Why_preschool_is_worth_every_penny_and_more
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to
00:00:03.600 | talk about preschool and why I think it's worth every single penny and more.
00:00:09.240 | So the first day of preschool was tough, not so much for our boy but for my wife
00:00:14.000 | and me. My immediate thought was hmm so this is where creativity comes to die. My
00:00:20.640 | wife and I spent three hours a day with him for the first week to help with the
00:00:24.000 | transitioning process. During this time I observed how other kids of varying
00:00:28.960 | developmental levels behaved. I saw kids have to wait their turn, listening to
00:00:34.600 | instruction and trying to communicate with other two and a half year olds who
00:00:37.760 | weren't very good communicators at all. It was kind of chaos, it was kind of free
00:00:42.160 | but I was a little bit sad frankly. As I thought about my negative reactions
00:00:47.360 | while soaking in the hot tub I came to realize what I disliked most about
00:00:51.080 | preschool was exactly what I disliked about work. At work, despite being a
00:00:56.720 | strong performer, I had to wait for a colleague in New York City to first make
00:01:00.560 | managing director before I could make managing director because he had been
00:01:04.320 | promoted to head of the desk. Although he was several years older we had the same
00:01:08.480 | experience, same amount of years of experience working at the firm and I was
00:01:13.000 | managing a large book of business in San Francisco. So I thought to myself do I
00:01:17.160 | really want to wait another five years for him to hopefully get promoted and
00:01:22.080 | then maybe I can get promoted? So I said screw that. After already being in firm
00:01:27.800 | for 11 years I didn't want to wait so I decided to leave and negotiate my
00:01:32.480 | severance. At work I remember having to listen to new hires who didn't know my
00:01:37.400 | business tell me how to do my job and I found this tremendously annoying. I
00:01:42.600 | remember in New York City, what was it, 1998 and 1999, Goldman Sachs went public
00:01:49.040 | in 1999 and suddenly this really private firm where you know we can kind of do
00:01:55.240 | what we want and we had this culture of going to breakfast with the partners and
00:01:59.400 | just being free was suddenly upended because we were a public company now and
00:02:04.640 | our workforce basically doubled in the next three years and it just suddenly
00:02:09.160 | felt not as collegial anymore. I didn't like that. At work I also had to attend
00:02:15.920 | endless meetings and hear people blabber on and on about what we should do.
00:02:20.000 | Ironically the time spent in meetings significantly cut into the time I needed
00:02:24.360 | to do the very things we were being asked to do. Seriously folks, having
00:02:28.960 | meetings about meetings is the biggest waste of time and that's why I like
00:02:32.840 | working for myself and writing because I just wake up, brush my teeth,
00:02:36.400 | go to the bathroom and if it's 4.50 in the morning because I don't know I
00:02:40.400 | couldn't sleep for some reason I'm just gonna go on my computer and do some free
00:02:44.560 | writing. It's just so much more efficient. So what was happening was that I was
00:02:49.480 | unconsciously associating my initial dissatisfaction for preschool with my
00:02:54.040 | tremendous unhappiness at work. I felt terrible subjecting my son to a system
00:02:59.020 | that I had so enthusiastically escaped from in 2012. In some ways it felt like I
00:03:04.400 | was sending him to prison but after a couple of weeks of preschool I started
00:03:08.720 | to have a change of heart and now that I'm three months in I believe preschool
00:03:13.560 | is worth every single penny and more and here are the reasons why. One, preschool
00:03:18.600 | will save a parent's sanity. It wasn't until we finally dropped off our boy,
00:03:23.280 | wiped away our teals and left did we start to appreciate preschool. Initially
00:03:28.860 | during the first month of preschool we finally both got three hours of free
00:03:32.440 | time. We used this time to catch up on errands, tidy up the house, go on a brunch
00:03:37.680 | date or a lunch date and just to soak and relax in the hot tub together. For
00:03:42.680 | once in many many many months both my wife and I had been going non-stop for
00:03:48.200 | two and a half years in a row to raise our boy. Our days would often go from 5
00:03:52.640 | a.m. to 11 p.m. because he wasn't a good sleeper and has the endless energy of
00:03:57.920 | the Sun. I swear he must have been born out of the Sun because he just goes on
00:04:01.400 | and on and on. I was also on a mission to fulfill my 10-year goal of posting three
00:04:06.820 | times a week and the hardest thing you can ever do is try to write and create
00:04:11.080 | and come up with new ideas when you've got a toddler banging on your door
00:04:14.960 | wanting to play with daddy. I swear to God it is just impossible so that's why
00:04:19.120 | my hours just kept on getting longer or I'd wake up earlier or I just start work
00:04:24.800 | and writing later and it was pretty tough. Meanwhile my wife was on a mission
00:04:29.440 | to make sure he had an enriching a home environment as possible and she was the
00:04:33.720 | commander of the Knights and he wasn't a good sleeper. So preschool gave us the
00:04:37.920 | vacation from parenthood we so desperately needed. It is absolutely true
00:04:43.200 | that once a child is born your love life, your relationship kind of goes way down
00:04:49.000 | for the first couple of years. Just look at all the studies and all the research.
