sending my DS to a waldorf rather than montessori nursery

[motheroflittledragon]

DS is now 18 months and while he has been the apple of my eye we are looking into sending him to nursery for 2 half days a week. We are still undecided if morning or afternoon works better for us. This is to socialise him as we have picked up on him being on the very shy side who struggles to interact with the other children when we take him to soft play. he is never mean or anything but he has a tendency to ignore them or stand to the side.

i really wanted to send him to a montessori nursery. having trained as a montessori teacher for the ages 3-6 i really see how the materials not only teach independence but also focus. of course i do know it is not a one size fits all.

here is the problem. i don’t drive so in that aspect am fully reliant on DH. i have tried to learn in the past but was told by my instructor i am unfortunately not suitable. the nearest montessori nursery is 30 minutes away but will probably be more during rush hour. there is a waldorf forest school near us which is realistically probably going to be the one we will have to sending him too. i do know it is very popular too but to me having experience with the montessori method it just seems so unstructured and i worry he will not be as advanced as he might have been with a montessori nursery and that they won’t be getting his full potential out of him. my friend did say that i could do montessori at home and waldorf at nursery but i really feel like i will need to focus even more on the materials we have at home which is more focus on top of it pretty much being on me to teach him mandarin as we have gone nc with my mother and i already feel at a mental exhaustion.

can someone just please tell me i am over thinking all this 😭

i have done that. i made yoto cards in mandarin for him (looking into transferring them onto the tonie box as he seems to prefer the figures to the cards , it is the default language for 70% of the things we let him watch and i do try to speak as much exclusively in mandarin as i can especially if i am on my own with him. i have tried those electric vocabulary cards but other then grabbing the reader out my hands and shoving the cards under the sofa success has been limited 😂🤣 at least i can rest assured he will always have a future as a button presser

well when working with children i am not constantly thinking i will cause a life taking accident

He is EIGHTEEN MONTHS OLD.

He doesn’t need bloody vocabulary cards, ffs. He just needs to hear you talking. That is literally all you need to do. You don’t need to teach him Mandarin, any more than people in China need to teach it to their children. If you want him to read and write it, there’s time for that when he’s old enough to, you know, read and write.

it’s just simple little electric cards that i have seen online for toddlers around his age. it’s a simple picture card you put in and it says lion and then the mandarin word for lion. plenty of parents use it for their toddlers for 1-2 minutes and then move onto the next activity ffs

it’s just so he know what a lion, cow other random item looks like. i don’t know about you but i don’t exactly have a zebra in my back garden to show him what the word means

Fine, but you don't need to - he needs to hear you speaking, to hear others speaking.

The harder thing to pick up later on won't be the vocabulary, it will be the tones and sounds.

which is why i do also speak to him in mandarin and put on mandarin specifically a taiwanese mandarin audio books for him and put on mandarin videos for him. this was just supposed to be an addition and as he is too young i will take it back out in six months time. i am doing as much as i can

Personally I would not touch a Waldorf educational setting with a barge pole .

Insidious, dangerous and racist . Google anthroposophy , Waldorf’s theory based on Eugenics if you want to find out more . Particularly don’t send him if you are not white .

Sorry to alarm you but I find it really worrying that this organisation try to work their way in to society with outwardly harmless fun .

I am Montessori trained as well and would stay very far away from a Waldorf setting. The two are poles apart. Having a niece in a Waldorf school, I find it incredibly jarring hearing about what her school is like. If I were you, I’d go for a different setting within walking distance, but not Waldorf.

i will keep that option in mind. thank you for saying this. DH did say his limit is 10 minutes and i do agree that it needs to be a walkable one as well

See this BBC article .
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-28646118.amp
I once went to a Waldorf toddler group
for a morning - once was enough . Even in that setting my 3 year old child wanted to draw a car and was looking for the black crayon because he wanted to colour in the tyres . We were told Waldorf schools don’t have black crayons because “black is a dirty colour” ..,.

It’s not something taught, it’s built into the curriculum . The Karma beliefs ( based on race hierarchies and. ableism) I have witnessed in another setting. And don’t get me started on their pseudo science and anti vaccine stance.

god that is terrible i had no idea of these believes. it certainly is making me think we should look at other local nurseries too

there is a reggio emilia nursery near us too so maybe that could be an option. thank you for all the help everyone has been on here

They try to keep it well hidden. That toddler group was using their facilities but run by an advocate, parroting what she had been told who let the cat out of the bag without realising it .

Years later when a state school was proposed in our area ( it didn’t last long fortunately - failed due to safeguarding and bullying concerns ) I investigated it again . It hadn’t changed ….

oh that is terrible and a shame it was still the same years later

Don't playgroups exist any more? Neither of mine went to nursery (and both did well at school) but I would take them to local playgroups in church halls etc, which provided social opportunities for all of us. Depending where you live you could well meet another Mandarin speaker too - my area is rather monocultural but I met Dutch, French, Indian, German and Spanish friends via playgroups.

Definitely worth exploring

I am not wrong about this, I am a bilingual parent and if you think limited exposure to one parent speaking the language makes a child bilingual you are incorrect. The child will end up having a primary language and ability to use secondary language, but will not be bilingual without immersion in both languages at any stage of life.

Dear god, the child Is 18 months old! You are massively overthinking this. You send him to a nursery you can get to.

More than possible.

I worked with a woman - intelligent,sociable, high capable at her job, appeared to be fully co-ordinated. Had failed her driving test many, many times so took herself off to one of these week long intensive driving course where you took the driving test at the end of the week. The instructor refused to let her take the test and told her not to waste her time and money on learning to drive as she would never crack it. I think it was a weight lifted off her shoulders.

So yes it is possible to be qualified to teach children and yet not suitable to learn to drive

Do you need a nursery that follows a particular philosophy? Do these philosophies work well for situations other than the time and place they were conceived for? We wanted a setting that took the best out of all these different philosophies and more importantly looked at what the current/up to date evidence says is best? So a nursery that was play based, had lots of unstructured outdoor play and didn’t use e.g. reward charts.

He’s only 18 months and you don’t need childcare, so why not wait to you can find something better. In the meantime go to activities or toddler group together? Then when he’s a bit older playgroup might be better than nursery?

He's a baby, let him be a baby and don't hothouse him.

That's a bit mean, plenty of people would be in that category