Our family of three––our history, our destiny–– would be judged by the Manhattan nursery school gods. We were twenty-seven years old and felt like a great deal was at stake.
I've had my writing and job applications rejected and there is status connected to all that. But life spared me this particular status absorption and I can't say I'm sorry.
This is amazing story for me. I look from totally different angle! I did not apply to Nursery school but to professional programs that work exactly in a same fashion in my area. I was rejected from all, of course! Reading your stories I understand why I was terrible fit! I admire your depth of the analysis of the situation!
Another fun fact - my friends applied to JCC nursery but her phone ring during the interview. Their application was rejected due to lack of knowledge of etiquette director followed.
How amazing those special rules I am learning everyday in my new life!
Parents are never competing for just a nursery-school seat. They are competing for their child’s future position.
Position is a source of resources for survival. A scarce educational position provides access to educational resources, relationships, and future opportunities. The scarcer the position, the stronger the competition, and the more resources parents are willing to invest.
Once a position is believed to affect the resources and opportunities available to a child in the future, competition enters.
I sent my daughter to a preschool she loved. I don’t remember how I chose it, but fairly randomly. I was unable to swing the cost for my second child so we turned to Head Start. The program was very good. Although I’ve never been to an exclusive preschool, I cannot imagine they could have offered anything more so far as actual education and socialization skills.
Education isn’t the point of these preschools, of course! Didn’t all of us teach our children their colors, numbers, alphabet and such anyway? Didn’t we already teach them how to interact with others politely?
There is a decidedly darker purpose to exclusive schools — to preserve class structures. Even if millions of dollars had been dumped into my lap when my children were young, they still would not have been accepted into certain programs. The decision would not be made on my children’s intelligence, sweetness or personality. They’d have been denied based on my graduation from a state school, my lack of connections and my family’s total ignorance of all kinds of small tells.
It would be instructive for everyone to spend a day at a Head Start program.
It was interesting to me because we were from a little bit different place than most of the other parents. I was just as poor but better educated. The program required parental attendance to some of the sessions, so I had some interaction with them. The cultural differences stood out to me. We talk about socioeconomic groups — we were different “socio” but the same “economic.” They do not always match up as neatly as we assume.
We did the NYC preschool application gauntlet while living in DC. It was low stakes for us because we didn’t have to move if our daughter didn’t get in anywhere appealing. That gave me the emotional distance to observe the process more objectively.
It was insane. The stress emanating from the parents was palpable. We saw one dad “cheat” by maniacally feeding his son the lyrics to “Wheels on the Bus” during the group playdate!
This so made me chuckle inwardly in a warm hearted and good,I hope way. It's so human that the one thing we can't have or feel blocked from is THE ONLY THING WE WANT. And should we get it often it's not that big a deal! I'm glad your children all had a great and successful time at that school. Now,this week I've also enjoyed some more reprehensible glee thanks to the book I am reading " America walks into a bar"...the author is telling how circa 1760 Manhattan was deemed a rough old place and erroneously thought to be named from an Indian word meaning " that place I am drunk all the time" which it seems was the mode of many of the residents. Now that was funny,in quite a bad way!
I remember adoring on Whitman’s poem, Mannahatta— the Lenape name which means “island of many hills.” The hills must have flattened by the 80s when I lived there. 🤷♀️
Good morning David. I must take a moment to clarify your statement “all parents of young children are alike.” I would argue it’s more like “many affluent (and privileged) parents of young children are alike.” Pre-school of any type - not to mention traveling sports programs, whether for financial reasons or lack of availability, is out of reach and simply not an option for millions of young parents. That is where our focus should be in my mind. That is symbolic in my mind of how our special and beloved country is off track right now in a number of ways. We collectively need to rethink things.
Totally aligned. Learning more than one language (and more than one culture) is so important from my perspective. We live in a global time; our kids will have to compete globally; ignoring the rest of the world doesn’t work anymore.
Omigosh, I remember this. I had a Greek American goddaughter who went to rodeos and Dalton. The admission gyrations were hideous. As a godmother in the Greek Orthodox tradition, I vowed responsibility for the kid’s religious education. As the kid started regular school, the Godmother put firm her foot. I was delighted she’d gone to Rodrigo. It was a thing we could share. But I had made serious problems, and it was time Christian religious education began. I preferred, I said, Greek Orthodox, and so it was.
