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.

Recess, most of which is spent outside, already makes up approximately 20 percent of the school day in Sweden. Many schools are moving more of their instructional time outside as well. Forest schools—nurseries where children spend the better part of the day outside, all year-round—are an increasingly popular choice among nature-loving parents. In Sweden, nature is not an abstract concept that is taught only on Earth Day and through textbooks about bees and butterflies.

Even though most parents and educators recognize the benefits of unstructured outdoor play, research shows that this generation of children plays outside significantly less than their parents did.

The Danish have hygge, one of those unique phenomena that doesn’t translate well but evokes images of a family cozying up in front of a fireplace, drinking hot chocolate, and playing board games.

if we want children to care about nature, they need to spend time in it first.

The Scandinavian countries lead the world in terms of paid parental leave, and Swedish parents get a total of 480 days, with a certain quota reserved for the mother and father, respectively, plus unpaid leave for up to three years.

Sometimes I would get together with other moms for fika (generally understood as a coffee break accompanied by a pastry) and take walks in the park or around town, possibly with a stop at an öppna förskolan, or “open preschool,” a free resource that provides developmentally appropriate activities for babies and children up to five years and, maybe more important, gives parents on leave a chance to socialize and treat cabin fever.

Then I would have gone home and napped some more. When my child was around the age of eighteen months, I, like 84 percent of all Swedish parents, would enroll her at a government-subsidized preschool and go back to work. As anybody who has ever cared for an infant knows, it is rarely easy: naturally, Scandinavian moms struggle with the same hormonal roller coasters, sleepless nights, blown-out diapers, and bouts with postpartum depression as their American counterparts. But having a stable income without the pressure of going back to work soon after the birth undoubtedly softens the transition to parenthood and gives Scandinavian parents a chance to bond with their baby at a crucial time of their development.

nearly a quarter of American moms go back to work just two weeks after giving birth.

Our attitudes about parenting are thoroughly steeped in cultural norms, and our children in a way become an extension of ourselves. We try to re-create the good experiences and eliminate the bad ones, giving our children the best childhoods we can feasibly offer them. This is true of most American as well as Scandinavian parents; we just have different ways of getting there.

which allows Maya to ride behind her sister either standing or sitting while Nora is lying in the stroller. Once again, in Sweden this is not an uncommon way for parents to get around with multiple children, but here it’s a surefire way of flying your freak flag. With the two dogs in one hand and the stroller in the other, I don’t just cause people to turn their heads. They roll down their car windows and tell me they wish they had their camera.

Weird response from folks

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that childhood obesity has almost tripled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past thirty years.

In 1989, according to one survey, 96 percent of all elementary schools in the US offered recess every day, but this has changed drastically over the past twenty-five years as many school districts have cut it or eliminated it altogether. 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.

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.”

To a great extent, friluftsliv is made possible by the Swedish common law of allemansrätten (the right of public access), which grants anybody the right to walk, ride a bike or horse, ski, pick berries, or camp anywhere on private land, except for the part that immediately surrounds a private dwelling. In short, that means you can pick mushrooms and flowers, as well as light a campfire and pitch a tent, in somebody else’s woods, but not right in front of their house unless you have permission. You can also walk through cattle pastures and other farm fields as long as you make sure to close all gates and don’t damage any crops. Unlike in the US, where private property rights are king, and land use tends to be ruled by the risk for potential lawsuits and the premise that if something can go wrong it probably will, allemansrätten relies on an honor system that can simply be summed up with the phrase “Do not disturb, do not destroy,” and trusts that people will use their common sense.

Some even suggest that nature fills the void left by the decline of organized religion in Sweden, which is now one of the most secular countries in the world.

I stare at the pink ticket in disbelief, then buckle up the kids and go home. We have a month to pay our fine of $123.50, and a court date in case we want to fight the charge.

Annoying But certainly there were signs she chose to ignore

For some readers, the million-dollar question was whether the swimming ban was posted at the preserve. The answer was more complicated than a simple yes or no. The brown metal sign at the entrance does not say anything about staying out of the creek. It does say to stay on marked trails only, but there are several well-trodden trails leading down to the water and nothing posted on any of them indicating that they are off-limits.

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.

Soon the wealthy started flocking to the countryside to get their beneficial dose of nature, whether they were sick or not, and children from poor families were sent to summer camps or on extended stays with families in rural areas.

