February Points

• Last days of February! It already feels like spring in Brussels (and a few days ago we had 12-13 degrees even) and when March comes it will be spring for real! I would have liked a bit more winter, at least a few days of snow, but otherwise I like living in a place with a bit milder climate than Stockholm.  And both the autumn and winter have been milder and sunnier and less rainy than normal Brussels weather, as I understand (and remember from my internship days here in 2002/2003).
• Harald turned ONE this month!  Poor Harald didn't get much of a celebration on his birthday except for brief singing in the morning and a few presents at night, but Harald himself didn't really care :)  We celebrated his birthday again last weekend when farmor & farfar (Peter's parents) visited and will do the same when my mum and my aunt visit at the end of March. When Isolde turned 1 and also 2 we had big birthday parties to which we invited many friends with or without children, but here we don't know that many people yet, and our main set of friends here were both away around Harald's birthday (and afterwards the kids have had colds, and the time passed). So he will get his big party next year instead! 
• Speaking of friends, we have invited friends, colleagues and acquaintances to a drink at our place next weekend.  We have asked each guest to bring with them another friend/family, as a way to get to know more people.  It is not mandatory of course but it would be fun to meet new people and it looks like most people liked our idea!

• We have booked two sets of plane tickets to Sweden, first over Easter when we will be in Sweden 11-21 April, and then for a weekend in May, 22-25th, when my mum turns 60 (22nd). We are also going to book tickets for the summer soon - I think we will spend four weeks in Sweden, probably 7 July - 1 August, give or take a few days.
• Peter has done EXTENSIVE research on cars but we have not made any definite decisions yet, and at the moment it looks like we will wait and see whether Peter would get a company car with his new job (which he will start looking for soon), as it seems like a rather common benefit in Belgium. And even if he doesn't, by then a few new models will have come out which may be worth waiting for.
• Harald is now enrolled at the crèche that we visited and I wrote about earlier, and will start on 11 August. It seems very good and they actually seem to go outside even in the winter, which is not very common in this country. And guess what, our neighbour's little girl E. will start there in September (and her brother V. will go to Isolde's school but not in the same class)!
• We are looking forward to having Peter's sister and family here for the first time in a few weeks' time.  Two weeks later my mum and aunt come, and two weeks after that we go to Sweden for Easter.  So a lot of family time coming up! Two friends are also coming again for work in March and will either stay the night with us or at least meet up for dinner, but one of them I might miss, as I may have to go to Sweden for work on that particular day.
• Tomorrow I have the day off. Originally we planned to go somewhere for an overnight stay (around 2 hours away is France, Luxembourg and Germany and Netherlands is even closer), but now Peter also has the cold Isolde had last week and Harald has had this week, so we have decided just to do some sightseeing in Brussels tomorrow and just do a daytrip somewhere nearby (on hour's drive at the most) on Saturday. It is so nice with an extra day to the weekend, especially since I have been working a lot lately.
• This weekend we also have some social activities to look forward to. We are invited to a colleague's carnival* lunch (she is Swedish and her sambo Portuguese and they have 2-year-old son) on Sunday, and after that we go directly to P & O's neighbours' coffee. As you know, they live in our building (and helped us found our flat) and now another family(Swedish-Welsh) they know are going to move in here too, and they have two other friends who live just around the corner.
• Isolde has already celebrated carnival at school this week but like Halloween time she only wanted to wear her costume for a minute. For that reason we only got her a very simple costume - a leopard mask - and she also wore a tiger t-shirt we already had at home. When we arrived to school and she saw all her little friends in their costumes she wanted to put the mask on, but just as quickly she wanted to take it off and she got a bit upset and didn't really believe me or her teacher that she didn't have to wear it if she didn't want to. I don't know if she wore it later - at Halloween she actually did wear her sceleton costume later in the day, at least long enough for photos - but she wanted to bring it again the next day. But in general, even though she's starting to get into dress-up game, she doesn't see the purpose of it, except for playing. Like us parents I guess who like dressing up for a dinner or party, but are not particularly fond of costumes or fancy dress/masquerade.
• I can't remember if I have mentioned it before, but since a couple of months back we are subscribing to the same "grocery bag"/"food bag" service we had in Sweden. It's the same recipes but here in Belgium it is called Smartmat instead of Middagsfrid. The produce is slightly better in Sweden but we're still really happy with it here, and since a few weeks back we do all vegetarian every other week.
• Have a great Friday and weekend!