David, so familiar from our decades living in DC! If anything, the pressure becomes more intense when it’s admission to a private day school. On a related note, my husband and I were intimately acquainted with the prep schools in DC. That’s how I know that Brett Cavanaugh lied to the Senators during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings… it still sickens me to think about.
Your piece really resonated with me, particularly after seeing your response to the travel-sports article that inspired it. As a mother of four at an independent school in Florida—with two kids playing competitive soccer—I’m not sure I can put the fault entirely with the parents.
Some of us have our eyes wide open about the absurdity of the system and choose to participate anyway. I hear parents on my daughter’s team talk seriously about athletic scholarships because without one they fear college will be financially out of reach. I have no such illusion about the ROI on club soccer. We keep writing the checks partly because we’re buying something else: a few protected hours of real life.
Even in families like ours that have always prioritized reading and delayed technology, by adolescence the kids largely interact online. You can tell a 14-year-old to “go outside,” but it’s a lot harder when nobody else is outside. I watch kids increasingly self-select into “sports kids” and “not sports kids.” Parent friends who think our travel schedule is crazy (and it truly feels crazy!) are often the same ones worrying that their teenagers are becoming increasingly isolated and trying desperately to find something that will pull them out of their rooms and away from their devices. They often push their kids into tennis and golf, mentioning this is "where business gets done anyway."
Sports certainly don’t solve this. They’re a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But for ninety minutes at practice, the phones go down. The kids run around and talk to each other. And strangely, it forces the parents into community too—we stand on sidelines together, carpool each other’s kids, waste entire weekends at tournaments, and eventually know one another in a way that seems increasingly rare in adult life too.
I also find it fascinating to watch this merge with private-school culture. When I was in independent school myself, the parental preoccupation was largely test scores and where you could get into college; athletics were still mostly part of the old “sound mind, sound body, Presidents Fitness Test” ideal, (with a healthy dose of country-club sports). We’ve been through a Head of School search this week, and I’ve been struck by how central athletic excellence has become to parents’ idea of what the school should be. Schools themselves are now building elite athletic pathways alongside elite academic ones. The well-rounded child is becoming the professionally developed child. Optimize, optimize, optimize.
Manhattan has an extraordinary cultural bounty outside the school gates (lucky you guys!). In much of the rest of America, we seem to be privately purchasing the childhood—and perhaps adult—community infrastructure our far flung communities no longer reliably provide.
I hear you on the hope of a kid getting a college scholarship. Our daughter was an amazing athlete but didn’t like the pressure. That’s when I learned how important it is was for the kid to have a tough psyche too.
I remember those days. The competition for pre school placement was fierce. I had to chuckle at the absurdity of what you and Debbie went through but I’m sure at the time it was quite serious.
This is why Jeffrey and I took the opposite road. We put the kids in a French pre school. Our families thought we were nuts.
Thx for the homework. I now know what Jesuitical means— and my son went to an all boys Jesuit high school. Go figure.
Thank you for sharing an insider’s view of the cutthroat nature of preschool enrollment in Manhattan. I love the honesty and self-deprecating humor of this piece. I believe that there are many parents throughout the country who can relate to this competition. In my state, it has much to do with hockey, and starts as soon as kids are on skates. Fortunately, mine weren’t interested. But some friendships got lost in the struggle, as hockey moms have no time for other things. That was hard.
When I was looking for nursery school for my son, then two and a half, I had a wealth of choices. The nearest was Rudolf Steiner, who insisted they didn't teach them at all but did not allow them plastic. Then there was a semi-Montessori who were big on teaching, but it had to be child led. Then there was another, run by a woman from a military family, who said they definitely taught but in a very traditional way. There may have been another. I claimed there was more orthodoxy about nursery school than any other part of education, including university. In the end, he went to the Montessori who were willing to take him un-toilet trained - they were a brand new place and were looking for customers. He learned to read age 3 and went on to do a PhD and teach at university. I thought the whole thing was very funny. No money issues or status involved, thank goodness.
It's the desperate, irrational determination to reach goals that has made the United States country that it is.
If we stop being crazy, we will stop being us.
Alternatively, I heave mountains of scorn toward us, and I fart in our general direction!
