We focus on early childhood education and care (ECEC) as one important channel of social integration for refugee families that recently arrived in Germany (between 2013 and 2016). First, we examine the attendance of ECEC of refugee children and investigate how patterns vary depending on individual and family characteristics, and institutional determinants of the location of residence. Then, we evaluate the impact of ECEC attendance of refugee children on the social integration of their parents. Our results show a substantial effect of children’s ECEC attendance on the social integration of their mothers. To estimate the causal effect, we adopt an instrumental variable approach exploiting the county-level variation in ECEC attendance rates. Furthermore, we control for a rich set of characteristics for refugee’s human capital, pre-migration history, and current situation in Germany, as well as for economic and institutional characteristics of the location of residence.