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).

the Finnish government still promotes outdoor napping. 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.”

“If it was below minus ten degrees [Celsius; fourteen degrees Fahrenheit] I didn’t put them outside by themselves, but I would still take them for walks. And if it rained I just put a rain cover on the pram and went outside anyway. You can’t let that stop you.”

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.

All, including the adults, are wearing the kind of bright yellow high-visibility vests that most Americans probably associate with hunting.

Lol eyeroll

“But what if something were to happen?” I insist. “All the students have casualty insurance coverage through the county. But, really, nothing serious ever happens.”

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.

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.

I had always tried to incorporate outdoor treasure hunts for Maya’s birthday in February and thankfully her friends’ parents were good sports who never complained about getting their kids back muddy. But the concept of holding an entire party outside in January was new to me.

a vast majority of Scandinavian children (as many as 84 percent in Sweden) between the ages of one and five are enrolled in preschool.

There is no unanimous, internationally recognized definition of play, but the British organization Play England calls it a “process that is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated,” noting that “all children and young people need to play.

A survey of a hundred preschools in Stockholm showed that the average time spent outside was one and a half hours per day—on a bad-weather day in the winter. On a nice day in the summer, the average was nearly six hours.

In Sweden all the supplies needed for activities and daily operations are provided by the school. They don’t need more markers—what they want is children who can play outside in all types of weather. Which prompts this list of recommended supplies for winter: • Thick mittens (two pairs) • Woolen socks

“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,”

Then, in the 1830s, a German teacher and staunch nature lover named Friedrich Froebel picked up on the idea that play is key to children’s physical, moral, and spiritual development. He was so convinced of this idea that he decided to create an early childhood education program that revolved around singing, dancing, gardening, self-directed play, and experiencing nature with all senses. Froebel viewed children as plants who would flower if they were allowed to learn at their own pace, nourished and guided by a teacher. He called his concept “kindergarten”—literally, a child’s garden.

Anette Eskilsson, a Swedish early childhood educator who often speaks about stimulating children’s desire to learn, explains the Scandinavian attitude toward play and learning this way: “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.’”

“In Denmark, play is valued for its own sake, whereas for many American parents it’s more about building skills and how it will help us later.

Those baby flash cards and the word walls so often seen in preschool classrooms may seem harmless enough, but putting pressure on young children to read early can actually limit other aspects of their learning that may be more important, like spontaneous exploration and discovery.

There’s another reason why hands-on, meaningful play experiences in nature are so conducive to learning. Nature activates all the senses, but without being overwhelming. When children play in nature, they tend to be calm yet alert.

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.

After two days of me tagging along to her new preschool to make sure that she is adjusting well (a process which is called inskolning and is mandatory for all new children), Nora is ready for me to move on. “You can go home now, Mommy,” she declares as we walk into the preschool on the third morning. “I want to go by myself. I’ll be fine.”

“I personally don’t like having things scheduled after work and I think that having too many activities after school stresses the kids out too. When I get back at four thirty I just want to kick back and be with my family.”

with Sweden’s tradition of equal treatment of the genders, Girl Scout and Boy Scout organizations here merged in the 1960s and ’70s, with the result that all troops are coed.)

Naturally, there are many benefits of participating in organized sports. It can teach kids a lot about hard work, social skills, self-discipline, sportsmanship, and other desirable traits. 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.

A former soccer coach, Hinic believes children in general start organized sports too early, and that most children of preschool and early elementary school age benefit more from playing outside.

A study by the University of Copenhagen showed that children actually got more exercise while playing freely outdoors than when they participated in organized sports.

when Ingunn Fjørtoft, a professor at Telemark University in Porsgrunn, Norway, compared five- to seven-year-olds at three different kindergartens in Norway, she found that those who played in the forest daily had significantly better balance and coordination than children who only played on a traditional playground.

Balance and adhd link too

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. In the US, this busyness begins already in the early years, but it doesn’t end there. Rather, the wheels of after-school activities seem to spin even faster—on top of an increasing homework load—the closer the students get to college.

“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.’”

Scandinavian Parenting Tip #3 Simplify childhood and resist the urge to try to keep up with the Joneses’ kids. Remember that a preschooler needs very few things besides ample time to play freely, and that filling his or her schedule with a litany of “enriching” activities can do more harm than good.