| What a hard situation! I don't know what I would do in your shoes? Are there different types of local schools or are they all genuinely the same. We met some old friends of my husbands who had their children in local schools that were more experienced based, not sure the name of the program, anyways the parents ( 2 couples) both thought these types of local school were superior to other types, but what shocked me was that the children were only 5,6,7 years old and were up until 1000 pm doing school work! When do they sleep? Never mind getting to play sports, or swim or other extracirricular things, which I think are important
The really sad thing about trying to get preschooler to do all this "academic" work is that research shoes that young children can learn this stuff early, but then score less well on tests when they are older, and that it is best to foaster a love of learning and play based learning for preschoolers!
I do understand a bit how you can have pressure in your family. My husband started school in HK at age 3, so he all for kids entering school early, but he really struggled in school. In my part of Canada you cannot start until age 4 at earliest, so kids are 4 or 5 when they start kindergarten, and IF you want to you can pay to send kids to private preschools, of all different types. We have decided to send our 3 .5 year old to a 4 day, half day program. Even that is a compromise for my husband and me, as most people here would send to a 2-3 day half day program until kindergarten. Kindergarten is either all day every other day, or everyday half days.  |