(Open) Preschool

When I first learned last year that we would be moving to Stockholm, I wasn't exactly thrilled. The winters are long, dark and freezing. The language is foreign. The food isn't quite my cup of tea. Nevertheless, one aspect of living in Sweden fascinated me, and that was its mythic stature as a world leader in childcare and in the treatment of working parents. In general, children are a huge focus of Swedish culture and I imagine that all the Swedish child-haters out there (if they exist) must just grin and bear it. Seriously, almost every stroller you see on the street is enormous, and you just have to get out of the way or risk being knocked down. (In all fairness, I often heard people in the States mutter about the size of my jogging stroller, so I do understand why people like big strollers. They're much more comfortable to use for parent and child when it's the primary means of transportation for your kid all over the city. Here, O's stroller seems pretty average if not downright streamlined.) A parent who pushes a stroller onto a city bus does so for free. There are elevators and extra-wide gates in the subway stations. There's a playground every three blocks or so. And there are the preschools.

Let's talk about Open Preschool first, since that's what I've had the most experience with. These free government-run preschools are all over the city (I can think of two within walking distance of my building) and they are essentially playgroups open to everybody. You don't have to sign up in advance. There is literally an open-door policy. The only rule is that parents have to accompany their children the entire time. It's not a childcare service, but is instead a resource for stay-at-home parents who want their children to interact with other children, and who want to be able to interact with other parents.

The one I've been to the most has a little playground out front (that is open to everyone, including kids in actual paying preschools) and inside the building is a small kitchen and dining area where you can prepare food for your child, with the majority of the building given over to the play areas. There's the typical play kitchen with food, dolls, cars and trucks, construction toys, animals, etc. There are also structured activities like storytelling and crafts, which are run by an employee of the preschool. For example, O and I (emphasis on the "I") made Christmas cards one week, and another week we participated in a little procession with singing and candles for Santa Lucia Day. I like the fact that there's no commitment, and that we can attend other Open Preschools if we want to, or just not go at all if we don't feel like it.

As for proper preschool, I've actually just submitted some applications for O. We applied a long time ago for one especially popular bilingual English-Swedish school and have heard nothing, so I'm assuming we are way down on the wait list. I've just applied for another independent bilingual school whose reputation isn't as great, but it's right next to S's workplace, so we'll see whether that works out. Finally, I filled in the application for the public preschools, which are all Swedish language (eeks!). You choose five schools and rank them in order of preference, then wait to be matched with one. And if all your chosen ones are super popular, you might get matched with a school that's not even on your list. Now, I don't actually have a job yet or anything, but I was advised to go ahead and apply for more schools (I'd just been waiting on that one popular bilingual school) because the wait time, even for the public schools, can be months so it would not be good to have a job offer and not even have started the process of applying for more schools.

The cost of the independent and public schools is exactly the same, the only difference being the curriculum and the application process. And that cost is insanely low compared to what I believe it is in the States. (I don't actually know since we never bothered to look up this kind of thing.) The cost is a very low percentage of your income, up to a certain maximum (so even the millionaires are paying very little), and I believe the maximum for part-time preschool is something like $150/month and for full-time, $200/month. Yeah...

We'll have to see how things end up working out for us. Fingers crossed one of the bilingual schools comes through, otherwise here's hoping for our number one pick for the public schools.