Is a "Viking" Childhood a Happier Childhood (with Helen Russell)?

Nordic countries are known to be happy - so should we all raise our children like the Scandinavians do? British parent Helen Russell moved to Denmark and was shocked that Danish children play outside in all weathers; are given sharp tools and they're shown how to light matches. In her book The Danish Secret to Happy Kids: How the Viking Way of Raising Children Makes Them Happier, Healthier, and More Independent https://www.helenrussell.co.uk/books/how-to-raise-a-viking/, Helen explains why play, risk and independence are the cornerstones of "viking" parenting. This series on parenting coincides with Dr Laurie's new free online class, The Science of Wellbeing for Parents which is available now at Coursera.org https://www.coursera.org/. You can sign up at drlauriesantos.com/parents http://drlauriesantos.com/parents. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:47Laurie Santos?

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• 1:54Laurie Santos?

  It's no secret that Nordic countries have very high levels of well-being. Ever since the World Happiness Report launched their famous country happiness rankings back in 2012, Scandinavian countries have consistently dominated the competition. In fact, Finland and Denmark have claimed the top spots for an impressive seven years running. The US and UK, by contrast, they haven't even broken into the top 10. So what's behind this Nordic happiness advantage? Journalist Helen Russell believes it starts in childhood.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  It's not an accident that people from the Nordic countries are voted the happiest in the world year after year. This is how they are raised.

• 2:30Laurie Santos?

  If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you might remember Helen from a previous episode entitled "Move to Your Happy Place." I asked Helen to return for this special series on parenting because she has traveled a rather circuitous path towards a happier family life.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  So I am London-born and bred, and my husband got a job at LEGO in Denmark. And we had no intention of ever leaving London, but Denmark kept being voted the happiest country in the world. And I kind of wondered what was it all about? Could it be that beer, bacon, Danish pastries really made you that happy? So I decided I would give it a year, investigating the Danish happiness phenomenon firsthand, looking at different areas of Danish living to see if any of them made me happier. And spoiler alert, it sort of did. And I ended up staying not one year, but nearly 12 in the end, and parenting a very loud mini redhead and surprised twins. So life changed in ways I didn't expect at all, but I did learn that Viking children grow up happier and healthier and more independent.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  We bought a home, our first home together, in the Danish countryside in a very Danish neighborhood. So yeah, really getting under the skin of being part of the groups and clubs and associations and sending our kids into Danish childcare, really understanding what it means to live danishly, and then really looking throughout the other Nordic countries of the things that they do that are very similar and very different to how I think we do it in the rest of the world.

• 3:49Laurie Santos?

  Helen's now the author of "The Danish Secret to Happy Kids: How the Viking Way of Raising Children Makes Them Happier, Healthier, and More Independent." I wanted to chat with Helen about why Nordic parenting is so much less stressful than parenting in the US. One of the big things you talk about as being really different concerns this idea of trust in Denmark, which seems different in the US and the UK. You talked in your book about this idea of tillid. What does that word mean and why is it so important in Denmark?

• 4:15Speaker 03

  So this is this magical word. It's a mixture of trust and faith. And really, the whole of Danish society is built around this. You have to have trust in the people around you, that they will also behave well and that everyone will contribute their fair share. And then you have to kind of have a bit of faith that it will all turn out okay. So things like this famous idea of Danes leaving their babies to nap outside in their prams during the day while they pop into a café for lunch or go for a coffee or go for a swim even, I've seen once. And there is this trust that no harm will come to them. There's a faith that the whole community will rally round so that whoever the adult is in a certain situation will have eyes on the children in their sphere around them. And as a parent where you can feel so alone and so isolated and so terrified, frankly,

• 4:59Speaker 03

  a lot of the time, that really helped because you sort of have the headspace to be happy and relaxed. If you have this trust and faith that it's kind of going to be okay and that most people are not out to get you, that people have got your back.

• 5:11Laurie Santos?

  And that kind of trust seems to extend to how parents think about kids and what they're capable of. How is this different in terms of how Danish parents trust kids than the kind of thing you see in the US and the UK?

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Well, I think when I first started looking around Danish daycare, so they start around 10 months in something called vugustu or nursery room. And the children from around the age of two are expected to dress themselves, to go outside, they can climb trees, they can do all this stuff. They're trusted to have autonomy over their body. And then from around the age of three, there will often be maybe candles, lit candles in the window sills of the burner hound or the children's gardens. And again, the children are trusted to do it. They're trusted to use knives to chop up the fruit. My children all attended some terrifying institution known as Family Scouts. From around age two, where they taught kids how to whittle wood. So I had two-year-old twins either side of me, each being given a knife. It was terrifying.

