So there is a big difference, op, and I’m not sure why you would want to keep misnaming it. Pre school isn’t really set up covering childcare during working hours at all. Pre school (half days) generally starts out at 2 days a week for 2 year olds, 3 days a week for 3 yo, etc and is focused on early socialization and skills. If you use pre school you still need child care for most of the day. It generally requires potty trained kids and doesn’t stat before 3. It’s more like supplemental places like my gym, music classes, mothers morning out, or coop pre schools.

Daycare is group childcare that is obviously structured around dual working parent hours. I have done both. There’s some evidence that the less hours/younger age for group care is healthier for kids in the long but obviously is a big financial sacrifice for any family to sah or get a nanny for the bulk of care through those years and what’s best for each family is different. But I think it’s confusing to say you are using pre school when you are doing daycare, because it does imply you are either not working or have a nanny/family caring for your child most of the time. So yes I would clarify that with you if we met on the playground and started talking about childcare.

Anonymous wrote:In my world it is a DCUM issue. We call our daycare "preschool" because DD calls it that to differentiate from the younger kids'/babies room she was in (which she refers to by the name of the center). She is very proud to be a big kid. I usually say "daycare" to other parents because I do think they are different in meaningful ways, but I don't have an inferiority complex about it.

My kids (currently 1 and 3) currently go to daycare and that’s what we call it even though the 3yo does a preschool curriculum. But when my 3yo starts at DCPS next week in public PreK3, I’ve been calling it school I think because it’s in a school building?

Anonymous wrote:I would never correct someone in real life but I do always have the fleeting thought that it’s a bit pathetic when parents of daycare-age kids call it “school.” Makes me think they are in denial about sending kids to daycare, which I think is ridiculous because I fully support women working. It’s just the dishonesty that bothers me.

My question is what makes one a daycare and one a preschool if they are both teaching? My friend sends her kid to a daycare but they are taught the same things kids in preschool are taught. So its a combo preschool and daycare (open year round and until 6pm). So yes, its a daycare. But they also do a ton of teaching.

I don't really care about daycare vs preschool, but the actual job titles of the people who take care of my 3 year old and teach him a preschool curriculum are "teacher" and "assistant teachers," and I feel like it would be actually insulting to them to insist that we cannot call them that. I know preschool teachers as well, the qualifications for teaching at a church half day are not different!

The only time it’s (barely) relevant to distinguish is when the topic of conversation is related to childcare. Parents who have other childcare but send their children to preschool for socialization/academics naturally have a different attitude to unexpected closures etc than parents like me who send their kids to a daycare preschool for childcare while we work/have other commitments.

I would never correct someone in real life but I do always have the fleeting thought that it’s a bit pathetic when parents of daycare-age kids call it “school.” Makes me think they are in denial about sending kids to daycare, which I think is ridiculous because I fully support women working. It’s just the dishonesty that bothers me.

Anonymous wrote:In my world it is a DCUM issue.

+1 I have never met anyone IRL who participates in this "war". OP I think the people you encountered were outliers.

In my world it is a DCUM issue. We call our daycare "preschool" because DD calls it that to differentiate from the younger kids'/babies room she was in (which she refers to by the name of the center). She is very proud to be a big kid. I usually say "daycare" to other parents because I do think they are different in meaningful ways, but I don't have an inferiority complex about it.

Ok, so what about a preschool program in a daycare center with teachers who have the same qualifications as teachers in the public schools? Precare? Dayschool?

Anonymous wrote:You know there are working parents who enroll their kids in preschool, right?

Well if you search these threads you know that any working parent that complains that preschools have too many days off gets admonished for not thinking ahead and choosing a daycare.

Anonymous wrote:Its stupid as are 99% of the "parent wars". The only good thing is it can help weed out who you want to be friends with.

Yup, super useful for that. If someone went our of her way to correct my use of the word "teacher" to "daycare worker" (even if I was talking about the person who works in a daycare and looks after my three month old, who is objectively a daycare worker) I would avoid that person. Because correcting people on semantics like that is obnoxious, doubly so when there is an undertone of whether one is better than the other.

Its stupid as are 99% of the "parent wars". The only good thing is it can help weed out who you want to be friends with.

You know there are working parents who enroll their kids in preschool, right?

Former preschool teacher here! It's dumb, the semantics don't matter. Many many full time daycares have amazing curricula and wonderful teachers. I never worked at a center; always a small private half day program.

It doesn't matter. And you shouldn't care. Just stop caring.

WHY do people care if someone says preschool instead of daycare? I've even had people correct me when I use the word "teacher" and say it's a "daycare worker." This is not semantics, I believe this is more to put down working parents who use daycare versus SAHMs who use preschool.

FWIW my kids are in Pre-K and a 3 year old program, both at a daycare center. There is a curriculum from 9:30-lunch, then lunch, nap, playground time and then they get picked up. My friends' kids are in Pre-K at a church center and they call it preschool instead because they pick up after lunch. Do people who correct others think that we don't realize it's daycare? It doesn't negate the fact that it's still preschool in the beginning of the day.