IN THE KINGDOM OF OUR CHILDHOOD

Children's laughter and children running. Climbing trees and scraping knees. Concern about whether children spend too much time in front of a screen. We like to place a high value on childhood. For many decades, there have been intensive efforts to strengthen childhood life, with child benefit, cash support and the development of kindergartens, and maternity leave schemes. We care about childhood and about children in this country. Rarely does the discussion go so high, as when talking about cutting back on day trips in the kindergarten. Can it be justifiable? Is it good enough for our precious children? 

We expect the nursery to be a joy factory for our little ones, with permanent staff, play and activities in safe surroundings, close to where you live. We are concerned with the primary school's qualities, and all the elements that make up a good learning environment; committed and trained pedagogues, good curriculum works, subject renewal, a safe school environment and a focus on coping with life. We have FAU and the Cooperation Committee, because the parents' voice is important and must be heard. Because it is the parents who have the ultimate responsibility. Admittedly, it is not always so popular to sit on such committees, because it does require a few hours of your time. Nevertheless, we advocate the values at a high level, because it is right. Because our children deserve it. This makes good little people, which is good for the future. 

Just be sure to keep your child healthy. Because the values are certainly crumbling here for many. You don't need glasses, so you can see better and read properly. By all means, do not need a stoma that relieves a diseased and broken intestine. Don't need an assistant who knows you well, knows your medications, makes you feel safe, and can relieve parents in their caring duties that exceed any normal resourceful effort. Don't need anything extra. 

Don't ask for anything in that life is like an earthquake. 

You do not need extended assistance allowance, or long-term care allowance, when you continuously watch over your seriously ill child, either at home or in hospital. Because there are rules for this, not values. There are regulations which state that, in theory, your child is in hospital now, so you do not need the fixed allowance with which life just goes around in its crooked way, while in practice you care for your child around the clock. Don't ask for anything in that life is like an earthquake. 

If your child is going to live with an illness for a long time, do not need user-controlled personal assistance that can give childhood life flexibility and security. Rather, choose the option that the municipality knows to tell you is the only one to choose between, and that justifies the choice with reasons that may be important in their municipal world, but not in your life. Don't be the parent who expects to be taken seriously, and don't be sidelined by those who know better about something they can't possibly know anything about. 

Don't cry about quality of life and or quality of help at the end of life. Do not point out that it is literally vitally important to have the right medication and knowledgeable decisions in a safe and close environment around the child, when life is at its very last end. Do not wish for children's palliative care teams where the child is exactly when the child needs to die, as long as a free choice to be in a completely different place in a completely different setting with completely different people is funded. Don't be wrong. 

Don't say out loud that childhood life is rarely as intense and valuable as when you know that the days will be too few and the time too short. Do not shout and beg that your child must be mostly a child and least a patient, when the system is rigged for patients who would rather not be children at all. 

Do not ask that families be families, even if they accommodate a small patient. Do not expect that it should really go without saying that it is the offer that must be adapted to the children, and not the other way around. Don't count security, quality of life or childhood smiles. 

Don't point out that the values didn't quite reach everyone who needed them, because the intention was of course good. Do not ask for sharpening in the realm of childhood. 

- Chronicle by Eline Grelland Røkholt, member of the Løvemammaenes Child palliation committee