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

But what if more toddlers spent their days watching real birds instead of playing Angry Birds on their iPads? What if more kindergartners actually got to grow gardens? What if more schools increased the length of recess instead of the number of standardized tests? And what if more children who act out were allowed to get out?

The government is also heavily invested in promoting outdoor recreation for children and adults alike as a preventive health measure. For example, the health care system in Sweden’s Skåne region encourages parents to get outside with their children from an early age as a way to prevent obesity and establish a healthy lifestyle from the get-go. “We all know that fresh air and movement benefit both your appetite and sleep,” says an informative pamphlet for new parents. “That is true not only for older children and adults, but fresh air every day makes small children feel well too. This also establishes good habits and a desire to exercise.”

The idea that fresh air and outdoor play are crucial to good health is so prevalent that it has even found some unlikely champions in the pharmaceutical industry. Kronans Apotek, one of the largest pharmacy chains in Sweden, offers the following advice for flu season on its website: “The first step toward fewer runny noses and less coughing is to let the child spend as much time outside as possible,” the company says. “When children are outside, the physical distance between them increases, which reduces the risk for contagion through direct contact or the air. The more time spent outside the better.”

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 1980, approximately 7 percent of American children age six to eleven years were obese; in 2012, that number was nearly 18 percent. Among adolescents age twelve to nineteen years, the obesity rate increased from 5 percent to nearly 21 percent in the same period. When you include figures for those who are simply overweight as well, more than one-third of American children are considered overweight or obese. That means children in the US are nearly six times more likely to be obese and nearly twice as likely to be overweight as children in Sweden. 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. When combined with children on the autism spectrum, as many as one in six American children have a developmental disability, representing a 17 percent increase between 1997 and 2008, according to a 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, a 2009 study showed that the prevalence of myopia, or nearsightedness, increased from 25 percent in 1971–72 to nearly 42 ...

• The first layer, or the base layer, regulates the child’s temperature and keeps him dry. This layer usually fits snugly. Long underwear made from merino wool, synthetic fibers, or a blend of both works best closest to the body, since these materials move perspiration away from the body. Cotton, on the other hand, soaks up moisture and leaves the child feeling wet and cold.

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, preferably with reinforced high-impact areas like knees and bottom. 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 help keep the coveralls/snow pants in place, and reflective trim or a high-visibility vest are a must for outdoor adventures after dark. Combine with snow boots or fleece-lined rain boots, as well as waterproof mittens with long cuffs, and a hat.

There’s an old Danish proverb that claims that “fresh air impoverishes the doctor.”

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.

Part of the explanation can likely be found in education reforms that have increased the academic requirements for kindergarten beginning in the 1980s and further exacerbated by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and, most recently, the Common Core State Standards, according to the advocacy group Alliance for Childhood. Although child-centered early education models can be found in the US through the Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia approaches, “teacher-led instruction in kindergartens has almost entirely replaced the active, play-based, experiential learning that we know children need from decades of research in cognitive and developmental psychology and neuroscience,” the group notes. And now pre-K is suffering from the ripple effects.

Plus, there is no scientific evidence that teaching children to read early will help them be better readers in the long run. A study that compared two groups of children in New Zealand who started their formal literacy lessons at ages five and seven, respectively, showed no significant difference in reading ability by the time they were eleven years old. But the children who had started at five had developed a less positive attitude to reading and had worse text comprehension than the children who had started when they were seven. Other studies have shown no significant association between the age a child starts school and his or her reading ability.

Testing creativity and problem-solving skills is arguably harder than testing factual knowledge, but the results of two separate studies conducted by MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, show that teaching children too much too early can backfire. At MIT, the researchers gave a group of four-year-olds exactly the same toy, and only varied the method with which they introduced it to the children. In one group, the researcher acted naïve and clueless when she demonstrated one of the functions of the toy, whereas the other group was given direct instruction by the researcher on how to use it. When left alone with the toy, all the children in the study were able to replicate what the “teacher” had done—pull on one of the toy’s tubes to make it squeak—but the children in the first group played with the toy longer and discovered more of its functions. They were simply more curious and more likely to discover new information than the children who had been told by the teacher how to use the toy. The study at UC Berkeley had similar results: When the children with the “clueless” researcher were left with the toy, they discovered a smarter way to get it to play music, whereas the children who were taught how to use it only replicated what the teacher had done.

“In order for children to learn, they must be able to pay attention. And in order to pay attention, children need to move,” she says.

“Nature invites authentic play—the best kind of play for young children. Authentic play is fun, open-ended, self-directed and freely chosen. Authentic play occurs naturally when children and nature are brought together,”

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.

Of course, nobody’s suggesting that we should go back to the days of bathing once a year, drinking filthy water, and dying from simple, treatable illnesses. Vaccinations, antibiotics, and the improvements in sanitation and personal hygiene in the industrialized world have been key to curbing outbreaks of infectious diseases and have saved a lot of lives. Unfortunately, beneficial microbes were the unintended casualty of this progress. How to bring them back in an age when most people don’t have a barn with farm animals conveniently located in their backyard is a question that vexes scientists. Our relationship with parasites, bacteria, and viruses is complicated to say the least, and researchers don’t necessarily know what type of dirt can help protect us against asthma and allergies. But if being too far removed from nature is the main reason for the epidemic, as so many scientists seem to believe, 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. The ick factor may be high, and for small children rocks and other small loose parts can be a choking hazard, but the risk of them getting sick from such things is extremely low.

One of the most renowned advocates of risky play, Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College, says that not only is risky play beneficial to children’s health and development but that depriving them of it can cause harm. According to Gray, risky play is nature’s way for children to teach themselves emotional resilience and learn how to manage and overcome their fears. Gray draws a straight line from the decline in children’s freedom to play and embrace risk to the dramatic rise in childhood mental disorders like anxiety and depression that has occurred since the 1950s.

“The story is both ironic and tragic. We deprive children of free, risky play, ostensibly to protect them from danger, but in the process we set them up for mental breakdowns,” he writes in Psychology Today. “In the long run, we endanger them far more by preventing such play than by allowing it. And, we deprive them of fun.”