Your Child from 34 to 36 months: Learning & Feeling

It happened almost overnight, didn't it? Instead of enjoying uninterrupted hours with your 3-year-old, these days you're more likely to be racing to get him to preschool on time. After school, your child comes home chatting about building block towers with "my friends" and demonstrates new cognitive leaps as he proudly recites his ABC's and counts out the forks you need for the dinner table.

Still, as your small wonder starts this first leg of his academic journey, you can't help but feel anxious. What impact will preschool have, now that your child spends so many hours in a group with a teacher and kids whose names you don't even know?

Studies show that all children reap benefits from preschool, receiving a boost in math and language skills, according to Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, researchers who mined a rich collection of data gathered from 14,162 kindergarteners, their parents, and teachers by the National Center for Educational Statistics. That's very good news.