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

Scandinavia’s nature-centric culture, embodied in the term friluftsliv (which loosely translates to “open-air life”), is not just the sum of all outdoor activities people take part in. It’s a way of life that to this day is considered key to raising healthy, well-rounded, and eco-conscious children.

In Sweden, nature is not an abstract concept that is taught only on Earth Day and through textbooks about bees and butterflies. It’s an integral part of everyday life.

Daily interaction with nature has helped turn many children, myself included, into passionate advocates for the environment. Not surprisingly, Scandinavia is also a world leader when it comes to renewable energy, recycling, and sustainable living.

One cross-sectional study representing four million children in the US showed that roughly half of all preschoolers don’t have daily outdoor playtime, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends encouraging “children to play outside as much as possible.”

And what if more children who act out were allowed to get out?

The wild is a voice that never stops whispering. —DANIEL CROCKETT

Considering the capricious nature of the Scandinavian climate, it’s maybe no wonder that the saying “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes” originated here. It probably started as a coping strategy, or was perhaps born out of defiance of the weather powers that be. If you were ever a child in Scandinavia, you’ve heard this phrase more times than you care to count, from teachers, parents, grandparents, and other adults in your life. As a result, Scandinavians grow up with a certain resilience to the weather. The children who once dressed in rain gear from head to toe to go out to recess or play in the woods after school turn into adults who feel a certain urgency about getting outside every day.

To paraphrase David Sobel, advocate of place-based education and author of Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, if we want children to care about nature, they need to spend time in it first.

Similarly, approximately 11 percent of American children between the ages of four and seventeen have been diagnosed with ADHD, whereas only 3 to 6 percent of school-age children in Sweden are estimated to meet the criteria for the disorder. Although the number of ADHD diagnoses has increased in Sweden in the past few years, too, the incidence is well below the US trend.

The fact that children spend more time indoors is believed to be the main culprit behind this increase. Sensory issues are on the rise as well, with more young children than ever before needing occupational therapy, speech therapy, and physical therapy, even at the preschool level.

Today only 40 percent of American school systems even have an explicit recess policy, and minorities and children living in poverty are less likely to have recess than white students and those living above the poverty line.

A comfortable child can play outside for hours, so high-quality outdoor gear and play clothes are well worth the money. If the clothes are durable, chances are they can also be handed down to younger siblings.

The first layer, or the base layer, regulates the child’s temperature and keeps him dry.

The mid-layer insulates the body by trapping body heat in pockets of air in the fabric. This layer can be made of either natural or synthetic fibers and can, for example, consist of a fleece jacket and pants or a sweatshirt and sweatpants.

The outer layer should be waterproof, windproof, and breathable. This layer also needs to stand up to some wear and tear and is typically made of polyamide or nylon,

For the youngest children, one-piece coveralls are usually the best choice, since they are easy to put on and prevent snow from creeping in. Underfoot straps ...

Combine with snow boots or fleece-lined rain boots, as well as waterproof mittens wi...

For rainy days, the Scandinavian-style heavy-duty rain gear sometimes seen at forest schools in the US is the ultimate outer layer. Typically sold as a set consisting of overalls (bib pants) and a jacket, and made of polyester and polyurethane blends, these garments do a great job of keeping wind and rain out. Layer them with a fleece jacket in cooler temperatures and combine them with a pair of rugged rain boots for endless fun in puddles of mud.

For dry days, use regular, breathable shell pants and a windbreaker for the outer layer. Even if the temperature doesn’t call for shell pants, they save your child’s regular clothes from getting stained and torn.

Hand-me-downs, yard sale finds, and older clothes with holes or stains that won’t come out make excellent candidates for playclothes. • In cool, wet weather, layer with rain gear as needed. • In sunny weather, a sun hat with a strap under the chin and thin, long-sleeved UV clothing help protect the child from the sun. • Shoes are optional!

Friluftsliv—Open-Air Life

friluftsliv. The term was first used in print by famed Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen in 1859, and describes a culture and a way of life that heavily revolve around exploring and enjoying nature.

