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February 9, 2023 - January 12, 2024
“Whenever the weather is nice, you really feel like you have to take advantage of it.
“There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”
“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.”
as the US ranks at the bottom of all industrialized nations when it comes to parental leave, guaranteeing only twelve weeks off after the birth of a child.
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 parental anxiety in turn fuels schools’ fear of lawsuits.
As a result, Scandinavia is often cited as a world leader when it comes to air and water quality, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and overall sustainability.
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.
Specifically, cold air was believed to increase immunity against bacteria by improving blood circulation in the linings of the nose and mouth.
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.
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.
“I actually believe that you have to let them take some risks,” says Lisa, one of the older staff members on recess duty as she watches Maya and her new friends at the top of the hill. “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.”
Moreover, recess is often the only time of the school day that students have a chance to socialize and play in an unstructured setting. This is when they make up their own games, negotiate rules, and resolve conflicts, honing their social skills in the process.
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.
“You have to get them out now, not when they’re thirteen, regardless of how torturous it can be sometimes. I don’t know how many times we’ve bundled them up to go ice-skating, and then they get tired of it after fifteen minutes. But now we’re reaping the benefits from taking the kids outside a lot since they were little. Now we can go down to the lake and ice-skate together as a family.”
Scandinavian Parenting Tip #2 If it is safe and practical where you live, let your baby nap outside when the weather permits, and seek out opportunities to spend as much time outside as possible. As your child gets older, choose outdoor activities that the whole family enjoys and be sure to adjust your expectations to your child’s pace and day-to-day form. Plan well for longer outings, and remember that you can never bring too many emergency snacks!
Most of what children need to learn during their early childhood years cannot be taught; it’s discovered through play. —RUTH WILSON
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.
“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.
Plato said that “the most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.”
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...
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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.
“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.”
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.
Wilson claims many parents are caught up in the “waste no time” syndrome out of fear that their children will fall behind in our achievement-oriented society. To prevent academic failure, parents feel the need to carefully engineer every aspect of their children’s lives, from introducing early academics and scheduling enrichment activities like music and science classes, to pushing children in competitive sports and pressuring them to excel in school, where from an early age they are subjected to high-stakes testing and the stress of getting good grades.
Occasional trips to the zoo, the pool, and story time at the library, sure. But before age six, when Swedish kids start formal schooling, they generally don’t have a whole lot of organized activities.
Exercise is of course beneficial to a child whether he or she is overweight or not, but if little Johnny doesn’t want to play soccer or T-ball or peewee football, it may be comforting to know that he is just as well off (and less likely to get injured) if he simply spends time 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 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.’”
Collecting is technically a violation of Leave No Trace, which says that you should “leave what you find” in nature, but Beery believes that it can be done responsibly and lead to a dialogue about environmental stewardship.
Beery, who has taught Leave No Trace in the US, thinks having an outdoor code of ethics is a good thing, but he also believes that it needs to allow children more freedom in their interactions with nature. “Of course if we’re talking about an endangered species that has a very fragile habitat, that’s a place where we don’t play. There are places where we don’t build our forts. That’s a given. But I think we’ve started overusing the idea of Leave No Trace in the context of children’s play spaces in nearby nature.”
“There is not this ‘leave no trace’ mentality here,” he says, and adds that the US code of ethics is misunderstood. “Leave No Trace is really about promoting land ethics. It’s not saying that you should never, ever have an impact when you’re going out and recreating. It’s more about reducing that impact and knowing what it does.”
Being exposed to certain microbes in the womb and early childhood can actually strengthen our immune systems and protect us from illnesses later on. 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.
“I think playing in nature is great for children’s development. They become so independent and trusting in their own abilities,” says Linda, whose three children have all attended a nature-based after-school program. “Nobody will help you up on that big rock—you have to get up by yourself. And when your body is ready for it, you will.”
In my mind I can almost hear my grandma saying, “Keep playing, my little trolls. Just keep playing.”
Studies show that we’re more prone to remember events that engage our whole body and all our senses. Nature, it turns out, is just the right place for that.
Even with our new rules in place, it took a conscious effort on my part just to match their screen time with “green time,”