00:04:52.480 | Happiness goes way down, freedom goes way down, everything goes way down and when
00:04:56.720 | you have absolute freedom to suddenly having no freedom because you've got to
00:05:01.360 | take care of little one, it's pretty rough and I think it's much rougher than
00:05:05.200 | if you were going to a day job for 12 hours a day and then had to come back.
00:05:09.000 | You know you're tired as hell but it's only like a couple hours before your
00:05:13.400 | child has to go to bed. When our boy started going to preschool for six to
00:05:17.160 | eight hours a day I felt like the heavens had parted. My happiness went
00:05:21.760 | from about a six out of ten back up to an eight out of ten on average. So
00:05:26.360 | preschool can save your relationships and it can save you from misery. Two, your
00:05:33.160 | child will learn to be more independent. It must be scary for a child to go from
00:05:37.520 | always being around his parents to suddenly being in a room full of
00:05:40.880 | strangers but over time your child will adapt, learn the names of everyone and
00:05:45.640 | figure out how to stand his or her ground. Our children will also learn how
00:05:50.120 | to interact well with others. As a son of US Foreign Service parents I clearly
00:05:54.760 | remember the scariness of being the new kid in school every two to four years
00:05:58.040 | but I believe the frequent moves forced me to develop social skills and greater
00:06:02.360 | confidence. Today I love going to all types of social gatherings and have no
00:06:06.960 | fear of talking to anybody. Three, preschool may help develop greater
00:06:11.840 | emotional intelligence in your child. The higher your emotional intelligence the
00:06:16.920 | farther in life you'll go because people will end up liking and supporting you
00:06:21.040 | more. I gotta say there are a lot of socially awkward and emotionally
00:06:26.640 | unintelligent people out there. For example there are people out there who
00:06:31.000 | have no respect for your time so they come 20 minutes late and don't even give
00:06:35.480 | you a heads up. There are people who will ask for something from you without first
00:06:40.040 | giving something. They'll just take take take and never give. So these are the
00:06:44.600 | folks who I think just didn't develop the proper emotional intelligence. They
00:06:49.240 | weren't guided to thinking about other people first before thinking about
00:06:53.200 | themselves and as a result they end up being really greedy and I think
00:06:57.560 | self-centered and I think it's just not a good way to go and live about life.
00:07:02.560 | Four, your child will experience and learn conflict resolution. Someone told
00:07:07.680 | me an interesting quote and he said the greatest violence you will ever
00:07:12.000 | experience is in public school. Now that was just specifically to public school
00:07:16.840 | and just grade school but I was thinking about that quote and I think it's really
00:07:20.800 | true. I remember as a kid I got in a lot of fights and I got suspended, I almost
00:07:26.280 | got expelled. There's just a lot of bad things going on and just for preschool
00:07:30.880 | amongst toddlers inevitably bad things will happen. The first time I was told a
00:07:35.280 | child had bitten our son I was shocked and angry. I wanted to know who that
00:07:39.080 | child was and who his parents were so I could talk to them and make sure that
00:07:44.720 | they're doing everything possible to make sure their kid is not going to be a
00:07:49.560 | terror. But you know what I couldn't find out because that just is the way it is
00:07:54.360 | in preschool and I learned to adapt and I think my son learns to adapt by
00:07:59.200 | understanding that bad things happen and the teachers use these situations as
00:08:04.320 | conflict resolution to talk about apologizing, to talk about conflict
00:08:09.120 | resolution, to talk about forgiveness and so forth. Five, your child will learn new
00:08:13.760 | habits. One of the biggest reasons why my wife and I were so exhausted as
00:08:17.640 | stay-at-home parents was because our boy didn't take regular naps after he turned
00:08:21.800 | about 18 months old. Therefore one of our biggest fears was that when he went to
