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

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.

Another advantage of having less structured and more child-led activities is that it can improve children’s executive functioning.

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.

“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.’”

Many businesses are all-in as well, rarely missing an opportunity to tout their green credentials. Max, a popular Swedish burger chain, recently introduced five new vegetarian dishes to reduce their carbon footprint, and instead of calorie counts, the restaurant labels each item on the menu with the CO2 emissions generated. (A Grand Deluxe Cheese ’n’ Bacon Burger will saddle the climate with 3.1 kilos of CO2, whereas a fish burger comes in at a bargain 0.2 kilos.)

The menu is now “climate adjusted,” which

means that each meal is carefully composed based not only on its nutritional value but also on its impact on the environment. Because of this, beef has more or less been eliminated from the menu, as it has been blamed for causing a substantial amount of greenhouse gas emissions and takes much more land and water to produce than other types of meat. Hamburgers are pretty much out, and fish burgers made from certified sustainable fish are in. Rice, a crop that is a source of major methane emissions and has to be shipped long distances, is only served about once a month. Potatoes and pasta have mostly picked up the slack.

Fertilizing produce with human urine is ingenious, as

it is both sterile and chock-full of nutrients, not to mention free, and the supply never ending. Several pilot projects are already up and running in Scandinavia to see if urine can be used as an agricultural fertilizer on a larger scale. Securing the supply will probably be the greatest challenge, since few Swedes would be willing to go as far as my mom to set up their own chemical-free fertilizer production.