Is nursery the missing step in a child’s development?

Source: Nida Al Watan

Some parents in Lebanon consider nursery a necessary stage to prepare their child before entering school, while others prefer keeping them under their care during the early years. However, many countries have incorporated nursery into their education systems, considering attendance in the years before school an important part of a child’s development. So, does nursery truly prepare children to integrate into school life? And how can it affect their growth?

European countries have integrated nursery into their education systems, making attendance during the second spring of a child’s life a mandatory stage before entering school, while Canada considers it a separate stage from school until the child reaches the age of six.

In other countries, nursery is viewed as an optional stage, as children are not required to start school before the age of six, allowing them to spend those years with their mothers.

Learning through interaction and discovery

Based on this, Nidal Barakat, an expert in early childhood and a specialist in leadership and special education, considers nursery a very important stage, especially when children begin to need greater openness and the opportunity to experience social life, as they learn through interacting and playing with other children and discovering the external and internal worlds that nursery provides.

Barakat believes that any educational or professional institution is vulnerable to mismanagement and abuse because it is based on human relationships, which can influence parents’ decisions when registering their children in nursery. “Therefore, it is necessary to establish social, national and parental awareness in this regard, and to emphasize that the founder of a nursery must be qualified to manage an educational institution, so that we can control physical, verbal, emotional and psychological violence.”

When is the right time to start nursery?

Regarding the appropriate age for placing a child in nursery, she says: “When a child reaches the age of two, they develop a strong need to communicate and interact with other children, and at that point nursery becomes necessary. Before that, the decision remains optional depending on whether the mother works or not. In the past, nursery was considered the better option instead of leaving the child under the supervision of a domestic helper, as it provides a healthy and clean environment accompanied by an educator, a nurse and a teacher, each of whom contributes to the child’s psychological and physical development.”

Choosing the right nursery

Regarding how to choose the best nursery, she answers: “Parents should learn about the nursery’s conditions and how it was established, in addition to receiving official awareness from the relevant authorities and from the child’s surrounding community, starting with the child’s doctor. They should also ensure the safety of the building and whether the team caring for the child includes a nurse, teacher, educator and specialists, which helps support the child in all aspects. In my opinion, a healthy environment, cleanliness and education are the main criteria for choosing the ideal nursery, in addition to the professionalism of the person managing it.”

Building skills before school

Barakat stresses the importance of supporting a child’s ability to discover and acquire knowledge before reaching the age of six. “Every child is naturally intelligent, but a nurturing environment must be available for them to first acquire the skill of discovery and then the skill of knowledge, allowing them to apply the information they gain in their lives and understand how to use it.”

From this perspective, according to Barakat, we can observe the difference between a child who attended nursery before school and one who did not. “A child who has become accustomed to a nursery program preparing them for school is not smarter than others, but their brain has been trained to receive information more easily, thanks to activities that have taught them to recognize their rights, how to make decisions, rely on themselves and adapt to groups, allowing them to receive information more smoothly than others.”

In addition, a child who leaves their mother’s embrace and home to go to nursery experiences their first real separation, discovering their independence and beginning the process of interacting with their small community, followed by the larger community of school, and eventually the larger community of life.

Detecting learning difficulties early

Asked whether nursery can reveal a child’s first learning difficulties, she says: “It is true that learning difficulties can be discovered during the nursery stage, especially since there is a specialized team following the children. However, its role is limited to drawing parents’ attention and guiding them toward the appropriate specialist to determine the type of difficulty, without directly intervening in the treatment process.”

Home and nursery: Two complementary roles

Although she considers home activities not a replacement for nursery activities, she points out that the two are complementary. The mother provides the child with an atmosphere of entertainment filled with affection and attention, but this is very different from the environment of skills the child acquires with friends and teachers at nursery.

She ultimately emphasizes the importance of the home, as it is the foundation of a child’s life, where they gain affection, care and self-confidence. Nursery then comes afterward to complement this role, with both working together to build a child who is emotionally, psychologically and morally healthy. According to her, the problems children face today are not caused by nursery or school, but rather by the environment, upbringing and what parents have provided their children with or deprived them of.