La Maison de la Petite Enfance de Fribourg

Françoise Dolto

The Maison of Early childhood

La Maison de la Petite Enfance – The Home of Early Childhood – is a place that welcomes parents and children together. It is inspired by the Maison Verte concept created by child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto and her team in Paris in 1979. Drawing from her practice as a child psychoanalyst, Françoise Dolto thought that by offering parents and children a place where they would be welcome and heard, where dialogue would take precedence over suffering and worry, many problems or misunderstandings could be avoided or resolved. In other words, it provides a space for an interchange of experience and also a place where children and parents can meet and talk with each other or simply relax together.

«What is important is that a child feels safe and autonomous as early as possible. A child needs to feel loved in order to become increasingly confident, day after day freer to explore, to experiment and to relate to others of the same age.»

Françoise Dolto, Major stages of childhood

Today, dozens of places of the Maison Verte type are to be found in France and in other countries. In the French-speaking part of Switzerland there are currently about fifteen that were founded some 10 years ago or more.