Daycare

Till today Bobo has been her temporary daycare for 5 days. In the first 3 days, she cried in the morning when we dropped her, but stopped crying on Thursday morning. Bobo's own daycare is closed throughout July, since most staff and kids are on summer vacation.

To my knowledge, there are at least four types of daycare in Finland.

1) ordinary daycare, usually hosts the most amount of children; grouped in different ages. The number can vary between 20 and 100.
2) group family daycare, takes care bit over 10 kids
3) family daycare, takes care maximum 4 kids
4) private daycare
Of course there are also special daycares which run 24h to take care of those parents need to work during evening.

The maximum number of children one daycare staff can in charge is four. I was surprised to learn that there are over 20 daycares within 1km from our apartment. Working mums in Finland can have maternity leave up to 10 months. Quite often many mums remains at home after that 10 months, so it's called parenting leave. The first three months of maternity leave you get 3 months full salary from your employer. During the rest months, you get 60-70% of salary based on your previous year income. Tax office does the calculation. If you continue parenting leave, you get much less money from the State. In addition, each child receives at least 100euro per month (depends on how many kids in that family), until turns to age 18.
You can imagine where our tax money go...

Bobo's own daycare is a group family daycare, it has 12 kids, aged from 1 to 5. Sometime some kids from neighboring daycare would temporary stay there when their daycare's staff is sick.

At the first place we applied for a ordinary daycare. Pity, there were not enough places, so we decided to let Bobo attend group family daycare. We think it's better for a kid to attend daycare with more kids, so she can start to socialize with others from early age. Call it group family daycare, but actually it's not a family but a real day care. It locates in the first floor of one apartment building. It has all necessary facilitates, including a big playing room, a kitchen, few bed rooms, 2 toilets, 1 big dinning room, 1 storage room and 1 office. Most of time, younger kids are playing in the big playing room. Older kids have more freedom, since they need less attention.

Bobo was sent to daycare bit over 1 year old. She was the youngest then. During these 2 weeks, she stays in a family daycare which has 4 kids. Family daycare, as from its name, it is in staff's home. Perhaps it's nicer place to go when a kid is young.

Once Bobo is used to her new friends, she will have to return to own daycare in August...