OK, so I know this is a bit pathetic, but HOW can we be "at the top of the wait list" for our local nursery for TWO!! years, and still no space?! We were just told that, no, actually, you still don't get a space at your local nursery next year either.
Just writing about it makes me depressed. There are two reasons we want to swap nurseries:
1. Bolle gets stressed out by the one she's in.
2. She spends an avg. of 2.5 hrs extra in nursery per week, because we have to drive there rather than walk her.
I know we don't have it so bad. We own a car, and can actually drive her, we have flexible jobs and she's rarely left there for more than six hours per day, two out of which she spends asleep.
But I hate it.
Perhaps it's just my bad conscience rearing its head, for not staying at home with her more. I've made a tactical move of taking a full-time position, just in case I fall pregnant again.
However, I don't think that's it.
For confidentiality reasons, the council can't tell us what space we have on the wait list. So we don't know if we're number 3, 15 or 500. However, they've told us twice (a year ago and again at Christmas) that we are very likely to get a space "next semester", and that therefore we should stick with our choice and not swap to another nursery where more kids leave and we're more likely to get a space sooner.
This drives me nuts! I know they can't tell us because if we know we're first on the list, and then observe another kid getting a space, then we'll know that kid has parents who are hard drug users / child abusers / something even worse. As it's now been two years of waiting, and we live in a bit of a deprived area, I can be pretty sure that this is what has happened. It is a small nursery, and it only takes two special needs kids to bump us out of a space.
And that also riles me. There is huge competition for local nursery spaces. I totally get that kids with Downs / junkie parents / a history of abuse should be getting a space ahead of others.
But I don't get why they have to get their first pick? Because that's what happens.
They should be guaranteed a space, but not ahead of everyone else in competitive areas.
What happens is that because we don't beat up our kids / take drugs / have huge personal issues, we have to drive our kid to an inferior nursery.
I know that altruistic people might say that those kids need it more.
Still, I'll be on the phone to various private schools in the area come next Monday.
Which hurts me, because the primary reason I moved back to Norway was so that I wouldn't have to deal with the ultra-competitive and unfair British school system.
Which school is top of the list? The local British school. Oh, the irony.
