Omenamäki daycare in Porvoo has gone so far as to provide written guidelines on the matter. Daycare manager Irmeli Elonen says that she belives children can begin to crave attention if they are ignored by parents on the way to or from their care centre.
”There have been a few cases when we wanted to talk to parents and they came and went,” notes Elonen. Although this occurred in only a few cases, the risk is that phone usage might spread.
Phone ban makes for a peaceful playground
Omenamäki is not the only kindergarten to implement a phone ban. Parents in the municipality of Masku are also asked to leave their phones alone when ferrying their kids around.
Kirsi-Leena Hotinen, head of daycare services in Masku, says that phone usage harms co-operation between parents and daycare workers.
Some who work with children say that manners are often lacking with new technology.
”The development has happened so fast that manners have not kept pace and the importance of interaction has been forgotten,” says Elonen.
The situation has improved considerably since Elonen’s facility banned mobiles.
”Sometimes it goes that parents sit in the car talking for quite a while when they come to pick up their children,” says Elonen. ”We want to keep the old boundaries around children’s development that we know to work.”