Norway nursery apps keep mums updated

Norwegian private nursery group Espira uses its own Spire app to send parents photos and videos of their children, as well as important information such as the time their children go to sleep and wake, when they eat, or have their nappies changed. 

 

Other nursery schools use Mykid.no, made by the publishing giant Egmont, or Kidsagram, launched by six entrepreneurs last year. 

 

“Today I received two reports, four events, three messages and some pictures,” Lina Barane, whose one-year-old son Leon is at an Espira school, told Norway’s state broadcaster NRK. 

 

“Here I can read that he went to sleep at 11.07am and woke at 12:43am. It’s very useful for me to know, since he has struggled with sleep in the transition from home to kindergarten.” 

 

She even gets a brief description of what the nursery staff find in his nappy. 

 

“It's better to get it now on the mobile than to have to ask about it. We’re doing potty training now, so it is helpful,” she said. 

 

Some experts are concerned that the time spent documenting every aspect of the children’s lives is time taken away from interacting with them in a way which will help their development.  

 

Professor Anne Greve at the University of Oslo argued that the documentation is also a violation of the children’s privacy. 

 

“Children have the right to avoid being monitored and documented all the time in just the same way that do not want it to happen to them” she said.  “I think there is a relationship of trust between parents and a nursery school that must be developed in a different way.”