Natures Way Preschool

It's taken me two years to write this review, and I'm still processing the devastation that occurred in consequence to how the school mismanaged my child and his classroom. My child was accepted into the program from a waitlist a month late. I made the naive mistake of sharing the blow by blow of their previous preschool experiences with the teacher. I knew my child had experienced toxic stress since infancy, and suspected they were neuro diverse. I also knew they had extreme anxiety. We now know my child fits the P.D.A. profile, a subset of Autism spectrum. There were three children in the class who fit the neuro divergent mold-- 1 was barely verbal and matched the profile for ADHD, the other was almost completely nonverbal. I feel like from the beginning, the teacher singled my child out as a "behavioral concern". After a lot of pushback, I was allowed to survey the class. It was immediately clear that the less verbal neuro divergent children were largely ignored-- one being all but forgotten as they lagged behind the group throughout my survey. Meanwhile, my child, who is highly verbal, was met with nervous hyper vigilance. Because they are extremely sensitive, they picked up on this from the beginning, and it resulted in highly reactive and erratic behavior. I was even shamed by the teacher for my child's lack of pro social skills, something understandable at 4 and certainly we now know understandable with a PDA child. Still, my child is capable of great concern, empathy and tenderness when in a supportive environment. This tense dynamic with the "teacher" crescendo'd into another child being injured during an overactive stress response from my child, who is a fight responder and feared the repercussion of his noncompliance. The child healed, but the aftermath was painful for both families, as my child chose to respond to the incident again with an overactive stress and fight response. Instead of admitting that the teacher and school were unequipped to help families with neuro divergent pathways, the teacher chose to politicize the situation in a truly inaccurate and disgusting way that was not reflective of neither my child, my family, our values nor our life experience. It caused deep harm. I chose to remove my child from the school. The last day, he played with the child who had been injured, because they were friends and neither he nor the other child involved could've fully grasped the heavy and hateful implication the teacher had made about the incident. Please reconsider this school if you suspect your child is neurodivergent. Unless something drastic has changed in their policy and training, they are not at all equipped to approach this challenge in a way that's helpful to families.

I want to start off by saying the preschool and all of the teachers are above and beyond amazing. My issue is with the woman who handles the preschool payments. The just of it is that she can’t keep her story straight about how the payments are supposed to line up. It’s changed every time I’ve spoken to her. And it doesn’t match the website info, confirmation emails or handbook info. When I pointed this out she immediately back tracked and said they have a new program that isn’t very reliable. She stumbles over everything she says and it just doesn’t add up. It has been a huge unnecessary hassle. This shouldn’t even be an issue after this many years of this program. Definitely keep track of how much you’re paying so you won’t over pay.

My two kids loved this school. They loved exploring and learning about nature in a child led way. I was sad when they graduated.

My daughters went to the Nature’s Way Preschool and had an amazing experience with loving teachers. I highly recommend this preschool.