00:08:26.040 | preschool he wouldn't nap between 12 30 p.m. and 3 p.m. when lights were off. But
00:08:31.360 | surprisingly during the very first day he napped and he continued to nap every
00:08:37.200 | single day for three months except for one day. So during the time your child is
00:08:42.160 | in preschool he or she is gonna learn new habits, a new way of doing things in
00:08:46.960 | a social setting and I think he or she will surprise you on the upside. Six,
00:08:51.520 | you'll learn how soft or hard you really are as parents. You'll gain perspective
00:08:56.080 | especially for first-time parents. We had no idea whether we were strong
00:09:01.200 | disciplinarians, too soft, too hard, so forth. You can learn from the good and
00:09:07.000 | bad habits of other parents by observing how their children act in a school
00:09:10.160 | setting and from your observations you can better calibrate what you should be
00:09:14.600 | doing more of and less of. My wife and I are probably on the softer side because
00:09:20.120 | our personalities are pretty chill. Also we don't have to go anywhere and follow
00:09:25.200 | a strict schedule. For example since we don't have to get to work by let's say
00:09:28.760 | 8 a.m. there was no urgency to wake up our boy at a set time every single
00:09:33.720 | morning, prepare breakfast, brush his teeth and so forth. The absence of
00:09:38.040 | routine probably hurt all of our ability to sleep more soundly because our son
00:09:42.800 | would just kind of sleep whenever. I mean we do try, we try to get him to sleep by
00:09:46.720 | 9 o'clock, 9.30 but you know sometimes things didn't happen and as a result you
00:09:52.960 | know we all kind of suffered for like two, two and a half years of sleep
00:09:56.080 | deprivation. You may also learn in preschool what you've been doing right
00:10:00.280 | as parents. You know they say that speaking to your child as much as
00:10:03.120 | possible is good for learning, therefore we talk to him all day long in English,
00:10:07.880 | Mandarin, Spanish and Japanese but we really didn't know how useful our
00:10:12.200 | efforts were until we went to school after our teachers said they'd be
00:10:15.440 | teaching the class how to count to 10 and we found that really interesting and
00:10:19.440 | we looked at each other and smiled because we had already been teaching him
00:10:22.800 | how to count to a thousand and I don't know if that's great or not but you know
00:10:27.400 | we just why stop at 10? Okay what's after 10? 11, 12, 100, 200, 500, 1000, million,
00:10:32.840 | trillion, quadrillion, whatever and we're not tiger parents we just kind of did
00:10:37.000 | what we thought was natural. So preschool is a great way to calibrate your
00:10:42.520 | parenting skills and figure out where you stand as parents. 7. Your kid won't
00:10:48.400 | get dumbed down. This was one of my biggest concerns whether my son would
00:10:51.840 | regress or get bored if he was being taught something he already knew in
00:10:55.280 | preschool. Fortunately that doesn't seem to be how the young brain works. Instead
00:10:59.240 | of regressing it continues to absorb new information. If parents continue to
00:11:04.960 | provide supplemental education at home I think our kids will continue to grow
00:11:08.520 | just fine. 8. You'll develop a support network of other parents. Spending the
00:11:14.280 | vast majority of your time only with your partner and child can get very
00:11:17.600 | mundane after a while and if you are a stay-at-home parent or a single parent
00:11:22.400 | you're gonna really appreciate the network of other parents who are going
00:11:25.880 | through the same thing you're going through. You're gonna be able to get tips,
00:11:28.800 | maybe you might make a friend or two, it's nice to go to random you know
00:11:33.400 | birthday parties and social functions on the weekend and mix things up. 9. Your
00:11:38.000 | child will participate in new activities. You can do plenty of fun things at home
00:11:42.800 | but there are certain activities like painting and claymation and science
00:11:47.400 | water experience that are much easier to do in school. Your child will also be
00:11:52.160 | exposed to new books and toys to keep him or her stimulated throughout the day.