• 6:05Laurie Santos?

  It feels like the Danish health and safety should like jump in and make you not do this, but.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  No, there is no Danish health and safety. It does not exist for Vikings. We have this like now family catchphrase of you can have a saw once you're four. That I had to say to my two-year-olds because their big brother was five, had his own saw. But there is this trust that if you let children have that freedom. And of course, there's a healthcare service, so it's not like a broken arm is medical bankruptcy. But it's a sense that if they fall and they break an arm, no one wants that. But if it happens, it's not the end of the world and it's much better for them to learn. So they are given this great freedom and yeah, this great trust is placed in them to be responsible for their own bodies, to do the right thing and to learn by doing, I guess.

• 6:46Laurie Santos?

  And a Denmark trust is sort of heralded and everyone's into it. But the idea that's poo-pooed is this concept of curling, which seems to be something that parents in the US and the UK are really into. So what's curling?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so named after, I think this is the Scottish sport where you're kind of going ahead with brooms, trying to make space. And the idea is that you're clearing out any obstacles away from your children, also known as helicopter parenting. But there's not so much of it, I would say, in the Nordic countries. In Denmark, my Danish parent friends were the best teachers. They are explaining how to do things on a day-by-day basis when I am clueless. I am always the idiot in these situations. So every day was a school day. But they would explain to me things like, instead of intervening and doing things for your kids, you set it up so that they can do it for themselves. So for example, you make sure all the hooks where their coats or their backpacks for school are, or an area that they can reach them, a place where they can put them away. All of that is accessible to them.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  And so you're not doing it for them, but thinking, what are the obstacles to the child doing what I want them to do? Quite child-led, I'd say.

• 7:46Laurie Santos?

  You've also talked about how Danish parenting is more focused on the process than the product. What do you mean there?

• 7:52Speaker 03

  I guess in all of Danish society, for example, there's this great idea that everyone is equal and that no one is to think they're special and everyone is worthy of respect just because. And this extends to children. So this idea that it doesn't necessarily matter if you become the CEO of a company, it matters if you're a good person. It matters if you have good friends, if you have maybe great hobbies, if you have a full and rich life, not rich in the financial sense. I spoke to parents who weren't that flustered about how their kids did grades wise at school, which is lucky because there's not that much pressure on that. There's not much book learning very early on, but it's more about will they be happy. And first, as a sort of cynical Brit, I thought, well, maybe this is a massive nation of slackers.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  But no, you see the statistics, Denmark punches above its weight in terms of businesses, in terms of creative endeavors. And kids do quite well. By the age of 15, it's above the OECD average in terms of maths, reading, science. So they're doing well, but they are happier in the process. I think that's the big thing. So for a Danish parent, it would be no good if your child was top of the class but miserable. And actually, I spoke to some parents in Finland. He said they sort of told their children to study a bit less because they wanted them to just do a few more extracurricular activities. It doesn't matter about being top of the class. It matters about being happy and balanced and fulfilled, which is a very different approach, I guess, to the one that many of us will grow up with.

• 9:20Laurie Santos?

  Oh man, it's such a different approach than the Yale students that I work with, you know? And it sounds like one of the best ways to get there is to sort of not intervene, even in these domains where you think intervention is the best approach. And one of the ones that you talked about in your book, which I think you had a hard time with yourself, was not intervening when kids are fighting. Explain why that was so tricky for you and what you learned from Danish parents.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it starts really early on. So in this vugustu, in this nursery room, the pedagogues, the early years educators, have a policy of sitting on their hands, they would tell me. I thought they meant this sort of metaphorically, but no, they mean literally that if little Anton is starting a fight with little Sven, then you sit on your hands so you're not intervening. You see if they can get themselves to the peace table by themselves. You know, I grew up an only child. I went to an all-girls School. There was no rough and tumble, none of that sort of physical contact. I never had that at all until I became a parent and then parenting toddlers is fifty percent running, fifty percent WWE wrestling. So I've got all that then, but but actually play fighting occurs throughout the animal kingdom. They've seen studies in rats that those deprived of the

