EXCERPTS
Your editorial suggests that if I crack open any child-care text it becomes questionable how much benefit children receive from "institutionalized daycare". With a degree in Early Childhood Studies, I have actually cracked open more than a few child development textbooks and I can tell you that young children gain enormously from opportunities to play with their peers.
They may not be having "meaningful conversations" in the sandbox as this editorial snidely comments, but their non-verbal interactions are actually highly social and form the stepping stones to more complex co-operative activities. The Post can feel free to keep churning out the anti-child care rhetoric, but at least leave the kids and their sandbox out of it.
- Carolyn Ferns, Toronto
....
The survey of members of the World Association for Infant Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines that this editorial relies on to argue that mother care is better than child care was conducted more than 15 years ago. Could you not find something more current?
Also, the editorial's contention that very young children get little value from interacting with their peers -- since they can't even speak well until closer to the two-year mark -- would make any first-year child development class double up with laughter.
- Monica Lysack, former executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, Regina.
- reprinted from the National Post