High workload, great pressure of expectations, lack of daycare places: the fast pace of modern everyday life presents parents with problems that sometimes seem insoluble. In a pilot project in Berlin, mothers and fathers learn how to play with their children. A visit.
Yumi claps her hands with joy when she sees her playmate Luis. "She's been looking forward to coming here all morning," says mother Tanja as she lifts Yumi out of the stroller. After all, the almost one-year-old has known the room she enters almost her entire life. At the age of 11 weeks she visited the playroom in the Charlottenburg town hall for the first time. She met Luis, his mother Mariana and other families. Determined Yumi crawls to the box with toys to fish out a colorful spinning top. Sitting on a blue mat next to her is Sabrina Böhm, an expert in early childhood development. Böhm has been meeting parents in the room regularly for years to show them how to play with their toddlers.
Böhm discusses the apparently self-evident, everyday things with the families. It's about subtleties that often get lost in stress. It starts with the question: How do I lift my child? Böhm gets a rag doll to use to demonstrate what is going wrong. Many parents held the child face up. They should first roll it onto its side before lifting it up. "If the child is lying on its side, it can hold its head up by itself. It trains its muscles and feels itself. It finds this position natural," says Böhm.
The participants in the course say that intuition when dealing with children is often lost in the fast pace of modern everyday life. Parents of all ages and income structures, in homosexual as well as heterosexual partnerships, meet in the room every week to find an answer to the question together: How do I interact with my child in such a way that it is in the crucial first years of life well developed?
The course, which the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Health Department launched together with the Berlin Citizens' Foundation, is in high demand. It is a pilot project, and other Berlin districts such as Neukölln have recently started offering it. For some, the playroom is also a sanctuary of sorts. Because the pressure of expectations on parents is great, at the same time many feel left alone. For many, the time when extended families can help raise children is over. Both parents usually work and are alone with their children in their free time.
"After all, it's also about equality here," says Böhm, while she seeks the perspective of some mothers. They nod in agreement. The old role pattern persists not in all, but in many cases. The men go back to work as soon as possible after the birth because they have better-paying jobs. If women also want to get back into work, they face an unsolvable problem: In Berlin, as in many other German cities, there are too few daycare places.
This lack also burdens Mariana. She is watching her son, who is playing with a plastic funnel next to her. At one and a half years, Luis would be old enough to go to daycare. "But we have written to more than 20 institutions and none have a place for him," says his mother. Mariana and her husband's families live far away, so no relatives can take care of Luis. She puts her head in her hands and looks down thoughtfully. "That's also good for me here: In the course I can honestly say that I'm tired when Luis has hardly slept at night," she says.
What children see as a play paradise with blocks and slides, adults see as a space in which they can talk openly about their feelings, including childbirth, which for many women is a trauma that they have to deal with. But the work with the child only begins after that. Tanja says that at first she wondered how she was supposed to communicate with a baby that couldn't speak itself. Böhm advised her to include Yumi in everyday life. Now when Tanja makes coffee or cooks food at home, she explains to Yumi what she is doing so that she can learn. "It's the same as with adults: If I go to the bakery five times, I know where he is," says Tanja. Böhm shows parents how they can raise their children to be more independent at an early age.
Tanja lies down on the floor so that Yumi can pull herself up on her. The two of them practice this again and again at home in their living room so that the girl can climb onto the sofa on her own. Böhm helps them. She shares tips on how Yumi can further refine her moves. It is important for Tanja to accompany her daughter in the early years. Because of this, she has decided not to return to her job at a TV station for about two years while her partner works. In her circle of acquaintances she reaps critical comments. "Then it means: your child has to go to the day care center so that it learns how to interact socially with others," says Tanja.
Böhm sighs softly. She knows these supposedly well-intentioned recommendations that are subject to derogatory looks, in short, the social expectations that parents are exposed to. In addition, they are overwhelmed by tips from countless guidebooks, which are often not helpful from Böhm's point of view. What is normal in education is determined by the majority. "The parents are put in a corset in their role," says Böhm. Above all, families need space to develop. This also includes speaking honestly about problems that are bothering you. "It's not always great to be a mother or father. Anyone who claims that isn't telling the truth. That's not real," emphasizes Böhm.
Böhm and her colleagues can already see the pressure parents are under during home visits shortly after the birth. Employees of the district office meet all first-time mothers to inform them about the offers that they can take advantage of with their child, such as Böhm's course. Even the invitation to a meeting makes many nervous. "Some are afraid that they will do something wrong or that the authorities want to take their children away from them," says Böhm. If the visit then takes place at the family's home, the apartment is cleaned to a high gloss and the most elegant clothes are taken out of the closet. "We really just want to offer families support," she says.
In any case, Mariana and Tanja are happy that they received the invitation from the district office. At the end of the course, they sing a farewell song with the children. Then everyone puts the toys that are scattered across the floor back into the box together. Böhm has to finish the lesson on time this time because she still has an appointment afterwards. "Today we have to say goodbye to you quickly, but we'll see each other again soon," Tanja says with a smile as she pushes Yumi out the door in her pram.
