NURSERY SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1938, Page 17

NURSERY SCHOOLS

THREE-YEAR-OLD PUPILS

PARENTS' COMMENDATIONS

I went to a parents' meeting at my three-year-old daughter's nursery school the other night, states a writer in the London "Daily Mail.' They hold these meetings three or four times a year. The headmistress and the committee sit round a table, and a score or so of parents (usuallyincluding four or-five-fathers) sit at the other end of the room. The talk the other night was on the subject: "You and the School," meaning Why do < you all send your children to a nursery school" I went because 1 had often been criticised for sending my child to school at the age of three. The first parent said she had two children, and couldn't cope with both o-" them unless she was her own under-nurse. Eminently sensible. She sent John to school at the age of two. The second had a little boy who was born in India.- While he was there he was quite happy with his bearer and other children, but when his mother brought him back to England he was suddenly very lonely. At the nursery school he found happiness and companionship with other children. TAUGHT SOCIAL GRACES. The son of the third parent had found no children of his own age round about his home in the country. The parents didn't think he was a "problem child," but the school has taught him social graces, says this parent. She adds that he is an only child, and couldn't quite stick up for himself at home. At school he had to fight his own battles. "Long before Anne was three,'' said the next parent, "I- felt that everything in the garden was not so lovely. Physically she was fine, but her mind needed stimulation. 1 had the idea of asking lots of children to tea, and of sending Anne to tea at other houses. The trouble was, there was always one parent there, and the child of that parent 'bossed' the show. She 'went to her mother' the whole time." ' Anne's- father said he had felt that she should mix with other children, and get away from her parents. It was very difficult to compromise with children, he said—to see eye to eye with them. A "HOL¥ TERROR." The next said that her little boythen her only child—had been 'her close companion Her foreign maid had to return to her own country, and after a while she welcomed the idea of a nursery school. For a term or two he had a "mother complex." Then he got along splendidly. She added that a second child—three months old I —was a "holy terror," and that she would he.only too glad to send her to nursery school. "I sent John," said the next parent, "because he was not the only child. He was 3$ years older than his sister, and seemed to realise that his place in the nursery had been taken." My wife spoke next, and said that our daughter, when she had overcome her fury at learning that there were other children in the world besides herself, had mixed with them with great sociability. "Henrietta," said the next parent, "decided the question for herself by going up to every child in the park, throwing her arms round his neck, and wanting to play." The father of this child pleaded ignorance, laziness, and' neglect! He said his wife and daughter had decided the matter for themselves!