Children and bringing them up

Third on this list is il tempo pieno, and it is the entry most likely to be read as English and answered as the wrong question. « Full-time » belongs to work and to study: a full-time job, a full-time student, a contract and a number of hours. It says nothing whatever about a six-year-old. Italian does use the phrase that way as well — un lavoro a tempo pieno is exactly a full-time job — but il tempo pieno, with the article in front of it and on a school form, is the child’s timetable and nobody else’s. It is the long day, the one ending in mid-afternoon, with lunch in the mensa inside it rather than at either end. What a parent is being asked is whether the child stays for it or leaves before lunch, and the two boxes are the whole question. The trap here is not that the words are hard; it is that they are easy, so a reader recognises them and answers about their own week. The sentence that settles it is a che ora finisce il tempo pieno, and the answer is a clock time, not a contract.