I have stumbled upon this yle article: https://yle.fi/a/74-20091125 (” Child experts believe that the burden of organising childcare shouldn't solely fall on parents and that the situation highlights the inequality among families. ”)
If you’re a single parent, or you and your spouse are both working during summer, you can’t expect a child to stay home by themselves all day and just wait for the parents to come home.
So i have 2 questions,
If money isn’t an issue, what activities can a child undergo during the summers while their parents are working?
And if a paid activities isn’t an option for the other households, what options do these parents have?
by Opening_Bread_8258
4 comments
Just buy a smart phone for your kid. What could go wrong
There are activities in the parks. They also offer a free meal for the children: https://www.hel.fi/fi/kasvatus-ja-koulutus/leikkipuistot/leikkipuistojen-kesa
Back in the 90’s and early 00’s we did just that. Parents were at work and we stayed at home. We played with our friends outside or participted in some activities which were organized by the city or the church. Maybe a week during the holiday we were in a summer camp. Many of our friends spent time with their grandparents, but we didn’t have that option.
I guess nowadays there are more of those activities and day camps organized for the kids (at least I have seen quite few adds on social media). Some of those seem to have a fee and some seem to be free. Also there are summer camps which last about week.
Both of my parents worked when I was a child (this was in the 80s and 90s so probably not very relevant anymore). They would stagger their holidays so that an adult was at home much of the summer. For the remaining time, I think that we would go to a day care that was in our complex for meals when we were young and we usually went to a horse riding camp for a week. When I was a little older we would just stay at home and feed ourselves. My parents didn’t really entertain us or play with us or anything like that anyway, so we were used to being quite unsupervised and doing what we wanted (mostly just reading for me). I think that that’s different for modern children, there’s more of an expectation that adults take a more active part in children’s lives and think of things for them to do. I think that it’s probably good in some ways. I and my friends were going to a park to play when we were about five years old and would have found it very strange if adults went with us, maybe that wasn’t okay?