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November 2 - December 26, 2024
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.”
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.
“all children and young people need to play. The impulse to play is innate. Play is a biological, psychological and social necessity, and is fundamental to the healthy development and well-being of individuals and communities.”
Plato said that “the most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.”
Education. “Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it,”
development is heavily influenced by their culture and that they learn primarily by playing and interacting with older and more skilled children and adults.
“It’s two completely different ways of looking at it. You either view children as empty containers, waiting to be filled by adults through teaching, or you believe that they have the innate capability to learn together with others. In Sweden we have faith in the child’s own curiosity and desire to learn. We call this concept ‘the competent child.’”
Parents and early childhood educators in Scandinavia seem to agree that if you want to raise healthy, capable learners, letting them play as much as possible is key.
Daniel, a Danish father of a kindergartner, explains it this way: “We see childhood as an important part of a human’s life and not as a race to adulthood. We believe and respect the fact that children have the right to a happy childhood.”
Sure, children can be trained to learn how to read and write earlier through drilling and direct instruction. But why the rush? Alliance for Childhood notes that many children are not ready to read in kindergarten and that pushing them to live up to unrealistic academic goals can lead to inappropriate classroom practices.
education in the early years should focus on supporting children’s curiosity and sense of wonder, and getting them excited about the world around them. As luck would have it, there is a perfect place for this: nature.
As a parent, a great way to support them is simply to spend a lot of time outside, ask open-ended questions, and encourage your child’s innate curiosity and willingness to investigate.
Hanscom believes the rise in sensory issues in children is directly linked to the fact that children play less outside.
Hanscom recommends as much as five to eight hours of active play every day, preferably outdoors, for toddlers and preschoolers, and four to five hours of physical activity and outdoor play for school-age children up to the age of thirteen.
But too much too early means there is very little downtime for kids to “just” play outside; additionally, it reduces parents to frazzled, grumpy chauffeurs. Of those who start too early, many are burned-out and lose interest by the time they are twelve, according to Hansi Hinic, a researcher at Halmstad University in Sweden, who specializes in the psychological effects of organized sports on children.
study by the University of Copenhagen showed that children actually got more exercise while playing freely outdoors than when they participated in organized sports.
Overscheduling children, whether it is with organized sports, clubs, or other adult-led activities, also means that they are missing out on the benefits of being bored. Too many stimuli means little time for the mind to rest and recover. And, frankly, little time for kids to figure out who they are and what they want.
“When your child comes to you and says he’s so ‘booored,’ give him a hug and tell him, ‘Good luck, my friend! I look forward to seeing what you get up to.’”
At Nora’s preschool, composting is one of the first “green” behaviors that is usually learned. There’s good reason for this: I know from personal experience that once you’ve gotten used to separating out your food waste from the trash, it becomes very hard to knowingly send a banana peel to the landfill when you get older.
Some researchers believe this strict interpretation of Leave No Trace can limit children’s opportunities to make meaningful connections with the natural world and may even exacerbate the perceived separation of humans and nature.
He argued, somewhat radically, that the purest people were found in primitive societies rather than civilized ones. The farther removed humans were from what he called the original “state of nature,” the more morally corrupted and decadent they would inevitably become. Children were viewed as close to nature because they hadn’t yet become broken down and destroyed by civilization, and according to Rousseau’s logic it was desirable that they stay in that natural state as long as possible.
Many researchers believe that smaller family sizes, increased antibiotics use, less contact with animals, more time spent indoors, and an obsession with cleanliness have all contributed to our immune systems slacking off in the past fifty years.
In reality, our modern, sanitized lifestyle has wiped out a lot of beneficial microbes in our gut that help us stay healthy.
When the immune system is not challenged enough, it might start looking for stuff to do, like overreacting to things that are not really dangerous, like pollen and peanuts. This is believed to cause allergies, asthma, eczema, childhood diabetes, and inflammation later in life.
M. vaccae occurs naturally in soil and water, and is inhaled or ingested when we come in contact with dirt. Our exposure to mycobacteria has decreased considerably due to sanitation and water treatment in Western urban areas, but by regularly playing outside or helping out with a backyard garden, children can still get in contact with it.
“Bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi play a critical role in developing and maintaining a healthy gut and immune system. Playing outside, digging for worms, planting vegetables, and essentially coming into contact with plenty of dirt and livestock are actually good things. Not just good—essential.”
one easy way to support children’s health and strengthen their immune system could simply be to let them play outside as much as possible and not panic if they sample a clump of dirt or lick an earthworm.
sticks and pinecones never killed anybody; kids have done that since the beginning of time. That’s how they get to know the world around them. They usually discover pretty soon that sticks don’t taste that great.”
The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids.
Of all children, none seem more apt at mastering their environment than the children who go to nature-based preschools.
“There’s an enormous difference between walking and getting a ride somewhere. I believe you have to let transportation take its time in order to gain appreciation for the way the world works.
In communities with a high level of social trust, children are generally given greater independence and mobility.
Ironically, in a time when our children are statistically safer and more secure than ever, removing all perceivable risk from their lives has become a mainstream parenting strategy.
Human ecology researcher Ebba Lisberg Jensen at Malmö University believes the anxiety over so-called risky play is a result of the fact that society has become so safe and secure. “The safety becomes a little bit of a trap. We want more and more safety, and it’s just never safe enough. This is what we call ‘care anxiety,’”
“Children are not going to be children for the rest of their lives,” he says. “If you overprotect them and don’t let them take risks and have a certain amount of responsibility, they’ll have a shock when they head out into the world later. This is not something you learn overnight; this is something you have to learn gradually. There’s a high risk that children won’t learn how to behave in traffic and in nature if they don’t learn this early.”
Sometimes they just pulled all the patio furniture from their small back porch and put it in the grass in the backyard. It was a simple setup, but judging by the looks on their faces, they might as well have been sitting in a five-star restaurant, sipping vintage Cristal and feasting on exquisite Russian caviar. To them, eating under the open sky was the finest dining experience imaginable.
British State of Education report found that four-fifths of teachers are worried about children not being prepared for starting primary school (which in the UK happens at age five) due to poor social skills and delayed speech, which many of the teachers attribute to parents’ excessive use of smartphones and tablets. “There is limited parent/child interaction,” one teacher writes, according to the Guardian. “Four-year-olds know how to swipe a phone but haven’t a clue about conversations.” According to the survey, as many as a third of the students who are enrolled in primary school are not
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The side effects of too much screen time—increased risk of sleep deprivation, attention problems, anxiety, depression, and obesity, according to the National Institutes of Health—are real.
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”
If we want our children to fully engage in and draw the benefits from spending time in nature—and, just as importantly, if we think that them doing so is key to the future health of the planet—they need a village.
1. There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.
“Fruit is candy.”
Dress for the weather.
Fresh air is good for you.
Just let them play.
A little dirt won’t hurt.
Freedom with responsibility.
Unplug to connect.
It takes a village.
We are one with nature.
