The Road to Asilo Nido

A.k.a. nursery school or Italian daycare, asilo nido is available to infants aged 3 months to 3 years, at which point Italian children attend scuola materna until age 6. Scuola materna is often translated as Kindergarten, but it's more like three years of preschool. More on that if we survive Italy long enough for Miss G to reach scuola materna age.

We decided in January or February that we wanted to enroll Miss G in asilo nido next fall. I've been asked why, if I'm not working, we would want G in daycare. One answer is that Italy is lonely, and being alone in a 68 m2 apartment with a toddler is lonely. Try doing both at once. I dare you. Another reply is that asilo nido will allow G to learn Italian and allow me to take language classes, write, find a part-time job.

Asilo nido comes in two flavors: private and public. Private daycares range from okay to excellent and are rather expensive. Public daycares are run by the individual comune; they are gorgeous early education facilities and highly subsidized. From what I can tell, most Italian parents would prefer the public nido for their children. Getting in is a tricky numbers game that balances limited availability with a family's need (need criteria include physical, mental or social disability, income level, number of children in the family, parents' work hours). As a family, J and I don't rate high on the comune's need criteria, but it would be foolish not to try to get G in.

The application is simple: bring an ISEE form (a financial statement filled out by a qualified financial services office) and proof of residency in the comune to the Servizi all'Infanzia office. Even non-Italian speakers like ourselves should be able to pull this application off. However, it took 5 trips in 4 days spread out over two weeks to get the application completed, including a last-24-hours-before-the-deadline dash to the questura (police/immigration headquarters) and our local anagrafe (Povo Technical Office -- see previous post) to gather the necessary documentation.

I don't have the energy to walk through the steps again here. One kind expat we've told the full story to was kind enough to reply, "Oh, but now she has to get in. There's no way she won't get in after all you went through to apply."

The believer in me knows, "Yes, of course she'll get in."

The exhausted immigrant in me says, "But this is Italy, and nothing works out for the best in Italy."

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The Comune of Trento provides tantalizing bits of information to its foreign population in English and sometimes French. For more info on the public asilo nidi of Trentino, see Servizi all'infanzia: introduzione.