Local kindergartens utilise teenage boys as daycare helpers and playmates for the younger children

A course training teenage boys as daycare ‘playmates’ is proving extremely popular in many areas of Greater Copenhagen.

The junior kindergarten helpers aged 13-16 undertake an introductory course including first aid and how to behave and play with children, before attending a local kindergarten for a couple of hours after school a few days a week.

The goal of the program is to provide more male role models and opportunities for rough-and-tumble physical activity for the children. It’s also hoped that the practical work placement opportunity will encourage more young men to seek an education in the daycare sector.

There are currently 17 teenage boys at ten different Copenhagen institutions undertaking the practical element of the program, and the next 19 students will begin their introductory course this week.

Kirsten Vyum of Copenhagen City Council is the project’s leader and said that while the plan had been to involve 20 institutions, the needs of the project have been met by the ten daycare centres.

‘We call them junior pilots to stress that this isn’t about cutbacks and competition to daycare instructors and assistants. It’s an offer of extra resources for the centres and we’ve had applications from an incredible number of boys and some girls,’ Vyum told Berlingske.dk.

The council, in the Vallensbæk suburb of Copenhagen, was the first to offer the project in 2006 and since then the Ringsted, Gentofte and Copenhagen City areas have also offered the daycare helpers. Each of the participants gets a nominal sum of money at the end of their placement.

Bille Lyck is currently one of the teen helpers at a Vesterbro kindergarten and has been a firm hit with the children who say their favourite day is when Bille comes to play.

He will spend 10 weeks at the centre as part of the project and says it is much more rewarding than working at the local supermarket.

‘I think you do more stuff and learn a little more by being with the children than sorting bottles at Netto [supermarket]. Here you chat with the children, get inspired and most important of all, are happy to be with them. They’re so smiley it’s infectious,’ Lyck told Berlingske.dk.

Stig Brostrom, PhD, of the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University evaluated the Vallensbæk project in 2007 and said it was very beneficial in both the short and long-term as the students enthusiastically threw themselves into physical games with the children.