Friluftsliv can encompass anything from skiing and hiking to berry picking and fishing, or be as simple as going for a nature walk or bike ride near one’s home. In Sweden, friluftsliv is generally defined as “physical activity outdoors to get a change of scenery and experience nature, with no pressure to achieve or compete.”

In the 2007 Eurobarometer public opinion survey, a staggering 98 percent of the Swedish respondents—more than in any other country—declared that it is their responsibility to protect the environment, even if it means putting limits on human development.

Norway was one of the first countries in the world to adopt a carbon tax.

From clean water, zero-waste policies, and green energy the leap to parenting may seem big, but, as Sobel and Chawla have pointed out, it all starts by forming a bond with nature in childhood. And the Scandinavians are experts at it.

Scandinavian Parenting Tip #1 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. Suggested reading: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv. Algonquin Books, 2008.

Fresh air affects children’s constitutions, particularly in early years. It enters every pore of a soft and tender skin, it has a powerful effect on their young bodies. Its effects can never be destroyed. —JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

More important, this type of stroller, called barnvagn (“child 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.

The Scandinavian practice of parking prams with young babies outside all year-round dates back at least a century. At the time, the infant mortality rate was high and indoor air quality poor, and many children suffered from rickets and other diseases. In Finland, a well-known pediatrician named Arvo Ylppö, who is sometimes referred to as that country’s Dr. Benjamin Spock, set out to change all that. In the 1920s, he started to distribute childcare guidelines to new mothers, to improve the health and survival rates among infants. Among his many recommendations was to expose children to sunlight as well as fresh and cold air regularly to create “sound blood” and prevent diseases. Specifically, cold air was believed to increase immunity against bacteria by improving blood circulation in the linings of the nose and mouth. When Ylppö died in 1992, the infant mortality rate in Finland had fallen from 10 percent in 1920 to 0.6 percent, making it among the lowest rates in the world (as of 2015, it stood at 0.2 percent).

For example, all new parents receive an educational pamphlet titled “Having Children in Finland,” which explicitly recommends the practice: “Irrespective of the season, many children have their evening naps outside in prams. Many babies sleep better outdoors in the fresh air than in the bedroom. Sleeping outdoors is not dangerous for a baby.”

“In my experience, they sleep better outside, since they get fresh air, and they also get used to sleeping with normal background noise,” says my younger cousin Josephine, whose one-year-old daughter, Valerie, has slept outdoors for up to three hours per day since she was two months old. “I also think that they stay healthier this way. At least they look healthy when they come in from their power nap in the pram with rosy cheeks, and they feel much more alert and energetic after napping outside rather than inside.”

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.”

According to Roland Sennerstam, a pediatric specialist in Sweden, the practice makes perfect sense from a germ-management standpoint, and he recommends that both babies and older children go outside both in the morning and in the afternoon. “As a rule of thumb, you can let babies sleep outside in temperatures down to minus ten degrees [Celsius; fourteen degrees Fahrenheit]. It’s a misconception that cold temperatures make us sick,” he says. “We get sick because we contract viruses and bacteria when we spend too much time inside, stand too close to each other on the subway, and so on. The risk of getting infected is especially high at day cares, where you might have twenty children spending the whole day inside in a virtual cloud of germs.”

Sure enough, a 1990 study of Sweden’s preschools (which essentially function like day cares) by the National Board of Health and Welfare showed that children who spent five or fewer hours outside per week at day care were sick more often than those who spent six to nine hours outside per week. In 1997, another study that compared traditional preschools with so-called forest schools, where the children spend most of the day outside, confirmed that outdoor kids generally have fewer sick days.

Outdoor experiences in a stimulating environment can also be a boon to the brain, which develops rapidly in the first three years of a child’s life, according to a study from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Listening to the sound of an airplane, grasping a leaf, smelling the ocean, observing colors and shapes in nature, crawling on a rough surface, and experiencing different types of weather all help form neural pathways in a baby’s brain, which essentially paves the way for learning later in life. “A baby’s brain absorbs a lot more then [sic] we realize as they try to make sense of the world through soaking up noises, sights and e...

even at traditional preschools in Scandinavia it’s extremely popular to let the youngest children sleep outside. Come nap time, it’s common to see a long line of prams with napping babies lined up against a wall outside, and in Denmark some preschools even have a special sheltered area with stationary pram-like bassinets where the youngest children sleep. And preschools that skimp on outdoor nap or playtime can quickly draw the ire of parents, who expect them to provide it.

