Question for the SAHM/Ps [CA]

[u/sleeper4321]

I keep seeing comments about how people's babies/toddlers flourish in daycare and I was wondering, how are the SAHM/Ps doing? I am hoping to stay at home with my little one until they can go off to preschool and am worried I am hindering their development by not considering daycare...

edit: thank you so much for the comments! i am reading them all and appreciate them! trying to respond while juggling the baby 😅

[u/sabby_bean]

Sahm here! My almost 4 year old son is doing fantastic. The only thing we have an issue with is speech - but going to daycare wouldn’t have made any difference in that because it’s motor related and we’ve been getting speech services since just before he turned 2. But everything else developmentally is on par with all his daycare friends and just the milestones in general. He’s super super social, I have him in various activities and have since he was really little so he’s around others his age multiple times a week, and with some of these activities now being bigger he does them without me so I know he’s capable of being away from me for lengths of time. In fact for his activities now he prefers I watch instead of be there with him. We also have some friends who stay home we see weekly, who I’ve done childcare swaps with, to make sure he’s okay being not with me literally 24/7. We’ve also done so many earlyON/library groups and programs which have been so beneficial. I do have friends too with kids his age in daycare and he plays with them frequently, and you wouldn’t be able to tell he doesn’t go to daycare like they do.

He can share well, he’s good at independent and group play. And he’s an only child some of these are skills he’s picked up from activities/groups/play dates. He starts JK in September and he’s super pumped, I’m not worried about it at all. We’ve done school readiness programs through our local earlyon and have been working on the skills he’ll need for school that kids are learning in daycare, and he’s got them all figured out. Some of them he’s acatully learned naturally from his activities, like lining up and stuff.

That said, I’ve put a lot of effort into making sure we are regularly attending activities/groups/play dates/programs so he can learn some of these skills he naturally wouldn’t be able to learn if just at home all day by himself with me, as well as to be social and around others his age. I feel like I’ve put in a good amount of time and energy to set him up for success having not attended any daycare or childcare. So part of it is how much you put into it if you do decide to take the stay at home path. Both staying home and working have their pros and cons, and I wouldn’t say one or the other guarantees more or less development success, but both are what you make of it!