ADB Company visit to PSA - Association of Dutch Businessmen

BUSINESS
Babies booming business in Singapore
By Brigitte Velema
As the number of Singaporean babies has been declining steadily the last few decades, the government has been doing it’s best to
promote parenthood. The government recently enhanced the Baby Bonus Scheme, first introduced in April 2001, to support
parents’ decision to have more children by helping to lighten the financial costs
of raising children. Under the new scheme parents can receive up to S$18.000
Baby Bonus from the government to help ease the financial burden of having a
child. Other measures implemented are reduction of maid levy, working mother
child relief, government paid extended maternity leave, childcare leave,
parenthood tax rebate and, subsidies on infant care fees . As the infant care
subsidy is substantial at $400 a month, it can be expected that it will fuel the
already booming infant care industry.(In less than a year time the number of day
care centers offering infant care has doubled.) One childcare centre offering
infant care is Babies Inc. Babies Inc is the only one to offer a Montessori based
curriculum for infants.(infant = 2-18 months old child) It was set up less than 3
years ago and has been very successful so far.
Interview with Lina Ong Director of Babies Inc Childcare Centre
Before becoming an entrepreneur you
were a lawyer. What made you decide to
get out on your own and why did you start
in childcare?
Well after my first child was born I went back
to work and my mother took care of my son,
which went very well. Once I was pregnant
with my second child however my mother
injured her knee and could no longer take
care of my son. I than starting to look for a
childcare centre and couldn’t find anything
that satisfied me. For my second child I was
specifically looking for centers that provided infant
care. At that time there were 9 centers in Singapore
that provided infant care. I looked at all of them
and was horrified at the thought of leaving my
children there. One centre assured me for example
that I didn’t need to worry about my baby, they
would put him in a playpen all day with some toys
and they assured me that the older children would
not disturb him. Another centre pointed to the
balcony when I asked them about outdoor play. On
top of that none of these centers actually did
anything with these children. They felt their job
was mainly to keep the children from harm. Most
of them assumed that before the age of 3 children
won’t be able to learn much anyway. None of them
had any kind of program for infants (children below
18 months). I really didn’t want this for my
children. Around the same time my oldest child
who was than 1 year old had picked up counting
by himself. It convinced me that children of this
age can really benefit from a stimulating
environment and it also made me feel that by
working fulltime I had actually really missed out a
lot. So I got myself a degree in childcare education
and set up Babies Inc together with an Australian
child care educator.
In what way do you feel you have a competitive
advantage over other childcare centers?
Well like I mentioned before we are offer a
Montessori program for infants, and we believe
that even very young children will benefit from a
stimulating environment. We encourage children
to ask questions, think for themselves and make
decisions, explore their environment and learn
independence and confidence, and we give them
the opportunity to pick up life skills. This is actually
very Un-Singaporean. To give you an example: If
you eat out you will notice that Singaporean infants
and toddlers are always spoon fed. Even though
most children are very well capable of feeding
themselves at age 1. Not only will it give a child a
sense of independence if it is capable of feeding
itself it will also prevent the child from eating more
than it needs. Most spoon-fed children will be fed
until the plate is finished, regardless of their need
for food. It’s a subtle difference of encouragement
to eat and force-feeding. We also believe that in
this age group learning occurs more through
experiencing than through “teaching “. We
therefore take great care to create the right
environment for their growth. We offer programs
like Gymboree and Kindermusik and we will shift
them to a different area about every hour. This
gives children the opportunity to explore by
themselves and this will not only stimulate their
curiosity and independence but also stimulate them
to take initiative. All of these examples mentioned
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Vol.14 • No. 12 • December 2004