• 10:21Speaker 03

  opportunity to play fight will end up not being able to read social cues properly in in later life. They become a bit leary. They don't know when it's appropriate to escalate to aggression and when it isn't. So the approach for a lot of the Danish parents and experts I spoke to you was that it's better to let children find that physicality, to grapple it out, only intervene if you really have to, if we're seriously talking, cut lips, and to see if they can get themselves to the peace table. And it was even my children's teachers telling me this, which is quite shocking as a parent. And you're considering sending your child to this school and then the teacher is telling you that, well, they might have some bumps and bruises. I do see the point there, but I still find it quite a hard one. No one wants to watch their kid getting hurt. Talk about the Danish parents' relationship to allowing their kids to be outside.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  I mean, the relationship is put them outside all the time from a really early age. So the sleeping outside in your prams, for example, can be up until it used to be minus fourteen and now it's minus four. Since when I did all my kids, they've made it a little bit less freezing, but But you put your kids outside in negative four degree weather. To sleep during the day. Yeah. Wow. Let me just check the temperature. And yeah, so it's a I'm going Celsius to Fahrenheit. Yeah. So it used to be the advice was minus twenty degrees Celsius or minus four. And now the advice is minus ten Celsius. So that's fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, either way, like, that's cold. That's cold. Well, they're really used to you get the gear. I mean, it's an investment, but you get your child

• 11:50Speaker 03

  a snowsuit and a balaclava. They call it an elephant hat. Don't know. One knows why. And mittens and layers and wool. And you're getting this for your kid from the age of around six months onwards. But there is an understanding that as a parent, part of what you do is you equip your child with the necessary clothes to survive outside all year round. And so there's no question that you don't go outside when it's raining. You go outside every day, otherwise you would never go outside at all if you waited for a sunny day. So there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. And all their peers do it as well. So it's normalized in a way that's very helpful as a parent. You do it because that's what you do here.

• 12:28Laurie Santos?

  And what are some of the benefits of kind of getting outside so often, even in the yucky weather?

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, there's so many studies about how helpful it is for us psychologically, better for our mind, better for our bodies, to get outside in nature. There was an amazing study saying that the average British child spends less time outside than prisoners. And that's madness. So the idea of shoving children outside in all weathers is really good. And the Viking approach is that that's what they had to do historically to survive. And so you keep doing it. In Sweden, they even have sometimes classes about how to dig yourself out if you get into an ice hole. Toddlers in Norway will learn how to use a match and use a compass and read maps. These real sort of Boy Scout skills that they're learning really early.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Makes them feel more resilient, makes them feel quite strong. My kids certainly felt quite proud when they had been out all day in the snow and and they had mastered how to whittle sticks. They feel this sense of mastery over their body. It makes them feel more confident and they seem to thrive on it.

• 13:26Laurie Santos?

  As you talk more about kind of danger and whittling and all this stuff, I can assume that there might be some parents who are thinking, oh, my gosh, are you just saying I should just like throw my kid into the woods with a knife and sort of see what happens? How would you respond to, you know, a critique like that?

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't, don't do that. It's age appropriate risk in a sort of environment where you know that it's safe and supported. And parents know, we know what is best for our child. Caregivers understand what the limits of that child is. So it's just baby steps to see what that child is ready for. I grew up with that sense of wanting to wrap my children in cotton wool at all times. And I lost my sister when I was younger. So this idea of protecting a child, I had a lot of fertility treatment, took me a long time to become a parent. And when I finally had children, I didn't want any harm to come to them at all. But actually, play researchers have looked at the link between being able to have this kind of risky play and resilience. And the short term, it can lead to injury, but in the long term, it's going to help them.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Children are natural risk seekers. They have curiosity. And one psychologist told me that she saw in her experience that It was the children who didn't climb trees that had the fear of heights. It's not one who climbed trees and fell. Also, she saw a lot in her practice that it was the children maybe who were denied these opportunities for age-appropriate, relatively safe, risky play in childhood will end up seeking out those thrills, those risks in maybe adolescence at a time when it's much more precarious. The stakes are far higher. So I ended up sort of reasoning, it was hard, it took me a while, but that it was better to let my children run a bit wild and climb the trees and whittle at this age than to have them go off riding a car in an unsafe way in their teenage years,

• 15:07Speaker 03

  that it was better for them to get their thrills this way.

• 15:10Laurie Santos?

  But the idea is that probably those thrills and that risk-taking is also normative for teenagers too. So any advice for parents with older kids who are maybe trying to embrace this idea? In the book, you mentioned this idea of, is it boel?

