairy Godmother’s three days a week, where a woman looks after other people’s children in her own home.

“There are only two other kids there, so she will notice when he is walking more, talking more or saying something new, and she has the time to actually feed him,” says Hunt.

“I don’t know how they do that at day-care centres. They would pretty much just need someone changing nappies all the time. It’s really hard to keep up with all the stuff kids need.”