Beside the point, DJT will soon rename the San Andreas Fault, the Joe Biden's Fault.
I've had my writing and job applications rejected and there is status connected to all that. But life spared me this particular status absorption and I can't say I'm sorry.
This is amazing story for me. I look from totally different angle! I did not apply to Nursery school but to professional programs that work exactly in a same fashion in my area. I was rejected from all, of course! Reading your stories I understand why I was terrible fit! I admire your depth of the analysis of the situation!
Another fun fact - my friends applied to JCC nursery but her phone ring during the interview. Their application was rejected due to lack of knowledge of etiquette director followed.
How amazing those special rules I am learning everyday in my new life!
Parents are never competing for just a nursery-school seat. They are competing for their child’s future position.
Position is a source of resources for survival. A scarce educational position provides access to educational resources, relationships, and future opportunities. The scarcer the position, the stronger the competition, and the more resources parents are willing to invest.
Once a position is believed to affect the resources and opportunities available to a child in the future, competition enters.
I sent my daughter to a preschool she loved. I don’t remember how I chose it, but fairly randomly. I was unable to swing the cost for my second child so we turned to Head Start. The program was very good. Although I’ve never been to an exclusive preschool, I cannot imagine they could have offered anything more so far as actual education and socialization skills.
Education isn’t the point of these preschools, of course! Didn’t all of us teach our children their colors, numbers, alphabet and such anyway? Didn’t we already teach them how to interact with others politely?
There is a decidedly darker purpose to exclusive schools — to preserve class structures. Even if millions of dollars had been dumped into my lap when my children were young, they still would not have been accepted into certain programs. The decision would not be made on my children’s intelligence, sweetness or personality. They’d have been denied based on my graduation from a state school, my lack of connections and my family’s total ignorance of all kinds of small tells.
It would be instructive for everyone to spend a day at a Head Start program.
Head start sounds wonderful. 👏
It was interesting to me because we were from a little bit different place than most of the other parents. I was just as poor but better educated. The program required parental attendance to some of the sessions, so I had some interaction with them. The cultural differences stood out to me. We talk about socioeconomic groups — we were different “socio” but the same “economic.” They do not always match up as neatly as we assume.
We did the NYC preschool application gauntlet while living in DC. It was low stakes for us because we didn’t have to move if our daughter didn’t get in anywhere appealing. That gave me the emotional distance to observe the process more objectively.
It was insane. The stress emanating from the parents was palpable. We saw one dad “cheat” by maniacally feeding his son the lyrics to “Wheels on the Bus” during the group playdate!
This so made me chuckle inwardly in a warm hearted and good,I hope way. It's so human that the one thing we can't have or feel blocked from is THE ONLY THING WE WANT. And should we get it often it's not that big a deal! I'm glad your children all had a great and successful time at that school. Now,this week I've also enjoyed some more reprehensible glee thanks to the book I am reading " America walks into a bar"...the author is telling how circa 1760 Manhattan was deemed a rough old place and erroneously thought to be named from an Indian word meaning " that place I am drunk all the time" which it seems was the mode of many of the residents. Now that was funny,in quite a bad way!
That’s hilarious.
I remember adoring on Whitman’s poem, Mannahatta— the Lenape name which means “island of many hills.” The hills must have flattened by the 80s when I lived there. 🤷♀️
Good morning David. I must take a moment to clarify your statement “all parents of young children are alike.” I would argue it’s more like “many affluent (and privileged) parents of young children are alike.” Pre-school of any type - not to mention traveling sports programs, whether for financial reasons or lack of availability, is out of reach and simply not an option for millions of young parents. That is where our focus should be in my mind. That is symbolic in my mind of how our special and beloved country is off track right now in a number of ways. We collectively need to rethink things.
This is why Hubby and I put our kids in a French pre school. It was half the price easy to get into and the bonus of our kids being bilingual.
Totally aligned. Learning more than one language (and more than one culture) is so important from my perspective. We live in a global time; our kids will have to compete globally; ignoring the rest of the world doesn’t work anymore.
We know you are great at puzzles david
Omigosh, I remember this. I had a Greek American goddaughter who went to rodeos and Dalton. The admission gyrations were hideous. As a godmother in the Greek Orthodox tradition, I vowed responsibility for the kid’s religious education. As the kid started regular school, the Godmother put firm her foot. I was delighted she’d gone to Rodrigo. It was a thing we could share. But I had made serious problems, and it was time Christian religious education began. I preferred, I said, Greek Orthodox, and so it was.