• 15:23Speaker 03

  A friend of mine who's also a scout leader ended up saying this, my pronunciation is also terrible, but boel, this idea of trouble or problems, like you seek out trouble, not so much, but just a bit. There is a sense that you fail as caregivers if you don't allow your children opportunities for risky play. And many parents would suddenly, instead of just doing maybe a risk assessment of a future scenario, they do a risk benefit assessment and think, well, hang on, here's what they could learn. It's a bit like that, what if I fall, but what if I fly? What are the things that they could learn from this experience? How is it expansive? So trying to bear that in mind, but it's not easy. And certainly, if you parent this way from the beginning, you have a bit of an advantage because actually teenagers don't have that much to rebel against in Denmark because they've had a pretty free life until then. Egalitarian society, no hierarchy.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  So there's not much to kick back against, to push against. Danish teenagers tend to get along better with their parents than teenagers typically. The cliches go elsewhere. But I think there is still some opportunity, I would hope, and I'm not there yet with my own kids, but to give them that freedom. And as you say, it's that natural thing to want to separate yourself from your parents and see if they feel that they have that autonomy to be able to take that next step.

• 16:32Laurie Santos?

  So to sum up what we've learned so far, beer, bacon, and Danish pastries may be delicious. But there's more to the American-Danish well-being gap than access to Nordic refreshments. If we want children to become happier, healthier, and more independent, we need to build a society based on trust, one in which people take a more relaxed approach to low-stakes risks. When the Happiness Lab returns from the break, we'll dig into a few other things we can learn from modern-day Vikings. We'll see why playtime matters both for kids and adults, and why Danish parents don't hang children's artwork on their refrigerators. The Happiness Lab will be right back.

• 17:10Laurie Santos?

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• 18:57Laurie Santos?

  If you're a fan of the show, you and I often talk about the painful phenomenon of time famine. That sense of overwhelm we feel when our days are filled to the brim with obligations, leaving little room to relax or even breathe. But studies show that these days, it's not just adults who suffer from time famine. Our kids also have packed schedules, filled with school obligations, homework, structured activities, lessons, sports dates, and on and on. Most parents want what's best for their children, but are super-packed schedules the right approach? Danish parenting expert Helen Russell thinks parents and kids might be missing out on something even more important: time for play.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Play is so big in the Nordic countries that they named it twice. It's the New York of the Nordics. So there's a verb form of play, which is lyre, sort of unstructured, intrinsically motivated play. And then there's also spieler in Danish for when you're playing maybe sports, or a board game, or music. And it's really important for Danish parents to have all of these types of play covered. And there's a sense that if you're not playing, then something's wrong. And that if children aren't allowed to play, then there's almost a deficit that builds up, and that they need to be able to just get out there and express themselves in that way. And they believe that it helps with collaboration, and teamwork, and communication. And play is kind of all Nordic children do. It's all Vikings do until they turn six, when they start school in Denmark.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  They don't start till they're seven in Finland. So it's everything. There is a sense that that's how you learn, and these are the skills that you develop first, nothing to do with book learning until much, much later. And actually, I spoke to researchers at Cambridge who were saying that children who learn via play rather than via the old-school book method tend to be happier and more calm and better at collaborating, too. So there's a lot of play research out there. I think as a parent, I tried to read it all, and found it all quite hard going, but... I kind of broke it down to this four approaches to play. There are things that I think about in terms of like decorating a cake. So there's the getting the decorations of the cake. So getting it out and saying, do what you like. The sort of guided, so saying, well, can you make your cake look like an otter? Whatever.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Or the gamification, so who can do it the fastest? And then there's this step by step instruction of sitting down with them, best attempted after a really good night's sleep. But my Danish parent friends were making time to do all of these in a way that I found quite overwhelming and stressful almost as a parent, because I'm not used to that. My own experience of childhood was very much get on with the books, get on early. And this idea that we should all just be having fun and playing was quite alien. And even in the Nordic countries, parents still feel quite time stretched. Eighty percent of mothers work, both parents tend to be working. But play is so important that people are prioritizing it. They are putting aside time and they're thinking, I'm going to be doing this playing. And yeah, all the research there is seems to say that's a really good thing.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  And that children playing with their parents as well as their peers is very good for bonding. So I found that quite hard, but it's something that I try to do.

• 21:54Laurie Santos?

  I think one of the things that comes up in the US and the UK is that, you know, it's not like parents are down on play. It's just like, there's this different pressure that takes precedence, which is this pressure to succeed, especially academically. What's the kind of right way to balance that if you're thinking about happiness from a Danish perspective?