00:11:55.640 | 10. The other thing is consistency. As stay-at-home parents we get tired, we also
00:12:01.600 | get a little bit bored. So with a preschool setting there are multiple
00:12:05.720 | teachers who rotate often time and continue to stick to new programs and
00:12:10.600 | new ways of doing things. So that consistency is really helpful to create
00:12:15.720 | an elevated level of excitement and newness every single day. And the final
00:12:20.800 | benefit of preschool, I think it's a lifesaver if you are pregnant or have a
00:12:25.080 | baby. Being pregnant or caring for a baby is already difficult. Concurrently caring
00:12:31.120 | for a baby and a toddler who won't stop running around and getting in trouble
00:12:34.320 | takes Herculean strength. For all the mothers out there who are just tired and
00:12:41.080 | exhausted, I feel you, I hear you and just know one thing that a doctor told me, it
00:12:47.760 | takes nine months to create a baby and nine months to recuperate. So give your
00:12:53.560 | body some time to heal and don't be too hard on yourself. By sending your toddler
00:12:59.000 | to preschool not only do you feel great that a highly qualified person is
00:13:02.620 | teaching and caring for him or her, but you feel great that you get to spend
00:13:06.240 | more time taking care of your body or your baby. It is also natural for the
00:13:11.200 | older sibling to get jealous of the baby sometimes. Therefore this separation may
00:13:15.840 | help lessen the jealousy and increase the harmony at home. And who doesn't want
00:13:20.620 | as much harmony at home as possible. So of course not everything is perfect. Here
00:13:26.380 | are some downsides to preschool you'll likely experience, or at least your kids
00:13:30.220 | will likely experience. One, more sickness. Despite a "don't come to school sick"
00:13:35.600 | policy, I'm sure some kids still do because parents have to work and also
00:13:40.280 | nobody knows exactly when a sickness stops being contagious. Your child will
00:13:44.560 | get sick much more often and as a result you will probably get sick much more
00:13:49.320 | often as well. But hopefully in the long run this builds the child's immune
00:13:53.400 | system and he or she will be less sick as he or she gets older. Two, more chance
00:13:59.080 | of danger. You're basically letting go of your child and having someone else care
00:14:03.920 | for him or her. And in a school setting it's probably six to ten kids per
00:14:09.240 | teacher and one person can only see and care so much. It's very unlike at home
00:14:15.360 | where it's a one-to-one ratio or maybe a one-to-two ratio. So your little one will
00:14:19.920 | inevitably get hurt, injured, bonked, bitten, whatever the case may be. Hopefully it'll
00:14:26.000 | never be something life-threatening. You know I pray that nothing bad ever
00:14:30.600 | happens to our son and your children. But expect accidents to happen. Three,
00:14:37.200 | activities at home may change. You know one of my favorite activities I used to
00:14:40.640 | do with my boy was to go for a one-hour walk around the neighborhood. We'd go
00:14:46.080 | everywhere and it was so fun to get exercise, to eat on a curbside step, to
00:14:51.080 | see new garage doors, to see the sunset and so forth. Now when he comes home he's
00:14:56.920 | tired and he hardly ever wants to walk with me and it's a little bit sad. But
00:15:01.720 | when we do it's maybe for 15 minutes and then back home he goes because he misses
00:15:05.840 | mommy as well. So expect activities to change and you've got to adjust
00:15:10.600 | accordingly. And then finally it's the cost right. Most cities in America don't
00:15:15.040 | have universal preschool. Therefore expect to pay between $800 to about
00:15:20.200 | $2,500 for preschool a month depending on location and amount of care. We pay
00:15:26.320 | $1,950 a month for full-time care plus about a thousand dollars a year for
00:15:31.240 | fundraisers which will inevitably happen because we want to support our teachers,
00:15:34.680 | we want to support the facilities and so forth. It's not like they're making tons
00:15:38.960 | of money even though the cost is so high. You know we could go down to part-time
00:15:43.240 | care three days a week for $1,650 a month but we prefer the flexibility. So
00:15:48.240 | the cost is something you've got to calculate and it's always a cost-benefit
00:15:52.200 | analysis. Do you pay this cost and then go to work and you better be making
00:15:57.880 | enough money to afford it and you better like your job enough to want to spend 10
00:16:02.640 | to 12 hours a day at your job. Otherwise it may be better to stay at home. So in
00:16:07.720 | conclusion I say preschool is worth it. Preschool is a necessity to help support
00:16:13.240 | parents careers. If your child can learn while also giving you the ability to
00:16:18.360 | earn, that's a great combo. For us preschool has allowed us to gain back
00:16:22.520 | some of our freedom. Not all, some of it six to eight hours a day. During the
00:16:27.320 | weekdays we've gone back to doing more of the things we love to do like write,
00:16:31.240 | play tennis, go out to eat, go to the beach, nap and so forth. And I'm
00:16:36.440 | noticeably happier than I was before you went to preschool. So happiness, how do
00:16:41.120 | you put a price on happiness? I really can't. I would pay I don't know 25% of my
00:16:46.520 | net worth if I could increase my happiness by one point out of ten. Sure
00:16:51.000 | why not. Happiness is what it's all about. And children are a joy but make no
00:16:56.120 | mistake about it they also bring about tremendous amount of suffering, sadness,
00:17:01.040 | fear and frustration too. And so with this happiness alone I think preschool
00:17:07.040 | is worth all the money in the world. As long as your children enjoy preschool, I
00:17:12.800 | think preschool is one of the best things you could do for them. Make sure
00:17:16.040 | you consistently ask your kids how their day was and whether they are having fun.
00:17:20.840 | If they're having a great time then keep on having them go. If they're not, ask
00:17:25.760 | them why, see if you can figure out some ways to improve their experience, talk to
00:17:31.080 | their teachers or find them a new school or keep them at home. Every child adapts
00:17:36.560 | to school differently. It's up to us as parents to find the best environment for
00:17:41.680 | our children to learn. Thanks so much everyone. If you have any thoughts or
00:17:46.240 | questions leave a comment and if you enjoyed this podcast please share and
00:17:50.520 | subscribe. Thank you.