Norway Wants To Give Kids A Bit more Freedom

Norwegians woke up Tuesday morning to news that a respected Oslo pre-school teacher, backed by child psychologists, thinks children should be allowed to openly express their own sexuality, not least through sex play and games in the local day care centers known as barnehager, or kindergartens.

The vast majority of Norwegians send their children from the age of one to the kindergartens, where they spend their days until they begin school at age six.

Pia Friis, leader of the popular Bjerkealleen Barnehage in Oslo and a well-known pre-school educator, told newspaper Dagbladet on Tuesday that children should be allowed to express their own sexuality at day care centers. She doesn't want to stifle what comes naturally.

Children, she said,

should be able to look at each other and examine each other's bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate.

But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don't want to.

I'm so relieved, no masturbating in the cafeteria.

When is the last time you heard of a two or three-year-old masturbating? Norwegian kid or otherwise?

Those Norwegians must have really strange kids.