• 22:09Speaker 03

  So Danish parent friends and caregivers and the teachers would say that the play will give them a lot of what they need, which I think that's the shift from the approach, maybe in the US and the UK certainly. So that that way they'll be happier and that actually you can make a lot of things into play. What the Nordic countries have is the idea that the goal sort of is happiness and a good life. And not happiness in that sort of jazz hands, Richter's Green way, but a deep contentment and a really balanced life where you have time for family, time for friends, time for your hobbies and a job. So the academic part that would, I guess, later become the job part, the career success, that's only a small slice of the pie in the Nordics. That's not everything.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  So by that metric, it means that it's never going to be as much pressure. And then that filters out to children because they see their parents. I mean, of course, there's still workplace stress for parents and even high levels of antidepressant use in Denmark. But that's because there is this sense that you're supposed to enjoy life. You're supposed to be having a nice time, but if you're not, you do something about it. So I think for children. They will go to clubs and activities, they will do sports, they will do hobbies and things. And there's a big volunteer culture so that these clubs and associations that kids go to tend to be run by parents for free, giving up their time. And a parent will typically think, if I want my kid to be able to go to this club, I will have to volunteer. So throughout my friends, for example, one dad was a basketball coach, one taught football, one was a swimming teacher.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  So again, children then see their parents modeling that behavior and think, oh, that's what you do. I guess, I guess one part of the pie is you have a job and then you have your family and then you do something for the community. And it's just a much more balanced life than I think the culture that many of us will have grown up in.

• 23:52Laurie Santos?

  Which is really important because it suggests parents are doing something different, too. They are also prioritizing their own fun, which is something I think definitely in the US, a lot of parents say they're really struggling with.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  There's a bit of putting your own oxygen mask on first, I think, in the Nordic countries. Because again, this egalitarian society, there's no point being a martyr. And I grew up Irish Catholic, so I'm good on that bit, but that's not going to make you happy. It's not going to help your child. So of course, it's a luxury and a privilege to be able to have free time and to have any time outside of the work that pays the bills. But if you are fortunate enough to have that, then there's no point busting a gut. The tax situation in the Nordic countries is high. And so if you work harder to get a promotion, to get a pay rise, you're going to be ending up giving quite a lot of that away in tax anyway. So there's less of an incentive, I guess, financially to be doing that. But people are still ambitious, people still earn good money, they have nice cars, they have nice jobs.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  But that's not the be all and end all, you're not judged by that. So I guess children see that as well. Their goal is not to have the flash's car. Your goal is to have spare time. That's the prize. It's time, not money. And so I think children see that as well. And it makes people more relaxed, I guess.

• 25:03Laurie Santos?

  And that relationship to time, I think, changes the way parents are spending time with kids a lot. One of the things I was surprised by in your book. Is all the kind of tiny moments where you and your kids weren't necessarily doing kid activities specifically, but you had the kids participating in whatever activities you were doing, kind of getting the kids to do adult things early on. What are some of the consequences of that for parent happiness?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. There is a sense that with a shorter working week than elsewhere, the idea of having a home-cooked family dinner, for example, is a norm in the Nordic countries. And it will be a child's job to lay the table, a child's job to light the candles, candles for all mealtimes, even breakfast, to get that hugo vibe. A child will help with tidying up, and then you do your clubs and activities after.

• 25:48Laurie Santos?

  So it kind of seems like kids are even more members of the team.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:51Laurie Santos?

  Some American parents complain about feeling like they're kind of a high-end concierge for their kids, where they're driving them around and making sure everything's perfect for them, you know, even being their alarm clock in some situations.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 26:03Laurie Santos?

  It sounds like in Denmark, there's like just an expectation that kids are gonna do more, and that like helps the parents not feel so overwhelmed.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the team point is a really good one. There's definitely a sense that we are in this family team. I mean, the whole of Danish society is about teamwork. So yeah, of course, why wouldn't your family be a team? There's not a hierarchy. A lot of my Danish friends would say, I had no clue when I was growing up that my vote on like what color we painted the kitchen was no less worthy than my parents'. And just had no concept that they were lesser just because they were children. But yeah, this emphasis on autonomy again. There's a great late Danish psychologist called Jesper Ull who wrote a very seminal parenting book. He famously said, all children from the age of around five should be able to wake themselves up with an alarm clock.

• 26:47Laurie Santos?

  Wait, wait, I just want to point out that you said five, because I have Yale students whose parents still call them and are their alarms, especially during the like, you know, midterm season and so on. Like, so five, not 25.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Five, repeat, five.

• 27:01Laurie Santos?

