There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge)

by Linda Åkeson McGurk

Meanwhile, many schools are cutting recess to cram more required instruction into a day that hardly had any free time to begin with, not even for the youngest students. Cities are banning sledding out of fear of lawsuits. At home, fear of traffic, abduction, and nature itself, coupled with frenzied extracurricular schedules, is keeping more and more children inside, where they are becoming increasingly dependent on screens for entertainment.

Prioritize daily outdoor time from when your child is a baby to make it a natural part of your routine from the get-go. Remember that not every nature experience must entail a grand adventure to a scenic national park—watching a caterpillar make its way across a sidewalk or simply lying in the grass and watching the clouds go by in the backyard can be a great adventure to a small child. Celebrate these everyday nature experiences together, and come back to the same places often to make sure your child forms a bond with your community and its natural areas.

carriage”) in Swedish, allows the baby to sleep flat on its back. This is key, since prams aren’t just used for walks around town. With their characteristic flat bottoms, they double as outdoor cribs on wheels.

Surprisingly little research exists about outdoor napping, but a Finnish study from 2008 did confirm that children take longer naps when they sleep outside. The study was based in the city of Oulu, Finland, where 95 percent of the parents let their babies nap outside, generally starting from when they are a couple of weeks old. The study also showed that the ideal napping temperature was perceived as twenty-one degrees (−6°C), although many parents reported that they let their charges stay outside in temperatures as low as five degrees (−15°C) or even colder. A majority of the parents also said that their children were “more active” and ate better after napping outside in the cold. A whopping 94 percent of the parents felt like napping outdoors was “healthy because of the fresh air.”

“Children who spend a lot of time in nature have stronger hands, arms, and legs and significantly better balance than children who rarely get to move freely in natural areas. In nature children use and exercise all the different muscle groups,” Ellneby, the preschool teacher, notes. “Children will themselves choose to exercise their joints and muscles, if only given the opportunity.”