Hello everyone

I am new here, and I am still trying to find my way around this site.

I am a 37 year old Danish female from Copenhagen. as per December 1st, I will be relocating to Switzerland (Oberägeri - Zug-area) with my husbond and my two children (aged 5 and 1½).

My husbond and I are both lawyers. My husbond will be working in Zug. I will bring my job and some of my clients with me from Copenhagen and this I will be working from home most of the time.

My oldest will be atteding the International School in Zug from January. We are very exited about that and we hope that she will find herself well settled very soon. They seemed very nice and caring, so hopefully I can send her off every morning knowing that someone will be kind to her and make sure that she will learn and feel good.

As I will be working 4 full days per week - and as I will need to travel and be away from home 2 days per month, I need to find day-care for my son who is just 1½-. In Copenhagen he is in daycare and he is doing very good. But they are also very kind and loving and they treat my son with so much love, warmth and care. I do not know much about the Suiss system. I have heard that schools are very displined and while I do not mind disciplin to some reasonable extent I do not tolerate anyone snapping, yelling or disciplining small children in order to make them understand a fact. In my opinion small children (all children in fact) should be taught by an adult who is a role-model. That means being calm and kind, warm and loving, redirecting (showing alternatives) instead of saying "no", respecting the children and their needs, showing them different options and giving them lots of kisses and hugs.

I would really like to know if anyone knows of af good, warm, loving caring day-care for small children around 1½. I would need day-care monday-thursday from around 9-16. I know it is a lot of time for such a small child to be away from me, but that is exactly why I need to find the perfect day-care for him.

I would love to hear from other moms, who have experinece in this area and have succeede in finding warm,loving, kind daycare for their children.

We will be living in Oberägeri, but I do not mind driving as long as the day-care is perfect.

What do you mean you're bringing your job? You need special permission to set up as self-employed here.

https://www.ch.ch/en/becoming-self-employed/

http://www.kmu.admin.ch/themen/00614...x.html?lang=en

Welcome.

hello medea!

Thank you for replying. However, if i wanted advice on how to get settled as self-employed i would have asked about that!

As you should be able to get from my message i am looking for advice concerning childcare.

Thank you!!!

thank you :-)

Welcome to the Forum, Fie
Another bit of unsolicited advice coming your way.
You say you are finding your way round the Forum. Excellent. It is, while you are doing this, not a bad idea to notice the User Names of those who give helpful advice to others. Medea is one of them. The fact that Medea did not reply to your question but questioned something else you had said seems to have irritated you a little. At least, it looks like that to me.

However, Medea, like many of us who work on here a lot, knows only too well that one of the biggest pitfalls for many people coming to work in Switzerland, is that they simply don't know which questions they should be asking. They may think the situation here, plus the rules governing it, is identical with the situation in their native land. Often it is not, with pitfalls for the unwary. Perhaps, being legal eagles, you have the Swiss employment regulations sorted out already. Good for you.

That said, it is wise, to start with, to tread lightly when replying to posts on here. You, too, may one day need information urgently at some impossible hour. Then the Forum comes into its own and members are probably keener to go out of their way to help if they know their help will be appreciated.

I hope you find the child-care you request, though one thing is sure. I would fail miserably at any attempt to fulfil your requirements. Patience is not my line.

__________________
Longbyt

Hello Longbyt

Thank you for replying. I aprreciate your concern and I see where you are going. It is very possible that Medea ment his/her advice in the nicest way possible. I also realize that I may not have considered everythinbg about my move to switzerland yet. Everything will come in good time.

However, I do find it rather rude and very offending when asking a question I am being patronized by another user replying to me on a wholde differrent concern which by the way has already been taken care of.

From what I understand I am now at the risk of being locked out of this forum, which I assumed was for everyone. It is sad for me to hear that that may be all it takes in here.

For now I just need advice on childcare. I hope that some user somewhere will have the heart to answer me even though I dared to get a little irritated at one of the top users in here.

For what it is worth - I am sorry if I offended either you or medea by asking to have relevant replies to my question. I was not aware that I was supposed to expect that a question put under the headline "childcare" would get replies concerning my ability to get settled as self-employed in Switzerland. Next time I will not bother to put my question in a category then - presuming that there will be a next time.

Again. Thank you and I apologize.

Hello Fie,

Please don't mind the "forum legends". SOME of them are indeed very patronizing but there are many others that are really nice and genuine on this forum. Do hang around, there will others that can help you with your question.

Hi!

I can guarantee you have heard some funny stuff

I work 80% too and both my children (now 2.5 and 5) have been in full time krippe since they were 6 months and they were both in a very "loving" environment, with no yelling (that is my reserved territory as a mom ) The rigidity I have experienced is more in the drop down/pick up times etc but I came to accept it. In anycase, most of my friends had the same experience, never heard anyone feeling the child care being too rigid.

I am not from your area so cannot comment to suggest a place but I am sure someone can and if you search on the forum, I am 100% sure you will find some useful stuff.

And to the risk of "patronizing" you but.... why are you sending your oldest to International School? I ask because at that age it might be worth considering local school that will enable him/her to meet local friends, have local playdates, speak the local language which will give you access to all sorts of activities (which he/she will not be able to do with english only). I know you did not ask but you know how moms are... they love giving upbringing advice

K

Welcome to the world of free, public, internet forums.