  Just wanna make sure, yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  And he even gives parents a script of what to say if they're not sure. My eldest fiery redhead, I didn't know quite how this was gonna go down, and I've got three children, and I have a job, and I'm busy. And so he said, you say to the child, Listen, when you were really little, I thought it was quite cute to wake you up every day. But now I find it kind of a pain. And so this is the alarm clock. You're going to wake yourself up. It's how it is now. And I was expecting some pushback, but my son just went, I've got my own alarm clock. Cool. It was done. And so all of my children have their own alarm clocks. They get themselves up. There is also a sense of, for example, if a parent needed to talk on the phone, or even if they just wanted to, again, not that martyr thing, maybe you just want to chat with your friend.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  You say, I can't talk right now because I'm talking to my friend and no explanation. Again, it's the equality piece. So you don't have to be trying to raise the ego of a child. You just say it how it is. I think there's quite a reputation for straight talking, which as a people pleasing Brit, I was not used to at all. But there is a bluntness and you say what you mean and you mean what you say. And everyone knows where they stand. And I came to really appreciate that, I think, after a while.

• 28:11Laurie Santos?

  This was the part of your book that seems so different from American parenting. We just recently had a big report by our Surgeon General at the time, Vivek Murthy, who talked about one of the main things parents are experiencing these days is guilt. Just this negative emotion of not doing enough stuff. And I love your example because you're just telling your kid, look, it's just not fun for me anymore to wake you up. Or I need to talk on the phone with my friend and just kind of deal with it. But it seems like Danish parents are able to do that without guilt. How does that work?

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I think it's not perfect. And there will of course be examples of parents who do feel guilty about stuff. But I think if you take this basic idea that respect is a given, that everyone is worthy just because they exist. You don't have to prove yourself. You are enough just because you exist, which is mind blowing for people of my generation. But I, I think if you're taking that as your baseline, then why should anyone feel guilty? I think this idea where you don't have to over praise your child to try and make them feel good. What I see with parent friends from other countries is if a parent is feeling a little guilty, there will be a tendency perhaps to overcompensate. Maybe that's with gifts. Maybe that's with food. Maybe that's with saying, oh, that's the best picture I've ever seen. Well done.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  And the Danish way is not to do that so much. Firstly, as a Danish child, you wouldn't know if your parents thought something you'd done necessarily was good or not, but also it wouldn't matter because you would know you were loved anyway, just because. And secondly, the idea is that if a child is constantly being praised and overpraised from an external person, they will spend their whole life seeking external validation, which I think many of us will find familiar. So actually, it's much better for a child to develop their own internal idea of, I think this is good, or no, I think I can do something a bit different next time. And then they have that internal compass that, again, helps with autonomy, feeling stronger, feeling more sort of in control of the world.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  The world is a big scary place, but you feel more in control if you think, no, I know that's the right thing to do. And so instead of looking for external validation, they just centre themselves and they get to know themselves a little bit. And yeah, it means that not every picture needs to go up on the refrigerator and that you're not constantly telling your child that they're the best at everything because they won't be, they're not.

• 30:28Laurie Santos?

  So to recap, if we want to raise happier kids, we might need to broaden our definition of success. We might need to take play more seriously, and we might need to relax a bit when it comes to the academic stuff. But if you're a parent, you're probably thinking, well, all that's easier said than done. So after the break, we'll dive into Helen's actionable tips for how caretakers can set the kinds of healthier boundaries that lead to a less stressful life, not just for kids, but for parents too. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

• 31:00Laurie Santos?

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• 32:30Laurie Santos?

  I often hear from parents who tell me that they just don't have the same sense of self now as they did before having kids. They love their children, but they worry that they've lost their own preferences and identity somewhere on the path to becoming mom or dad. Author Helen Russell says, "This is another spot where Nordic families seem to be navigating things a little bit better." Danish parents don't have as much trouble expressing their preferences as US parents do. For instance, take bedtime.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  So this is another really good example in that parenting books I'd read from the UK and the US all said things that were basically along the lines of a little bit kind of tricking your kid into going to bed or just going, "Oh, look at the time now, you're going to be tired tomorrow," instead of telling your child how they feel, which isn't the Nordic approach. Instead, the culture there is much more saying, "But you know what, I as the parent, I'm kind of tired now, I'm kind of done, so if you could go to bed, that would be great because I'm not doing any more parenting now. So, good night, I love you, I'll see you in the morning," with your alarm. And that's it. But again, it's that trusting that the child will get to know themselves. So the idea is that a child should be able to have autonomy over when they are tired. So you're not telling a child that they're sleepy. They may not be sleepy. They can sit in bed if they like.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  There's nothing exciting in there. They can read a book if they really want to, but they are just in bed now because it's... Parent time. And again, around food, it's more that a child should be able to tell if they are hungry or not. So you don't say to a child, you have to finish your plate or no pudding. Instead, you trust that a child may have an idiosyncratic biological clock. They may not be hungry when we are, and that they should be in control of things like whether they're tired or hungry, or whether they're too warm or too cold. You trust that the child will know that, which I found, again, quite challenging as an outsider, because I grew up with the generation that you finish your plate. And then lots of my peers had eating disorders in their teens and twenties. And just not trusting our own

• 34:22Speaker 03

  appetites for anything, I do feel is quite problematic. And so I found it very difficult, but it was something I knew I definitely wanted to try to put in place for my children so that they again got this sense of themselves that wasn't from external voices.