* Celebration of the start of Lent. The Swedish equivalent is Shrove Tuesday when we eat semlor, but that is a very modest celebration compared to carnival.

Pre-School

Big day tomorrow!  It's Isolde's first day at pre-school (förskolan)!  If the induction days count, which I think they do.  Otherwise, the real day is next Monday when she'll be there sans parents for the first time).

Induction is three days - Wednesday-Friday this week - and I will stay with her throughout the day 9:15-15:00.  Then on Monday I will drop her off at 9 and hopefully not hear anything before pick-up time.  The second week is technically induction too so she can only attend 9-15 (later she will have a bit longer hours) and I will be on stand-by if it's not working for some reason.  

This "three-day induction" is the method most pre-schools seem to be using nowadays instead of two or three weeks' induction where the child gradually spends more and more time at pre-school, such as 10 minutes the first day, 30 minutes the second day and so on.  While the "quick method" may not work for all children - and those children get more days - it's believed that three days is what is needed to adjust to a new environment and situation.  Especially if those three days are spent with a trusted parent who shares the first meeting with the teachers and the other children and is with them throughout all the activities and routines and shows them this is a fun and safe place to be.

I'm really excited about tomorrow!  Isolde is still rather oblivious even though we've been reading Kråkes förskola :)  She's a very social little girl so I think she's going to love it.  I also expect the induction will go well - fingers crossed - and if she has any difficulties it will come in a few weeks' or months' time when it's not new and exciting anymore.  Will keep you posted!

It was quite difficult to pick the pre-school and I hope this one will be right (although it's always possible to change of course).  Where we live in central Stockholm there are so many pre-schools and even if we tried to narrow the search we had around 25 pre-schools on the list to start with and had to get it down to five.  Five is the maximum number you can apply for through the central waiting list system in the municipality of Stockholm and those five have to be put in order of priority.  There's a really good comparison tool on the site to compare for example teacher-children ratio, number of teachers (trained, qualified) as opposed to other staff (non-qualified, without teaching degree), pedagogy and results from the parent questionnaire.  Most were however quite similar so in the end we very much ordered them on the basis of the parent questionnaire and especially key questions we thought mattered the most.  There are both municipal and private (independent) pre-schools in the central system, but many private ones have their own waiting lists so we also applied to many of those.  However, as both types are equally - and heavily (parents pay only 7-10% of the real cost in fees) - funded by the public purse, the City of Stockholm is planning to "force" the remaining pre-schools into the central system, albeit still allowing them to apply different admittance criteria, for example parent co-ops require parents to help out in different ways.

Our plan was to visit the five on our (central) list (there was no way we could visit 25 before narrowing it down) but I was recommended to wait until the spring before we wanted her to start.  By the way, the earliest you can apply through the central system is at 6 months while the private ones accept applications as soon as the baby has been born.  However, before we had got around to booking visits we were offered a place at our no 1 choice and we only had four days to reply.  So instead of visiting five pre-schools we just visited one.  Even though in an ideal world I would have wanted to be able to compare firsthand and I regret that we didn't visit all five pre-schools earlier in the process, it felt fine accepting the offer and I think it is the right choice (although since I haven't visited the others I can't know for sure...  I remind myself that in some parts of Sweden people just have one or very few choices and I guess I shouldn't complain). 

We were there for about an hour on the visit and visited both småbarnsavdelningen, Nallen (age 1-2 where Isolde will start) and the two older groups (age 3-4 and 5-6).  The pre-school is located in an early 20th century building and Nallen is on the first floor in premises that were in all likelihood a flat once upon a time (same for the other groups on the second floor, where they occupy the whole floor).  At first we were struck by how small it was, perhaps 60-70 sqm, but then we remembered that 14 little one-two-year-olds (and three staff) don't need that much space, especially since they spend most of the mornings outside and after 3pm the little ones usually join the older children upstairs.  The premises were a bit worn and torn (e.g. window sills and doorsteps could use a coat of fresh paint) but my friend the pre-school teacher (and my mum, also a pre-school teacher) had told us to look beyond such things (and in a way you can see it as fin-de-siècle charm) and focus on the staff and the teachers, the atmosphere (including how the children seemed to feel and behave) and the pedagogy and ways of teaching.  And we liked what we saw and felt.  They are not a pure Reggio Emilia pre-school but they are inspired by Reggio (as is the Swedish pre-school curriculum but to what degree varies from pre-school to pre-school).  They have a very small yard/outdoor play area, as many pre-schools located in the city (and some don't even have one at all), so instead they go to parks nearby (Humlegården, Tessinparken), other green areas (Gärdet, Djurgården) and the woods (Lill-Jansskogen) at least three or four days a week, rain or shine. 

