What I Wish I Knew Before Enrolling in FCPC RN: When Dropping Out Makes Sense
Last October, I found my 4-year-old Mia curled behind our laundry basket at 7:15 a.m., clutching her worn stuffed fox and refusing to come out for our weekly FCPC RN visit. I’d spent 10 minutes looking for her after she slipped out of the living room where her home visitor was setting out activities, and when I knelt down to talk to her, she mumbled into the fox’s fur that she was “too bad at school” to come out. That’s when I knew it was time to drop out, something no one had warned me I might need to do when I signed up six months earlier.
I’d jumped at the chance to enroll when our county sent the flyer. FCPC RN’s free home-based early learning program was pitched as the perfect flexible option for part-time working parents like me, and for kids who got overwhelmed by noisy center-based preschools. It checked every box: it was free, aligned with state developmental guidelines, and fit my work-from-home schedule with just one two-hour visit a week. I bragged about it to my mom group, signed up the second enrollment opened, and cleared out a corner of our playroom for all the free art supplies and books they promised to send.
The first visit felt like a win. Mia’s home visitor, Lisa, was warm, played peekaboo with Mia, read a picture book, and left us a set of foam blocks to keep. The problems creeped in slow. By the third visit, I noticed Lisa spent most of her time at my kitchen table typing on her work laptop instead of playing with Mia. When I asked, she explained FCPC RN requires providers to document every developmental milestone, check off 12 different skill boxes every week, upload photos of each activity, and submit progress reports every six weeks to get paid. If she misses a checkbox, she loses hours of pay. The two-hour visit time allotted for our interaction? Half of that is just required paperwork.
What that looked like for us was this: Lisa would pull out a planned activity to check a skill box—one week it was sorting buttons by size, another it was balancing on a taped line for 10 seconds—and if Mia got bored halfway through and wanted to go color instead, Lisa couldn’t just pivot. She had to get the checkbox. So she’d encourage Mia to keep going, I’d end up distracting my own kid so she could finish the documentation, and by the end of the visit everyone was cranky. I started working through my to-do list while Lisa did her paperwork, Mia would wander off and get into things she shouldn’t, and what was supposed to be a fun learning activity turned into a weekly chore I dreaded.
I kept telling myself I was being ungrateful. It’s free, it’s supposed to be good for her, what right do I have to complain? That lasted until the morning behind the laundry basket, when Mia told me she always got the sorting wrong and didn’t want to make Lisa sad. I texted Lisa that we were canceling that day, called the program coordinator the next morning, and dropped out entirely.
After I did it, I talked to five other local parents who’d enrolled in FCPC RN in the last two years, and three of them said they’d either dropped out or wished they had. No one talks about this online, I realized—all you see is the official marketing that says it’s a great option for families, so you feel like something’s wrong with you if it doesn’t work for your kid.
It’s not that FCPC RN is bad for everyone. My friend Sarah has a 4-year-old with social anxiety, and it works perfectly for them because her provider prioritizes play, works around her kid’s needs, and the home environment is way less overwhelming than a center. But there are things no one tells you before you enroll, and concrete questions to ask to avoid the stress we went through.
If you’re thinking about enrolling, ask your potential provider three specific things before you sign. First, ask how much of your weekly visit is actually spent interacting with your kid, not doing documentation. If they say more than half the time is paperwork, that’s a red flag. Second, ask if they can skip a planned activity if your kid is not interested that week, or switch the focus to something your kid actually loves. If they say they can’t deviate from the plan because of requirements, that’s good to know upfront. Third, ask if you can reschedule or skip a week without penalty if you’re busy or your kid is having a hard time. A lot of programs are strict about visit frequency because of funding, and that’s a problem if you need flexibility.
If you’re already enrolled and miserable, you don’t have to stick it out. I did a simple two-week check before I decided to drop out: I wrote down one line after every visit about how Mia felt, and one line about how I felt. After two weeks, 3 out of 4 entries said Mia was cranky and withdrawn, and I was stressed. That was all the evidence I needed. If you don’t want to drop out entirely, ask to switch to visits every other week instead of every week to cut down on the pressure. That worked for one of the moms I talked to, and it made the program fit her family better.
These days, Mia goes to library storytime twice a week and plays at the neighborhood park most afternoons. She still learns new things every day, but now it’s on her terms: last week she taught herself to count to 15 by counting the rocks she collected on our walk, instead of being forced to sort buttons for a checkbox. We don’t have a weekly chore to dread, and she hasn’t hidden from a learning activity since. It’s not a perfect solution for every family, but it’s the right one for ours, and I wish I’d given myself permission to make that choice sooner.
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