• 34:38Laurie Santos?

  It strikes me that this in some ways is easier for parents. Obviously, it's harder because you want to help your kids and make sure they're eating right and going to sleep on time and so on. But if you give your kids that responsibility, it must be that parents wind up feeling less overwhelmed because there's kind of less stuff that you have to do if you're worrying about their senses and their feelings and their needs all the time. Like if you offload that so that they do it themselves, not only do they learn how to do it, but it's kind of less overwhelmed and less work for you as a parent, too.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  I think so. And some people have kids who are just a great sleepers or great eaters, and that's brilliant for them. I have three very different children. I have experienced many different approaches, but actually, the only thing I have control over is myself. So if I say, I'm tired, and that's true, I am exhausted by about 10:00 PM. So if I say, I'm tired now, so I need you to go to bed, I'll see you in the morning, and I love you. Then again, that feels like I'm modeling because I'm saying, well, I have needs, these are my needs, I need to be done with parenting now for the day, to be fresh, to be ready for the next day. And gives a bit of a life back to parents, which I think so many parenting manuals or advice columns or gurus out there, as you say, there's a lot of pressure and you can feel very guilty and you can feel like you're not doing the

• 35:50Speaker 03

  right thing, and it's never enough. And this Nordic approach just seemed Kind of easy, you can kind of let your shoulders drop and you can exhale finally. And you get a bit of your life back. And if the studies are to be believed, your children are happier, healthier and more resilient. And I certainly see with my own children, the children of my friends and throughout the Nordic countries, all of the young people I spoke to, that there is something in it. It makes sense that they have this autonomy, this sense of self-worth.

• 36:16Laurie Santos?

  It also seems like Danish parents are just kind of chiller generally. Like they just kind of don't get as upset about their kids' resistant behavior and so on. Was that something you observed and was that something you were able to model yourself?

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Yes, you know, we all have this idea, well, I certainly did, of Vikings, of these, you know, big, strong, marauding group of people, but actually, modern day Vikings, it turns out, barely raise their voices at all. I was really surprised. And coming from a different parenting culture, I am used to perhaps hearing in supermarkets, you know, a parent telling their child off. I rarely hear parents raise their voices in the Nordic countries. In Sweden especially, there's this very soft sort of soothing voice and one of the parents I spoke to there said, yeah, I couldn't believe it. She's British and she lives in Sweden and she was saying, my neighbor's kid locked themselves in the shed and said she wasn't going to school. And I said, did you lose your mind? She said, no, I said, well, we'll try again tomorrow.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Goodness me, I'm not sure I would have that patience, but there seem to be reserves of patience. And I'm thinking it's something to do with being raised that way themselves, that they know what works. As you say, it's kind of giving more time and headspace back to the parents. So they just are a little calmer there, a bit better able to cope with the challenges that parenting can throw at any of us. So, yes, it is very calm. There is a sense that if you raise your voice, you've lost it, you've lost that battle. And again, you're modeling to your child. And brain scans show that if you raise your voice at a child, if you're shouting at a child, they can go into that defensive mode where they're not actually hearing what you say or taking in anyway, which I thought sounded very convenient when I first heard it.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  But, you know, I've seen the brain scans, I've seen the science and now I'm thinking, oh, yes, okay, that's true. And I'm still not immune to doing that, but I know that I've lost when that happens. And I know that if I really want to get through. I have to channel my inner Nordic parent and try and remain calm.

• 38:07Laurie Santos?

  I think another thing that's different for American and maybe UK parents is that even in that shed situation you talked about, like if you don't get the kid to school, in some sense, it's like, oh, my gosh, the kid's not going to go to school and they won't get the right grades and they'll never get into college. There's this real fear of failure, I think, in US parenting. But in Danish parenting system, it seems like failure is kind of okay. It's sort of just like this, oh, well. There's even a word for it, too, that I think you've really embraced, right? I think it's actually behind you right now. The pyt, the P Y T.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Do you know what? Yeah. This is this idea where it means sort of like, it doesn't matter. It's it's fine. So, yeah, along with the trouble and the tillid, this is the great word. So you just think, oh, just let it go. It's fine. And as a naturally repressed British woman, I have to just remind myself of this at all times. But yeah, I think that feeds into the parenting, as you say, is this idea of it's not the end of the world. And we know enough from studies now to know that failure is important for growth and that it happens. You can't avoid it. So why not just let it happen when it happens and hope that it happens in fairly low stakes ways so that it doesn't happen in the big stakes way later on? And I think, again, it's this idea where we're all worthy just because, and there's an emotional safety net at all times, so that if something goes

• 39:18Speaker 03

  wrong, you are still loved and held, and you will be helped back up to hopefully learn from it next time.

