Barnehage

Barnehage, Norwegian word for preschool/kindergarden. Our group of children range in age from 0-2 years. We have several soon to be 3 year olds who will be transferred after summer to the bigger group which is housed across the lake on Helgøya where I live. We are in a temporary setting at the moment while we wait for a new barnehage to be built. When it's done being built we will have capacity for 130 children ages 0-6 years old in six different groups.

The group I work with has six women who are permanently there and then we have substitutes and extra help when needed and a couple students who are with us a couple days a week. Not everyone works the same days, some days we are four adults and other days five...and the lucky days we have six or more adults. Some politician has set a minimum standard child/adult ratio which I think is pathetic but supposedly suits the minimal needs to provide adequate care for a child. I think that politician should come work with us one day when there is 15-16 kids and four adults...

We talk a lot about how lucky mothers are in Norway having such a great maternity leave where they can be home at 100% pay for the first 8 months of their child's life or 80% pay for the first year. In America I was once a daycare mom for a three week old baby girl. She was with me from 7AM until 5PM. I was practically her mother since her real mother only had a couple hours in the evening with her before she went to bed...it was horribly sad. She should have been with her mom. But that is what our society has come too, people want things and to have things today the majority of us need a two income family. I wish it wasn't that way. I wish children could be with their mom or dad the first years...to come home from school and have a parent there. I'm old fashioned I know but I think we lost something important when both parents went to work and children were left with strangers.

We sacrificed things when our kids were younger....well to some degree...we were always offered plastic money....the kind that doesn't exsist until you use it, then you have to pay it back...we used that more then we should have sometimes but I was able to stay home with our kids the first 12 years. I know some of you are probably thinking 12 years!!!! But I was there...my kids knew that and with the Captain gone for weeks at a time, it was important that one of us was there for them. We had times when we had no money what so ever and I was always scared we wouldn't be able to get food or clothing...I can remember calling home to my parents and crying on the phone because I didn't have any food. Things have thankfully changed for the better...but those times stick with us for better and for worse. I can't help but overstock our fridge out of fear that we will run out of food...even though now, a lot of the food gets tossed...it's embarrassing but I'd rather have more then enough then not enough. I have a close relationship with the kids...I KNOW them because I've spent so much time with them, watched them, learned how they are, what they do when they are sad, happy, angry...they get so mad when I say I know what they look like when they are angry or something...I'm not suppose to know everything...and I don't...but I know a lot more then I would have had I not had the opportunity to be with them all those years.

I wish people valued time together more then things...and some people do- God bless them. However, way too many people put value on things rather then relationships. Today I stayed home with Sarah who threw up this morning- poor baby- I wasn't actually allowed to take a sick day because of a child since she is over the age of 12, but I asked to take the day off anyways...no one wants to be alone when they are sick like that and I couldn't leave her. During one of her visits upstairs with me today we were watching Ellen or Dr. Phil or was it Rachel Ray...I get them all confused..and they were talking about teens who had kids early and regretted it. This subject began a conversation about not wanting to return to the teen years once you are an adult and how difficult it is to be a teen and how important it is for teens to have the right clothing and so on in order to be popular and this is where I told Sarah that her clothes don't make the person. She could wear a 1000 kroner pair of pants or a 100 kroner pair of pants and she is still Sarah...still the same girl I love and admire...but that was easy for me to say and not so easy perhaps for her to live- since she is a teen and teens do notice these things. But why do they notice it? Is it because of the media? Is it because their parents give into them and give them whatever they want and they never are satisfied? I don't expect my children to NOT want the "cool" clothing but if my words can sink in...even somewhere down the line...that the clothing isn't what makes them wonderful or cool, that if they can shine from the inside out it's a million times better then wearing their bling on the outside...if this sinks in someday...then I'll be a very happy mamma....

Here are some photos taken this past fall of my quaint little barnehage....it's a sweet place...simple, small, intimate...I like it a lot. Until next time my friends...