In Sweden, most children start something called “preschool class” the year they turn six, although this is not mandatory. (I would compare it to American kindergarten if it were not so completely different. Judging by what some older teachers in the US have told me, I imagine that it is a lot like kindergarten was thirty years ago.) Formal, mandatory schooling starts the following year, when the children turn seven and start first grade.

“It’s very rare for somebody to get injured. We have our rules and the kids are really good about following them,” Suzanne says, as if she were reading my mind. “We nag them about wearing helmets a lot, and they know that they’re not allowed to start sledding or ice-skating until there is an adult outside.”

Sometimes, regular classes like art, science, and physical education are taught outdoors. In the woods, the children learn while moving around, something that is especially important to the youngest students.

“With the six-year-olds we’ve looked for sticks and compared length, which ones were shorter and longer,” she says. “In science class, with the older children, we’ve used the sledding hill to learn about friction by comparing different ways of getting down—for example, with a wax cloth, a plastic sled, shoes with grooved soles, and so on. There really isn’t anything you can do inside that you can’t do outside.”

I can’t help but think about the poor teacher back in Indiana who told me that all she did during recess in the winter was tell the children what they were not allowed to do, and how different the approach of teachers seemed here in Sweden. “I actually believe that you have to let them take some risks,” says Lisa, one of the older staff members on recess duty as she watches Maya and her new friends at the top of the hill. “That’s how children learn. It’s a form of trial and error—they try one thing and if that doesn’t work they’ll try something different. It’s hard to watch sometimes, because as an adult you’re wired to intervene. But even though it looks chaotic, they do a really good job of looking out for each other.”

“Sometimes I think that it’s better for the adults to take a step back, observe, and not interfere,” one of the younger staff members chimes in. Watching the organized chaos on the sledding hill, she jokes, “Sometimes it’s better to just look the other way.”

In Finland, a country envied by educators worldwide as the only non-Asian country to consistently rank in the top ten on the PISA test, students typically get a fifteen-minute break after each lesson, averaging seventy-five minutes of recess every day. They also have fewer instructional hours than students in any other country in the developed world, and little homework, leaving the children with more time to play outside. This is a drastically different approach to education than what is normally found in Asian countries, where many students rack up twelve hours or more per day hunched over their textbooks. Obviously, many other factors go into the Finnish success story. But one thing is for sure: The fresh air that teachers and parents in Scandinavia insist that children get every day is not just good for them—it’s actually essential to their health and well-being.

A 2011 Swiss study of five-year-olds showed that aerobic fitness improves children’s attention span, and that better motor skills, like balance, result in improved working memory. Both are crucial to academic success.

A meta-analysis of two hundred studies showed that physical activity during the school day resulted in increased fitness, better attitudes, and a slight improvement in test scores.

Finally, several studies have showed that outdoor recess can help prevent myopia, or nearsightedness, in elementary school children, since children’s eyes need bright, natural light in order to develop normally.

He enjoys nearly two hours of unstructured, outdoor play every day here, four times more than in the United States.”

ADHD is a recognized condition in Norway, and 3 to 5 percent of Norwegian children and adolescents are estimated to have it. That figure is consistent with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which estimates that 5 percent of children in the US have ADHD. Yet 11 percent of all American children are currently diagnosed with the disorder, a figure that has been rising steadily for at least two decades. Of these, more than half receive medication for it, and among preschoolers who are diagnosed, the number is over 75 percent. Researchers are still scrambling to explain the recent ADHD epidemic, and the debate about how to treat it goes on. Outdoor play is certainly no cure-all for ADHD, but in Lowen’s case it was a game changer. Her son’s behavior no longer fit the diagnosis, nor did his Norwegian teacher see any evidence of it.