• 39:24Laurie Santos?

  So one of the reasons I was especially excited to talk to you now is that I know you've recently left the Viking world and moved back to the UK. So having kind of been a Danish parent for a decade now, you're back to being the UK parent. And so I'm curious how you keep these Danish norms in a situation where many parents aren't following them. How do you follow the Danish ways, even if you're maybe not living in Denmark at the time?

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's been really interesting. And it has sort of put it to test, because when I wrote the book, I didn't know that I'd be moving back. And as you say, it's much easier to put all these things into practice when you're in the Nordic countries. And when you're out of them, that's when they're really put to the test. But I've been going back to it, following my own advice or following the advice of these Nordic parenting experts and parent friends. And of course, it's a different school system. They've never done exams before. They've never done homework before, but hoping that they understand that, of course, I want you to learn. And I want you to try your best, but it's not the end of the world. They still have their alarm clocks. I still tell them when I'm done for the day, you need to be in your rooms now. And I try and make sure with all of the activities and the busyness and the schedules that we all have these days, that there is time for them to just be and be really bored.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Boredom's the best thing, you know, I wouldn't have been a writer if I hadn't had the opportunity to be bored as a child. And I think that's something we often lose a lot in modern lives. Also, I have one daughter, it was really important to me that she was allowed to still do all of the kind of marauding Viking stuff. So I want all of my children to still be able to take risks and to be active and to be outdoors. It was really important to me that nobody ever told my daughter that she can't climb a tree. And I'm very happy to say that a month and a half in, she is higher up the trees than she's ever been. I do get some strange looks from other parents. Someone asked me the other day, my kids were all outside and she said, you do know it's raining, right? Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's fine.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  So I'm just trying to, I guess, give them that autonomy. So I have given them all jobs and they have things that they have to do with the running of the household. I've got my hammer out. I've put up a lot of shelves at kid height so they can reach everything, they can do everything. There's a cupboard where there are any time snacks that they're allowed any time. So I don't have to be the one providing snacks for them or their friends. And yes, someone also asked me the other day, like, you don't have any of your kids' pictures on the fridge? No, no kids' pictures on the refrigerator. So yeah, I'm trying to put it into practice in the non-Nordic world now.

• 41:46Laurie Santos?

  And so you get pushed back from other parents, because this is something a lot of American parents report feeling the most guilty about, is when they get the kind of side eye from another mom being like, oh, you're doing that. How do you steel yourself against that? How do you decide like, well, I'm proud of what I'm doing?

• 42:01Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I'm a massive geek, so I defer to people like you. I'll defer to all the science and say, well, actually OECD studies show raising children in the Nordic mode helps them to be happier and healthier and more resilient. And there's so much now that we know about things like work-life balance, things like school, things like autonomy and risky play, that I just tend to be a massive geek and reel off the science. So in the back of this book, I've written all the studies, just flick it in their faces. Flick it in the other parent's faces and we'll start a Viking revolution.

• 42:31Laurie Santos?

  I love Helen's idea of starting a Viking parent revolution. And just to recap Helen's ideas for how to do that. First, remember that taking time for what you need as a parent isn't selfish. It's modeling self-care. When you trust yourself in your needs, your children will learn to trust theirs, too. Second, embrace quiet, boredom, and failure. If your kid locks themselves in a proverbial shed one day, know that even though it feels like the end of the world, the sun will rise again. And finally, don't let other parents' side eyes keep you from embracing your inner Viking. In the next episode, we'll tackle the question of how we can set healthier boundaries, both in our parenting and beyond. We'll chat with clinical psychologist and parenting expert Dr. Becky Kennedy, who'll

• 43:13Laurie Santos?

  share her expert tips for expressing boundaries in firm but compassionate ways.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  We have some unconscious belief that like, I'm gonna set some really good boundary for my kid. My kid's gonna be like, "That is amazing parenting, Mom. Thank you. I do need to go to bed. Thank you for turning off the TV." Never. No child in my house, or any child I know who's normal, has ever said that.

• 43:34Laurie Santos?

  All that next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 43:44Laurie Santos?

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