Reforms in NSW and Victoria need to make early education financially viable for parents, especially mothers
It all sounds rather cute, but of course, utopia it’s not. Like many other countries, early childhood educators are often low-income earners, and many centres are understaffed, often chronically so. In theory, however, since 2013 every child over the age of one in Berlin is entitled to subsidised care in the public system until they reach school age. The trouble is, it’s not easy to find a Kita spot and harder still to find a multilingual centre .
But I do have to squint my eyes to the small changes I’ve seen in my daughter since starting Kita. She won’t wear sandals without socks now , doesn’t like to get dirty and hates getting her clothes wet, so much so that it took two weeks of gentle coaxing before she would get her swimsuit wet at the beach. Her favourite German song is about not putting your elbows on the table when you’re eating. It all makes me wonder how much behavioural ironing out is necessary at such a young age.
When I pick her up, my daughter is happy to see me, somehow relieved, but she is also often reluctant to leave, an additional insult to the fact that she does for her carer many of the things that she won’t do for me – like sit in the pram, clean her teeth, brush her long mane of hair. One day I commented on how nice her hair looked, and her carer replied, quite matter-of-factly, “Yes, we brush it”, as though it had never occurred to me to do the same.
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