Kita

Cubbies at Kita

After two months in Berlin, I find myself with two new hours in the morning, free hours made possible by the start of Kita. Kita, as I knew from reading Sara Zaske's German-parenting book Achtung Baby, is daycare. It is free in Berlin, it is a right for every German child—or child in Germany. I still can't quite see my own child as actually German. 

One parent does the Eingewohnung, a process of agonizing gentleness whereby the child is mixed, like an egg white into a soufflé, hour by hour into the environment of the Kita. Our own Kita, two blocks from our house, is a small and homely place where we were offered a spot after three days of pleading—a speed we have been told not to advertise to other parents in a city where some spend a year or more looking for a Kita. Every year, 10,000 kids go Kita-less in Berlin, keeping a parent at home who might otherwise work or look for work (as I should probably be doing), or indeed start a blog.

Eingewohnung goes at different paces for different children, sometimes happening in as little, said our Kita's head teacher, as two months. As little as two months! Which is to say that the first two months of daycare aren't really daycare at all, but an anxious hovering at a coffee shop around the corner, waiting for a phone call saying that little Sophie or Matteo has choked on a spoonful of muesli, bitten the sand in some Spielplatz, or been concussed by a falling chestnut.

In our case, J.'s teacher called the third morning to say that, rather than stay an hour, why didn't he stay all the way until lunchtime. Surely this was a sign of a prodigiously well-adjusted child? But on the fourth day, and most of the days since (it is now the ninth), drop-offs have been tearful. J., now 16 months old, has coped by crawling into a Kinderwagen and falling asleep shortly after arrival. His Eingewohnung could be plotted, like some alpine route, as a vertiginous ascent (staying a half hour, then an hour, then the whole morning) leading to a plateau of indeterminate length. Yesterday he cried only briefly, said the teacher, and for the first time he stayed awake the whole morning. Next week he might get to stay for lunch.

At the cafe where I'm sitting, three Kita groups have passed in the last hour, on their way to or from playgrounds. Each time I heard little feet, I looked up to make sure J. wasn't among them—I wanted to spy, to see him in the wild, to see if he really looked happy, but knew that what I'd actually have to do is disappear, hide in a doorway or behind a tree, since he would lose it if he was wheeled past me, a second farewell in a single morning. But these kids were a bit older, three- and four-year-olds. Hallo, Ibrahim! bellowed child after child from one group to the cafe's friendly owner as they passed. They already seemed like schoolchildren, engaged with each other and the world.