But I'm sure I will have more to tell after tomorrow!

Meanwhile Peter started working yesterday after nine months parental leave and really had mixed feelings about it (as did I back in November when I returned to work after ten months leave) but is already back into the swing of project planning and meeting.  No soft start there. 

Rain and Shine

Emma, a Swede living in Scotland, writes about the lack of appropriate wear for children in her adopted home when the weather is not sunny and dry but rainy, windy and cold, as is often the case in Scotland. She reflects upon the Swedish expression det finns inget dåliga väder, bara dåliga kläder ("there is no bad weather, only bad clothes" - sounds better in Swedish rhyme) and wonders how come two very similar countries (especially Scotland where there is also snow parts of the year), weather-wise, can be so different when it comes to the outdoors and weather conditions.

Her post reminded me of an article I read today about the Swedish Ur och skur ("rain and shine") pre-schools being awarded the Nordic Council's Nature and Environment Prize.

The motivation was "Rain or Shine by Friluftsfrämjandet ("Outdoor Life") is a prime example of an organisation that has contributed to children's wellbeing and understanding of nature in an era where people spend more and more of their lives online. Rain or Shine concentrates almost exclusively on outdoor schooling, so the proximity of the individual child, not to mention the institutions, to nature is absolutely central to its activities."

Rain or Shine was founded by Friluftsfrämjandet in 1985. 30,000 children attend the organisation's 200 schools, mainly pre-schools. The philosophy behind Rain and Shine is a belief that children's senses can be developed by smelling, observing and listening to nature, and that outdoor activities can promote learning. Studies also show that Rain or Shine children are considerably more healthy than kids in traditional schools.

And I bet 1 million Swedish kronor that Rain and Shine kids wear proper water-proofs and wellingtons!

Childhood Poverty and Family Policy

Anne, a Swede currently residing in Oregon, writes about the cost of childcare in the US and the (negative) consequences for families and especially women. A job may pay $9 / hour but (licensed, authorised) childcare costs $15 / hour so you're better off just staying home. Even if you have a more advanced and thus higher paid job, $15 / hour doesn't make a huge difference when it comes to an incentive to work. Anne says that "You get what you pay for is something you often hear, in different contexts. It is considerably greater differences between what's good and what's bad [quality] so you'd better be careful. [sic] USA is the country with the best, most modern and luxarious but also the worst you can find. Everything is about money, no subsidies, discounts or support systems exist. Everything depends on how much you are willing to pay, you get what you pay for."

This week I attended several really interesting meetings on this very topic (at research institutions SOFI, CHESS and the Institute for Futures Studies). Some of the findings of international studies:

• There is a strong correlation between poverty rate and generosity of family provisions*

This means that countries with generous family policies have lower child poverty rates. And especially family policies that support dual earner families (i.e. families where both parents are working).

• Support promoting dual earner families is more efficient than support promoting traditional family patterns

This means that

• The poverty relieving effect of dual earner support works both via benefits and market income. I.e. the contribution may be direct through the amount of benefits paid, or indirect by supporting two earners and thereby raising the market income of the household.

While

• The support to traditional family patterns works only via benefits

Other important factors are

• Access to childcare

This includes extensive, accessible, affordable and high quality childcare (pre-school).

Another interesting - and strong - correlation is that between family policy generosity and infant mortality, i.e. generous family provisions lead to low infant mortality.

• What drives this development is strong dual earner support (e.g. childcare provisions).

I'm not going to bore you with all the tables and graphs but I think you get the gist from the above bullet points!

* Family provisions are policies such as tax deductions for families/parents (double or single parent households), parental leave/allowances, child allowances, right to and compensation for staying at home with a sick child, etc.