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

Daily fresh air is seen as essential for babies, ranking just behind food, sleep, and the nurturing love of a parent.

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 w...

“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.”

“Of course you check on them just like you would if they slept inside,” she says. “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.”

Cecilia’s daughters always took longer, deeper naps outside, and many Scandinavian parents will second that notion.

“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.”

Surprisingly little research exists about outdoor napping, but a Finnish study from 2008 did confirm that children take longer naps when they sleep outside.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The secret of outdoor napping is to dress for the weather, as it’s not good for the baby to be too hot or too cold.

Very young babies should sleep on their backs in a stroller that has a flat bottom or a bassinet attachment.

Place the stroller near a wall and out of the wind, and make sure that the baby is protected against rain.

In the summer, make sure that the sun is not shining directly...

Use a mosquito net to protect the baby from bugs, stray animals, and debris that ma...

In the winter, dress the baby in warm layers (preferably starting with woolen long underwear in very cold temperatures) and use a bunting bag. Lining the s...

Avoid over-bundling, since this can restrict airflow around the child’s face and increase the risk of...

Place a baby monitor by the stroller or crack a window, and check on...

Just like when I was in second grade some thirty years ago, a lot of the work is project based and the children are fostered by the teachers to plan out and take responsibility for their own work.

There is also a new focus on integrating movement and physical activity into traditional academic lessons—for example, by using math cards with prompts to bounce a ball so many times or count the number of steps required to walk to the other side of the room.

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,”

“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.”

During her five-hour day she has been outside for two hours.

Granted, this is not a typical schedule, because the teachers wanted the children to enjoy the newly fallen snow, but even on a regular day outdoor recess will make up about an hour, or 20 percent, of the school day.

According to the rules of survival, we can go about three weeks without food and three days without water, but only three minutes without breathing.

Fresh air helps oxygenate our cells, which in turn makes us feel more energetic and alive. If that fresh air is combined with exercise, like sledding or climbing up a pile of snow, even better.

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.

But if we have something sweet we also go outside and move around. If the kids don’t want to do that I tell them they can eat some carrots instead.”

Suggested reading: Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children, by Angela Hanscom. New Harbinger, 2016.

Most of what children need to learn during their early childhood years cannot be taught; it’s discovered through play. —RUTH WILSON

“I even felt guilty for letting the three-year-olds play for an hour yesterday,” one of them divulged. “I had to tell them to get back to their book work.”

Bowing to the pressure from the school district and from disgruntled parents, the teachers at the parent cooperative recently started handing out weekly homework assignments to the four-year-olds.

“When we went to preschool, it used to be all about playing and sitting in a circle and singing songs,” one mom, an elementary school teacher, told me. “Parents still think they’re sending their kids to kindergarten so they can learn how to share and take turns, but that’s just not how it is anymore.”

These parents had gotten the message from the US Department of Education, and it was crystal clear. Kids these days need to spend less time molding Play-Doh and more time preparing for their corporate careers.

in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world,

“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.”

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.

The idea that children learn through play is far from new. Plato said that “the most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.”

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.

Piaget believed the learning process was more important than the end product, and that children can learn problem-solving skills only through active discovery.

Vygotsky held that children’s cognitive development is heavily influenced by their culture and that they learn primarily by playing and interacting with older and more skilled children and adults.

He is mostly known for his theory about the zone of proximal development, according to which one should respect each child’s individual spac...