David, so familiar from our decades living in DC! If anything, the pressure becomes more intense when it’s admission to a private day school. On a related note, my husband and I were intimately acquainted with the prep schools in DC. That’s how I know that Brett Cavanaugh lied to the Senators during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings… it still sickens me to think about.
Your piece really resonated with me, particularly after seeing your response to the travel-sports article that inspired it. As a mother of four at an independent school in Florida—with two kids playing competitive soccer—I’m not sure I can put the fault entirely with the parents.
Some of us have our eyes wide open about the absurdity of the system and choose to participate anyway. I hear parents on my daughter’s team talk seriously about athletic scholarships because without one they fear college will be financially out of reach. I have no such illusion about the ROI on club soccer. We keep writing the checks partly because we’re buying something else: a few protected hours of real life.
Even in families like ours that have always prioritized reading and delayed technology, by adolescence the kids largely interact online. You can tell a 14-year-old to “go outside,” but it’s a lot harder when nobody else is outside. I watch kids increasingly self-select into “sports kids” and “not sports kids.” Parent friends who think our travel schedule is crazy (and it truly feels crazy!) are often the same ones worrying that their teenagers are becoming increasingly isolated and trying desperately to find something that will pull them out of their rooms and away from their devices. They often push their kids into tennis and golf, mentioning this is "where business gets done anyway."
Sports certainly don’t solve this. They’re a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But for ninety minutes at practice, the phones go down. The kids run around and talk to each other. And strangely, it forces the parents into community too—we stand on sidelines together, carpool each other’s kids, waste entire weekends at tournaments, and eventually know one another in a way that seems increasingly rare in adult life too.
I also find it fascinating to watch this merge with private-school culture. When I was in independent school myself, the parental preoccupation was largely test scores and where you could get into college; athletics were still mostly part of the old “sound mind, sound body, Presidents Fitness Test” ideal, (with a healthy dose of country-club sports). We’ve been through a Head of School search this week, and I’ve been struck by how central athletic excellence has become to parents’ idea of what the school should be. Schools themselves are now building elite athletic pathways alongside elite academic ones. The well-rounded child is becoming the professionally developed child. Optimize, optimize, optimize.
Manhattan has an extraordinary cultural bounty outside the school gates (lucky you guys!). In much of the rest of America, we seem to be privately purchasing the childhood—and perhaps adult—community infrastructure our far flung communities no longer reliably provide.
I hear you on the hope of a kid getting a college scholarship. Our daughter was an amazing athlete but didn’t like the pressure. That’s when I learned how important it is was for the kid to have a tough psyche too.
The only view of young children more illusionary than their parents’ is that of grandparents. Guilty as charged, your honor.
I remember those days. The competition for pre school placement was fierce. I had to chuckle at the absurdity of what you and Debbie went through but I’m sure at the time it was quite serious.
This is why Jeffrey and I took the opposite road. We put the kids in a French pre school. Our families thought we were nuts.
Thx for the homework. I now know what Jesuitical means— and my son went to an all boys Jesuit high school. Go figure.
Thank you for sharing an insider’s view of the cutthroat nature of preschool enrollment in Manhattan. I love the honesty and self-deprecating humor of this piece. I believe that there are many parents throughout the country who can relate to this competition. In my state, it has much to do with hockey, and starts as soon as kids are on skates. Fortunately, mine weren’t interested. But some friendships got lost in the struggle, as hockey moms have no time for other things. That was hard.
When I was looking for nursery school for my son, then two and a half, I had a wealth of choices. The nearest was Rudolf Steiner, who insisted they didn't teach them at all but did not allow them plastic. Then there was a semi-Montessori who were big on teaching, but it had to be child led. Then there was another, run by a woman from a military family, who said they definitely taught but in a very traditional way. There may have been another. I claimed there was more orthodoxy about nursery school than any other part of education, including university. In the end, he went to the Montessori who were willing to take him un-toilet trained - they were a brand new place and were looking for customers. He learned to read age 3 and went on to do a PhD and teach at university. I thought the whole thing was very funny. No money issues or status involved, thank goodness.