The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids

by Jessica Joelle Alexander

If you go to Italy, you will see children eating dinner at nine p.m. and

running around in restaurants until almost midnight; in Norway babies are regularly left outside in minus-twenty-degree weather to sleep; and in Belgium kids are allowed to drink beer.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning, but for children play is serious learning. MR.

As they see it, if children are always performing in order to obtain something—good grades, awards, or praise from teachers or parents—then they don’t get to develop their inner drive.