Early Childhood Education is important.

Abstract: If your child getting a good education is important to you, make sure you at least read to them EVERY night or send them to a good preschool.

My family in 1999.

In the process of getting a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education, I began to wonder what my husband and I did right that we now have four children graduated from high school (generally speaking, educators believe that education is important and is demonstrated by graduating from, at the very least, high school). I am into my 31^st year of being a mom: the oldest is working on her nursing degree (she’s been sidetracked with four children of her own); the second one has ADHD and went to the local community college for two years after which he was accepted to both UCLA and Berkeley; the third (with ADD)  is working on an electronic music career; and the last will be attending UC San Diego in the fall. Early Childhood Education is important. My children stayed home with me (after the third was born) until they went off to public school. My husband and I talked to them a lot, read to them almost every night at bedtime, we counted electric poles while driving down the road, and I quizzed them often about their colors and shapes. They didn’t read when they started kindergarten and they couldn’t add and subtract. BUT, something happened in those early years that gave them a great start to education. Lest you think that it was in their genes, studies have shown that it is nurture not nature that determines a child’s intelligence. If you have time to do only one thing with your child every day, read to them! Do this even if they are enrolled in the greatest preschool in the world.