Learn Hardcore Norwegian: Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene slik at de lærer ansvar. - She gets the children to water the flower beds so that they learn responsibility.

få + (person) + til å + infinitive
- Hun får barna til å vanne. – She gets the children to water.
- Læreren fikk oss til å lese mer. – The teacher got us to read more.

Here får does not mean “receives/gets (something)” but rather “causes someone to do something”.

In English we often translate it with:

get someone to do something
make someone do something
have someone do something

Can you leave out til and just say Hun får barna å vanne blomsterbedene?

No. In this causative structure, Norwegian needs til:

✅ Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene.
❌ Hun får barna å vanne blomsterbedene.

The required pattern is:

få + (person) + til å + infinitive

Some other examples:

Han fikk henne til å le. – He made her laugh.
Foreldrene får barna til å rydde rommet. – The parents get the kids to clean their room.

What is the difference between får and lar in a sentence like this?

Both can involve someone doing something, but the nuance is different:

få noen til å gjøre noe
= get/make someone do something (more active effort, sometimes persuasion or pressure)
la noen gjøre noe
= let/allow someone to do something (permission)

Compare:

Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene.
She gets/makes the children water the flowerbeds (she initiates it, maybe instructs them).
Hun lar barna vanne blomsterbedene.
She lets the children water the flowerbeds (they maybe want to, and she allows it).

So lar focuses on permission, while får … til å focuses on causing/initiating the action.

Why is it barna and not barnene?

Barn is one of those Norwegian nouns with an irregular definite plural:

et barn – a child
barn – children
barna – the children (definite plural)

So:

✅ barna = the children
❌ barnene – this form is not correct in standard Bokmål.

Other similar patterns:

et eple – epler – eplene
et barn – barn – barna

Why is blomsterbedene in the definite plural form? Could it be just blomsterbed?

Blomsterbedene is:

et blomsterbed – a flowerbed
(flertall) blomsterbed – flowerbeds
(bestemt flertall) blomsterbedene – the flowerbeds

In this sentence:

… å vanne blomsterbedene …
= to water the flowerbeds (specific ones, probably known to the speaker and listener).

If you say:

å vanne blomsterbed – to water flowerbed(s)

that sounds incomplete or strange; you would almost always want either plural or definite forms:

å vanne blomsterbed – rarely used like this
å vanne blomsterbedene – to water the flowerbeds
å vanne blomsterbed could appear in a more general, abstract sense, but it’s not natural here.

So in a concrete situation (the garden at home), definite plural blomsterbedene is the natural choice.

What does slik at mean, and how is it different from så or sånn at?

Slik at introduces a result or purpose clause:

… slik at de lærer ansvar.
= … so that they learn responsibility.

It’s similar to English “so that” or “in such a way that”.

Comparisons:

slik at – fairly neutral, written and spoken:
- Hun forklarte det slik at alle forstod.
  She explained it so that everyone understood.
sånn at – more informal/colloquial (especially in speech):
- Hun forklarte det sånn at alle forstod.
så – usually means “so/then” or starts a main clause, not a purpose clause:
- Hun forklarte det, så alle forstod.
  She explained it, so everyone understood. (more like a consequence, not “in order that”)

In your sentence, slik at nicely expresses the intended result/purpose: she makes them water the flowerbeds so that they will learn responsibility.

Why is it de lærer ansvar and not de lærer om ansvar?

Both are possible, but they mean slightly different things:

lære noe – learn something (internalize/acquire it)
- de lærer ansvar – they learn responsibility (they become responsible, they develop it)
lære om noe – learn about something (get information about it)
- de lærer om ansvar – they learn about responsibility (perhaps in a more theoretical sense)

In this sentence, the idea is that the kids develop responsibility as a quality, so lærer ansvar is more natural than lærer om ansvar.

Why is there no seg in lærer ansvar? I’ve seen lære seg before.

Norwegian has two related patterns:

lære noe – to learn something / teach something
- Barna lærer ansvar. – The children learn responsibility.
- Læreren lærer barna norsk. – The teacher teaches the children Norwegian.
lære seg noe – to learn something (often with some idea of mastering a skill)
- Barna lærer seg å svømme. – The children are learning to swim.
- Hun lærte seg norsk. – She learned Norwegian (on her own / as a skill).

In your sentence:

… slik at de lærer ansvar.

You want “they learn responsibility” as a quality or value. Seg is not needed here; lære seg is more common with skills or abilities (å svømme, å spille piano, et språk, etc.).

Does får here mean “receive,” like in jeg får en gave?

It’s the same verb få, but a different usage.

få + noun = receive / get (something)
- Jeg får en gave. – I get a present.
- Hun fikk jobb i Oslo. – She got a job in Oslo.
få + (person) + til å + infinitive = causative (“get/make someone do something”)
- Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene.
  She gets the children to water the flowerbeds.

So yes, it’s the same verb, but the meaning shifts depending on the construction.

What tense is får here, and how would the sentence look in the past tense?

Får is present tense:

Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene …
She gets the children to water the flowerbeds …

To put it in the past tense, use fikk:

Hun fikk barna til å vanne blomsterbedene slik at de lærte ansvar.
She got the children to water the flowerbeds so that they learned responsibility.

Note also the past of lærer:

lærer (present) → lærte (past)

Why is the pronoun de used in slik at de lærer ansvar, and what does it refer to?

De is a subject pronoun in the 3rd person plural: they.

In this sentence, it refers back to barna:

Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene slik at de lærer ansvar.
= She gets the children to water the flowerbeds so that they learn responsibility.

Because barna is plural and refers to people, the corresponding subject pronoun is de.

What is the difference between å vanne and the noun vann?

They are related but different parts of speech:

vann (noun) – water (the substance)
- Jeg drikker vann. – I drink water.
å vanne (verb) – to water (to give water to plants, etc.)
- å vanne blomsterbedene – to water the flowerbeds
- Kan du vanne plantene? – Can you water the plants?

So in your sentence, vanne is the verb “to water,” not the noun “water.”

Is the word order fixed, or could you say Hun får til å vanne barna blomsterbedene?

The word order you suggest is incorrect. The natural order is:

Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene …

The basic structure is:

Subject: Hun
Verb: får
Object (the person caused to act): barna
til å
Infinitive: vanne
Object of that infinitive: blomsterbedene

You cannot move til å in front of barna, and barna must stay as the object of får, not of vanne in this particular order.

So:

✅ Hun får barna til å vanne blomsterbedene.
❌ Hun får til å vanne barna blomsterbedene. (ungrammatical)