It is not a given, that questions have to be answered, directly.

Ah, but I can afford to be patronising. I like to play the little old grandmother who tells her 'children' and her 'grandchildren' on EF what to do and be horrified when they don't do it.

Fie, I apologise profusely if I came over as patronizing to you. That wasn't my intention at all. I also phrased my question badly so I apologise for that too. I haven't been back on to say this until now because my PC - or the forum - decided to be very slow in reacting to anything I tried to do with it!

What I was wondering was whether your company was sending you over which of course would be quite different to being self-employed here. However I see from your later post that you have already addressed my concerns.

I sincerely hope you're not in ANY danger of being locked out of the forum. I can see no reason why you should be for simply replying to others' comments.

I can't help on the childcare side as I don't have any myself and don't live in your part of the country. I hope there's someone else on the forum who can help you find a childcare centre for your youngest.

Outside Scandinavia, you will seldom get this type of "child-centred" viewpoint. Sometimes, children need to hear the word "no" and understand what it means. Sometimes there is no other option than do what you are told to.

Hello Uno's

Thank you for your support :-) It is very much appreciated.

Best from Fie

Hi and thank you for replying. That was really useful. Rigidness I can deal with. As long as the children are treated with respect and are shown love and care. But I guess that is different from place to place and person to person. I am hoping to hear from someone who has personal experience from a place near Zug.

I am choosing the International School as we do not know for how long we will be staying in Switzerland. We might at some point relocate to the Luxembourg or even the States. In such a situation we need her to speak english.

However, that does not mean that I will purposely isolate myself on the expat-island. I have lived in France and i Belgium and I know how important it is to socialise with the locals. I will certainly do my best to do that. My husband and I have already signed up for intensive suisse-german courses (We already understand (read and hear) almost all german, however we do have some difficulties in speaking the language and when it comes to suissgerman we are somewhat lost - so that is on our agenda).

My daughter will also be signed up for suiss-german classes when she is ready. She needs to learn english first, though. My youngest will learn suiss german through daycare.

I am not worried that she will feel lonely or isolated. She will have a lot of friends in school and many of the children there also live in the village where we will be staying.

Where we are staying in Copenhagen we have both american and Malaysian neighbours. She does not speak their languages and they do not attend the same school, but she is still enjoying playing with them. We have also been to Zug for a visit where she in one week made a local friend - even though she did not speak suiss-german. I am convinced that with her bright and open mind she will make friend locally as well as in school. I will certainly do my best to help her along.

I hope that explains my choice.

Best from Fie

Hello Tuborg and thank you for your opinion.

I am convinced that all children can learn to do what they are told even without hearing the word no screamed in their ear all the time by an adult who has clearly no understanding of and no respect of what it is like to be a child.

My children are seldom being told "no". When they do things, that I do not want them to, I tell them "Please, I do not want you to do that - instead I would like you to do this". My 1½ year old is responding very well to this. It also means that he respects me - but he is not afraid of me. It also means that he doesn't himself yell or scream at me or his sister or anyone else. My 5 year old has this under her skin by now and has grown to be a complete darling and a very helpful and polite child - and above all very loving and kind to others. Its simply a delight.

Having tested the method I am convinced that you may teach children "to do what they are told" by telling them "no" and by expecting them to be silent and sit still and not act like children and simply asking them to supress their personalities. But you can also teach them to respect others and show concern simply by being a role model to them and treating them the way you'd like to be treated.

But hey - I know lots of people who believes in or prefers or do not know any other method that just "telling" their children or students to do what they are told and nothing else. Everyones free to do whatever they want - but I'd like to find a place who shares just some of my values.

This is just facile and bears little resemblance to reality. Teachers, as a rule, do not go around shouting at children, irrespective of what you may believe.

You know, I have never, ever, heard of a child being an absolute delight in the eyes of their parents and completely ill-disciplined at school. It must never happen...

You know absolutely nothing whatsoever about me and my child rearing skills. However, I can surmise quite a lot about yours.

Your tone reads very aggressively and defensively, and I can't see why, as the OP has been polite to you. The OP has caveated her opinions that they are her opinions, and she acknowledges others sometimes have different approaches.

It seems fair to me on a thread of her own requesting a specific type of childcare, that she explain the style of caring she seeks. Why are you attacking her approach? Is something lost in translation, and you are just trying to let her know she won't find that kind of care here in CH?

Not read the thread, but coming from a lawyer am loving the deliberate(?) typo| husbond.

More lost in translation, than anything else.

A bit of background info.

I spent two years living in Norway and my daughter went to a Norwegian barnehagen, which very much believed in the system that the OP is espousing. It is, generally, the Nordic way of doing things, of allowing children freedom to explore and "be themselves" free from artificial constraints. It is also part of the Nordic system of equality, that no one is better than another. These are, on the whole, quite laudable aims but they do come at a price and it is a price that very many of my Nordic students quite openly questioned - particularly when they first met other systems of schooling.

The OP, quite naturally, wishes the very best for her children. I just feel that it is not something that is going to happen in this part of Europe. I suspect that the best avenue for the OP would be to locate a Montessori or Steiner schooling system.