Our daughters do not go to pre-school/nursery/day-care. One of the unintended consequences has been the lack of play-mates for the girls.
There is no common play-area in the apartment apart from the terrace and the ground-floor parking. 1-2 children in the apartment of their age/near-by age do not come to these places. Public parks are at a minimum distance of 1.5 km one way and that too is not of much use. There is nobody to play within the public parks of the non-residential areas. The public parks in the residential areas are so crowded that there is actually no place to play. We were raking our brains and we came up with an idea – Anganwadi.
What is Anganwadi?
Anganwadi is a part of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the only major national program that addresses the needs of children under the age of six years. It seeks to provide young children with an integrated package of services such as supplementary nutrition, health care and pre-school education.
We have not used any of the Government offered services till now in either the education or the health sector. So, we thought, we might as well try out and see what good use our taxes are being put to.
Anganwadi also applied to our mindset that our children need to see different facets of life apart from the privileges that they have. Children need to have upbringing to make them adaptable to all situations and the spectrum of people that they will interact with. We want our kids to be all-terrain friendly, see the real world and not restricted to limited views from the comfort of the gated community.
We enquired and got to know that there is an Anganwadi centre in the lane next to our apartment. On our visit, we were told that there are two more centres in the vicinity. We visited all three in a span of two hours.
We had told the girls that we were going to a place to play with children of their age. I know that they are not articulate enough and they did not tell us in as many words what I have written below. However, if they were able to, their response would be on the following lines. This is what we could make out from their limited verbal reactions and ample body language signals.
Where do we play?
There were about 25-30 children in the first two Anganwadi centres and 10-15 in the third. All crammed into the area of one and a half room, approximately about 600-750 sq ft. From the experience of our twin daughters, we have learnt that what children like the most are running and jumping as their part of playing. Here, leave aside the place to run and jump, there is no way that they could have walked 5 steps in any direction without bumping into another child.
Where do we play?
What do we play with?
Women in-charge of Anganwadi centres did tell us that they have been given some equipment to engage the children and to give them to play with. But, this paraphernalia is limited in nature. They are held liable in case of breakage. So, to be on the safer side, they do not bring it out.
What do we play with?
Whom do we play with?
This was a fairly interesting point. Anganwadi is for children up to 6 years of age. What we saw was a majority of children, if not all, below 3 years. We were told that parents, for their children above 3 years, put them in private schools. The parents do this so that their children are ready for their schooling straight away and get a head start. So, actually, there were no children of our daughters’ age in Anganwadi.
Whom do we play with?