Parenting Skills and Early Placement of Children

¶ … Parenting Skills and Early Placement of Children in Daycare Settings

This paper presents a detailed discussion about daycare and the possible correlation between parenting skills and early placement of children in daycare settings. The writer explores the effects of daycare on children as well as the parenting skill possibilities that lead a parent to place their child into an early day care setting. There were ten sources used to complete this paper.

Since the women's movement took hold about four decades ago millions of children have been placed into daycare systems across the nation. This movement has sparked huge debates on the impact of daycare on children including children who have been placed in their daycare settings at a very early age. Some focus has been on the parenting skills of those who place their children into daycare at an early age and whether or not the parenting skills or lack of them correlate with the early daycare placement. With the exception of daycares set up for the exclusive purpose of early intervention, because of poor parenting, there does not seem to be a direct connection between parenting skills or lack thereof in daycare decisions.

PARENTING SKILLS

One can take one hundred parenting skills surveys and one might find one hundred levels, styles and sets of parenting skills on any given day. Parenting skills are as individual as those who implement them but there are a few basics by which the world can measure capability and success. The basic premise of parenting skills is to keep the child safe from harm and teach them to become productive, moralistic adults in the world. Whether or not the parenting skills are tied to daycare entrance has not been looked at to closely but in looking at peripheral clues and situations one can infer that there is no correlation, with the exception of the early intervention settings.

There have been incidences at daycare centers across the nation that provide evidence that the individual parents of the child lacked parenting skills, but that did not seem to have a direct correlation with blanket statements about parenting skills and early entrance to childcare services.

A daycare teacher found a handgun in a bag belonging to a three-year-old boy, police said (Presse, 2002).

The boy had no idea the gun was in his bag, found by a teacher who was helping him unwrap his lunch, a police officer from Riverside, eastern Los Angeles said Wednesday.

The boy's father the previous day had apparently put his jacket and the gun into the bag which the mother picked up the following day without realizing the weapon was inside, giving it to her son to take to school (Presse, 2002)."

One of the factors that may contribute to the question of parenting skills and daycare placement are the studies that have concluded daycare participation can be beneficial for children of all ages according to studies.

A study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that children in higher-quality daycare tend to be more cooperative and less negative with their mothers and others (Schmid, 1998)." The study further found that the mother's parenting skills still played the biggest role in the social ability of the children. While this does attribute some daycare success or failure in daycare settings to parenting skills it is not about early placement, but social skills and parenting skills.

Marion O'Brien of the University of Kansas at Lawrence reported that at ages 2 and 3 children who were in high-quality child care had fewer problems than other youngsters.

In addition, 2-year-olds who received care along with other children tended to be more compliant with caregivers and to have fewer behavior problems when they reached 3.

On the other hand, 2-year-olds who spent more time in child care had more behavior problems than others the same age who spent less time in care (Schmid, 1998). ' This shows that the early placement of a child into daycare does not seem to have a connection to the parenting skills of the children's parents (Schmid, 1998).

Daycare has shown itself to not hinder the learning development of children. In fact it shows that children in daycare settings are often more ready for the school setting than those who have stayed home the first five years of their lives (Schmidt, 1998). Daycare and parenting skills are often tied together in several ways. Studies have been conducted about the language development, and social development but the actual parenting skills and early placement is an often ignored question. One can take the studies in other areas however and from the results of those studies make an educated guess as to the significance parenting skills have on early placement into childcare or daycare settings.

But the quality of daycare is important, the analysis found, especially having the little ones around other children. And the researchers said child care involving a lot of interaction between the child and caregivers can also lead to better mother-child interaction (Randolph, 1998)."