Every morning when I drop Leah off at nursery, I see the day's food delivery in crates and boxes by the back door to the kitchen. The daily food delivery to a nursery school in the U.S. (if nursery schools served meals) would probably be Sysco boxes full of frozen french toast sticks and preformed chicken patties. Not here. Yesterday morning's delivery was mushrooms, potatoes and leeks, along with pears and bananas.
The teachers told me at pickup time that lunch had been stovies with sausage, and poached pears for pudding. Lucky kids!
It's interesting to see how parenting is a bit different in a different culture, and taking Leah to nursery has given me a chance to see that. Parents are much more relaxed here about a number of things. The playgrounds are full of some pretty seriously fast and high slides and swinging contraptions that, when fully loaded with a kid's body weight, could easily take out a small toddler passing by. Parents are always either on a bench nearby as their child plays, or down in the sand or mud playing alongside the child, but never hovering over in an attempt to keep the kid from plunging off the side. I have also noticed that a good number of toddlers here ride in car seats that are installed in the front seat of the car. That would never, never fly in the United States. I'm not actually sure why that happens here, because the cars seem to be equipped with the same airbags as they are at home. I have never seen a rear facing infant seat in the front seat here, so it seems to be a practice reserved only for toddlers. Leah still hasn't noticed all of her little friends getting out of the front seat of their parents' cars in front of the nursery, probably because she is still too impressed with the sheep and the cows that are peering over the front gate at her as we walk past their stalls. I hope she doesn't, because we are certainly not going to put her car seat in the front seat, no matter how many other families are doing it!
There's an interesting discussion taking place in Scotland right now about a proposed "Named Person" scheme. It's a new policy by the Scottish government set to go in effect at the end of the summer, though it does have opponents who are trying to get it thrown out before then. Basically, it will give each child a "named person," appointed to monitor his or her welfare as he or she grows up. The named person, who will usually be a midwife, health visitor or head teacher, will be a point of contact for the child for information or advice. It's meant to ensure that cases of child abuse or neglect are uncovered, but opponents argue that this will undermine parents and violate a family's right to privacy. It has prompted an interesting discussion about parenting in general in Scotland, and since I get a good bit of time in the car each morning to listed to BBC Scotland after dropping off the kids, I have learned quite a bit about the debate. Overall it sounds like a good idea, though I do see the validity of the opposition arguments. However, I'm struck at how difficult a program like this would be to institute in the United States, if only because we are such a large country. This seems to be just one aspect of life in Scotland that couldn't possibly be replicated in the U.S. because of the difference in the size of our population.
I think about this a lot when I am driving. Scotland is visually so calm...no billboards on the side of the road, for example, and no screaming advertisements on shops or pubs. This must be because of tradition, in part, but also because it's just not worth the expense of putting up a huge advertisement on the side of the road when not many people will see it. The other day, Emma told me a statistic that I found shocking: the population of the United Kingdom is a bit over 5 million people, and only 8.3 percent of those people live in Scotland. 8.3%! That's crazy! Scotland covers nearly a third of the entire land mass of the UK, but holds only 8.3% of the population. What's more, about 70% of those people live in the band of land between and around Edinburgh and Glasgow (the dark blue dots on the map below...along with Aberdeen which is on the northeastern coast)
There are various and complicated reasons for this of course, mostly historic (see clearances, highland for much, much more on this issue, or ask the person of Scottish descent nearest to you right now...) but some economic and cultural. In a way, it's what makes so many parts of Scotland so special. While this low population rate creates some serious challenges (no wonder their roads are so narrow! Who would pay to widen them?), it does create a number of opportunities and advantages...and the named person scheme is just one of many.
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