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

“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.”

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.

Many cultures in the industrialized world are dominated by an anthropocentric view of nature. They see nature almost as a detached entity, something that is mainly there for humans to master and extract resources from. Other cultures subscribe to the idea that humans are stewards of nature and all other living beings, and in some cases that this responsibility is bestowed on us by a divine creator. In Scandinavia, however, a third narrative prevails, as here most people see themselves as inseparable from nature.

“Studies show that if you alternate outdoor and indoor learning, and the teacher is prepared, you get good results,” says Anders Szczepanski, director of the National Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education at Linköping University, Sweden. “There are certain parts of the brain that are stimulated when we move around and have fun in a varied environment. We turn on our intuition when we go outside—and we need to do it more often.”

He says that collecting natural objects can foster play and creativity as well as knowledge about the outdoors.

“too much order and cleanliness hampers play. Children must be allowed to get muddy, get in the water with their clothes on, make a mess and be rowdy; they should be spontaneous, improvise and do things that are not thought-through.”

“The more time they spend in nature, the better they become at self-control,”

In communities with a high level of social trust, children are generally given greater independence and mobility. “Having social trust means that if problems arise, we trust that we solve them together, as a community. In places where the attitude is that everyone minds their own business, children have less mobility,” says Mårtensson, the environmental psychologist.

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.

“Of course you don’t want your child to get seriously injured,” says Magnus, a father of two, “but it’s normal for kids to get bruised legs and scraped knees. That’s what we call ‘summer legs.’”

(As a side note, more people in the world died while taking selfies than from being attacked by sharks in 2015.)

But the toys and the cupboards that were always fully stocked with candy weren’t the main reason why I loved going to her and Grandpa’s house when I was little. It was because my grandmother gave me something way more precious—her undivided time and attention—and played with me like a peer. She never told me it was too cold to go outside; instead, she helped me dig tunnels through the snow. In the summer we played hopscotch in the driveway and badminton in the backyard. We went for walks around the neighborhood and ate fresh strawberries and ice cream on the porch. I was my grandmother’s world and she was mine.

The sound track alone made me long for the days when “I Love You” by Barney the purple dinosaur was the most commonly played tune in our home—no small feat, considering that this was allegedly the CIA’s preferred song for torturing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and other detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan.