Q&A with The Daycare Myth author, Dr. Dan Wuori

What made you decide to write The Daycare Myth?

After more than 30 years on the field, I found myself compelled to spell out what I view as a dangerous disconnect between what we know about the needs of young children and the way our systems actually operate in practice. Not only are we sub-optimizing early development, but we are saddling taxpayers for decades to come for our failure to get things right (at a far lower cost) in the first place.

This isn’t a partisan issue. And it’s one that affects each and every one of us, regardless of whether there are young children in our lives currently.

My hope from the beginning was that the book would be an opportunity to pause and reflect on “the way things are“ as compared to the way they ought to be. To have my book — which was designed as a conversation starter — be used in just that way in Nashville is such a special treat.

As a country, what exactly are we getting wrong about early childhood education?

For the better part of a century, we have operated on the premise that education and care are two very different things — that education begins in kindergarten, but that prior to that we offer something lesser. But this notion is contradicted by decades of brain science. And we know better than we ever have that learning begins even before children enter the world. If we know this to be true, then it’s critical that we adjust both our thinking and our systems to better optimize the development of very young children.

What’s the one thing you want parents to take away from this book? What about policymakers?

For parents, the book’s main takeaway is that the choice as to where you place your infant may be the most important one you ever make on their behalf. That’s because you aren’t selecting a babysitter. Instead, we are selecting the adults who will co-construct our children’s brains. And that’s a very different way of looking at the situation.

For policy makers, the implications here are huge. Proactive investments in early childhood have been shown to improve academic outcomes, diminish long-term reliance on social welfare programs, improve long term health, and minimize interactions with the criminal justice system, just to name a few. Here we have an opportunity to meaningfully shrink the size of government and reduce burden on individual taxpayers not through draconian cuts, but by minimizing the need for them in the first place.

What is a practical action step parents with young children should take right now? What about early childhood education advocates?

First and foremost, parents need to understand the importance of the period from prenatal to three, so they can make informed choices for their children – whether that means planning to have a parent in the home or selecting a high-quality early learning setting. For advocates, I believe the same holds true in a lot of ways. Much of the public and many policy makers continue to misconstrue the early years as less important than they actually are and the results are detrimental for us all. The idea behind the book is that when we know better we can do better.