Well, I'm still trying to sort out my feelings about the coop. There were many things I did like about it - the parent education nights were very helpful and the director's committment to educating the parents on early childhood developent (as much as is reasonably possible), brain development, gentle discipline options, being an attached parent - were wonderful. Those parent ed nights only validated my already developing philosophy re: parenting. And, I met many wonderful parents who have become very good friends.
The downside - even though our coop is very much "child led" in terms of play and interests, there were still 2 mandatory circle times. Some kids handled that structure very well and others not so well. The very energetic older boys often got into "trouble" for having a hard time sitting through circle or music time that bordered on "punishment". These boys were only very highly energetic children who needed to be running around, not sitting in a circle for 15 - 20 min. My son never got into trouble, but he saw it happen to the other boys and began to hate circle times with a vengence. I began to arrive late merely to avoid the beginning circle time or my son wouldn't want to be there at all. I felt the whole energy around circle times to be contrary to what we, as parents, were being taught about our own interactions with our children and about child led learning. (Though, I must admit, once a week a fabulous storyteller came in and told wonderful stories. All of the kids, from the youngest to the most energetic 5 yo was enthralled and sat very quietly to hear the stories.)
For my child, 33 other kids in the same space was a bit much. He's a pretty sensitive little fellow and I think many times he just got overwhelmed. It took a long time for me to be able to leave him there - but, to the school's credit, they let me stay at the school for the whole day as long as needed. So I went everyday for 3 months before I was able to leave him at all.
During my son's last year, our coop does a pre-k program. I thought it was a good idea, but it turns out that my son wasn't so hip on it. It was much more structure and directed activities than he was comfortable with. I guess it really depends upon the teacher's ability to engage the children in the activity as to whether my son was interested. If he, for once, felt pressured to do something he was ambivalent about, he immediately became resistant to participating. His teacher was very gentle and accommadating, but the director, at her pre-k table (there were 2 pre-k tables this past year) was pretty insistent that the children do the activity or she was pretty stern with them and they got into trouble (again).
I felt like the other parents interaction with my child was, overall, a good thing. The parents in our coop (as I am sure is the case in most coops) were supervised in their interactions with the children. It was as if we were in a laboratory and were given chances to help problem solve, redirect, handle conflicts, help children learn about empathy and the like. I found learning these things to be useful, but not something I wouldn't eventually have learned anyway.
So, all in all, though I found my experience to be helpful to me as a parent, I'm not sure that I would have done it in retrospect and I wouldn't do it for a second child. I think, instead, I would just get involved in a homeschooling group from the get go. Actually, I wish I done that with my ds so that the transition from friends at preschool to friends at the homeschooling group would be a smoother one. And, after reading "Hold On To Your Kids" I realize that some of the behaviour my son exhibitied at the age of 2.5 was actually quite age appropriate for a healthily attached child. I was worried that he would have trouble socializing because of his fear of other kids - and whether the preschool helped him through this or whether he was just going through a developmental phase is a big "who knows" scenario.
If you are thinking about a coop seriously, I would sit down and talk with the director about her/his approach to issues that concern you - i.e. structure, expectations of the children, how they deal with conflicts with children, is there any punishment (time outs, et cetera) (by the way, I would expect that most preschool - particularly coops - to not endorse any type of punishment), what they do about kids who don't go with the program, and any other things that are of concern to you.
My experience with the preschool is one of the reasons we decided to homeschool. It was a gentle and child led an education as there is out there and it still wasn't what I'd hope it would be for my child. In the end, I decided that what I want for my child in terms of his 'education' is something that we can discover together.
I hope this is helpful.
Michelle
