Last night in the State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted the critical importance of early childhood for the well-being of children, their families, communities and the nation.

“Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road.”

It isn’t when a child begins learning, but how and what he or she learns. Learning begins before birth regardless of the choices parents make. What a mother eats and drinks (and smokes) while pregnant affects a child’s learning capacities. From their first moment out of the womb, all children are immersed into a learning environment. The emotional attachment that children form (or fail to form) to their parents in the first year of life has a lifelong effect on learning. The tone and number of words that they hear in the first three years of life furnish them with the tools with which to explore the world.

In short, the President’s call to make preschool available to all children is laudable. Preschool really can be a wonderful learning environment for children. But the really great gains are made in interventions with families (not just children) even earlier in life. After all, without intervention to support parents, preschool is not prevention; it is remediation.