4. Outdoor Play Environment

Is an outdoor play environment important to you, or do you think we’ll all be living in arcologies in 15 years anyway? Do the kids get to play in woods, or just a yard? Is it even a yard or is it just a fucking concrete patio? Are there natural play structures there or is it just something that was ordered off the fucking internet and put together by a fucking TaskRabbit one weekend who doesn’t even know what a toddler looks like? This shit is important.

5. Languages

Languages are important if you want Harper to succeed in life. So: is the language teaching educational and didactic, or is it just exposure and immersion based? Do they spend just one hour on Mandarin, Swift, French or Python, or is it like three hours? Are there any native speakers? Do they expose kids to modern languages or is it all shit like Latin, which is useless, or other old languages like Lisp, which will probably be useful later?

6. Music

Do they have a proper music program? Is it something like motherfucking Music Together and you’re going to be listening to three years of fucking Hello Everybody, or are the teachers just making shit up? Can the teachers actually sing or do they sing like drunk white college girls (okay, or guys) on spring break trying to do karaoke (give them three points) or drunk white mid-thirties women (or men) trying to do karaoke (give them six points)?

Are there any musical instruments? Are they real ones, or fake ones, like inflatable guitars? Is there a piano in there? Is it a fucking proper piano, like a grand piano, is it just a shitty Melissa and Doug piano, or even worse, some plastic Fisher Price piece of crap piano that hasn’t even been in a fucking Toy Story knock-off straight-to-video short. What’s the violin to pupil ratio? Do they spend, like, just one hour doing music or more? Do musicians visit? Why the fuck are the musicians just visiting, why the fuck don’t they live there? And: is it just western music or does the preschool acknowledge that we live in a globalized economy and have a fucking sitar or an erhu? Can they even name just one fucking Bollywood YouTube channel?

7. Indoor Play Environment

This one’s really fucking important. You want to know :

What are the toys like?

What are they made of? Are they made of wood? Are they made of plastic? Do you want your kid to get fucking cancer? You know being BPA-free doesn’t actually matter, right? Are the toys compostable? Are they soy-based or corn-based?

What the fuck is this, a toy vacuum cleaner? Is it bagless? Is it even fucking hypoallergenic?

Are the toys branded? What brand? The right kind of brand or the wrong kind of brand?

Gender: are the toys gendered, not gendered, or too gendered? Are there any trans toys? Are the toys inappropriately gendered? Are they pansexual?

Also: are there too many toys? Because some fucker’s going to have to tidy those fuckers away (see: Volunteering).

If you see a plastic Fisher-Price Trackmaster Thomas The Tank Engine, get the fuck out of there. If it’s a wooden Brio Thomas then you’re good.

8. Discipline Philosophy

Ask about their philosophy about discipline because even though you tell everyone Piper’s super easy to get along with we all know that she’s a right bitch sometimes when you’re trying to get her to put her toys away. So: is the school a RIE school? Are they, like, super authoritarian? Are they the biblical authoritarian kind, or some other Abrahamic religion? Is their discipline stick-based or tree-hugging based? Will they just give every kid a fucking medal for just showing up?

9. Scheduling

Look I know how it is. Sometimes you have to work unpredictable hours and you don’t know if Steve’s going to get off work in time to pick up Jasmyn. So, ask how flexible the preschool is. Are they, like, super flexible, or are they super rigid? How many days can you leave Jasmyn there just to get some peace of mind? Can you do half days? Do they do after-care?

If you do need to make a scheduling change, do they use Slack so you can easily contact the preschool and other parents? What’s their policy on third party Slack integrations? Is there a bot that will automatically post to your preschool group’s channel when your kid does a shit? Do they even have a proper Slack team, or is it one of those shitty free ones where all the important messages will disappear?

If they use hipchat, just leave.

(Update: choosing a preschool in 2018 is easier because Slack just bought hipchat).

10. Class Composition

Some parents care about this more than others. YMMFV. Most parents care whether the preschool is mixed age or not. You might care if it’s mainly white. Or if it’s mainly cis/het/white. Or if it’s not cis/het/white enough. Or if there are enough kids who come from a working-class upbringing so Taylor knows what it’s like to know someone whose parents have a service job.

Here’s a tip: ask if the other kids have passports. If they don’t, it’s a sign they don’t travel, and you may or may not want your kid to mix with those kinds of kids, or you may want to make sure your kid is exposed — in a controlled fucking environment — to the kind of kids who will never have the chance to leave the country.