Those baby flash cards and the word walls so often seen in preschool classrooms may seem harmless enough, but putting pressure on young children to read early can actually limit other aspects of their learning that may be more important, like spontaneous exploration and discovery. Testing creativity and problem-solving skills is arguably harder than testing factual knowledge, but the results of two separate studies conducted by MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, show that teaching children too much too early can backfire. At MIT, the researchers gave a group of four-year-olds exactly the same toy, and only varied the method with which they introduced it to the children. In one group, the researcher acted naïve and clueless when she demonstrated one of the functions of the toy, whereas the other group was given direct instruction by the researcher on how to use it. When left alone with the toy, all the children in the study were able to replicate what the “teacher” had done—pull on one of the toy’s tubes to make it squeak—but the children in the first group played with the toy longer and discovered more of its functions. They were simply more curious and more likely to discover new information than the children who had been told by the teacher how to use the toy. The study at UC Berkeley had similar results: When the children with the “clueless” researcher were left with the toy, they discovered a smarter way to get it to play music, whereas the children who were taught how to use it only replicated what the teacher had done.
Of course, there is a time and place for academics and direct instruction. But Vandermaas-Peeler doesn’t believe this teaching style behooves the preschool years. Instead, she thinks education in the early years should focus on supporting children’s curiosity and sense of wonder, and getting them excited about the world around them. As luck would have it, there is a perfect place for this: nature.
“Play in and of itself has a therapeutic effect on children,” says environmental psychologist Fredrika Mårtensson at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at Alnarp. “And they play differently outside. The games are more open and flexible, and it’s easier for them to organize the situation in a way that’s beneficial to them physically, socially, and psychologically.”
Some of the cognitive skills that are honed through play are decision making, problem solving, and abstract thinking. They can happen in any environment, but more so in nature, where children tend to engage in a lot of fantasy play. Researchers believe these critical thinking skills are crucial not just to early childhood, but for children to succeed academically later in life. As a parent, a great way to support them is simply to spend a lot of time outside, ask open-ended questions, and encourage your child’s innate curiosity and willingness to investigate.
“Outside children are constantly moving, they are active. Active children learn better and more,” writes Ylva Ellneby, a veteran preschool teacher and author in Sweden, in one of her popular books about early childhood. “Children need to use their imagination and nature gives them the freedom and inspiration that is required to make it happen. . . . The woods and fields offer many adventures and magical experiences.”
There’s another reason why hands-on, meaningful play experiences in nature are so conducive to learning. Nature activates all the senses, but without being overwhelming. When children play in nature, they tend to be calm yet alert. “When their senses are engaged, they are strengthening their sensory skills. And strong sensory integration results in a higher incidence of learning,” says Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and author of Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children. Conversely, Hanscom believes the rise in sensory issues in children is directly linked to the fact that children play less outside. 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. She notes that children need movement and frequent breaks throughout the day in order to learn effectively or they will start to fidget and lose focus. “In order for children to learn, they must be able to pay attention. And in order to pay attention, children need to move,” she says.
Ruth Wilson, professor emeritus in the Department of Special Education at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, also sees a natural connection—a “goodness of fit”—between children and nature. “Nature invites authentic play—the best kind of play for young children. Authentic play is fun, open-ended, self-directed and freely chosen. Authentic play occurs naturally when children and nature are brought together,” she writes in her book Nature and Young Children: Encouraging Creative Play and Learning in Natural Environments.
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. Or, as one American mother explained it to me: “When my daughter was little I wanted her to be involved in everything. She was in Girl Scouts, ballet, gymnastics, swim club—everything. I wanted her to be something, not just, you know, be!”
I felt like asking her when she thought her daughter would ever get a chance to “just be” again, but I shut my mouth. For most people the answer to that question is “when they retire.” Of course, by that time, the irresistible urge to jump in muddy puddles just to see how filthy you can get is probably long gone. (Not to mention that the window for when this is considered socially acceptable will have closed.) Unfortunately, she was just one example of the prevailing idea that children are the sum of their weekly activities, and that busiest schedule by third grade wins.
It’s Okay to Be Bored
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After two days of me tagging along to her new preschool to make sure that she is adjusting well (a process which is called inskolning and is mandatory for all new children), Nora is ready for me to move on. “You can go home now, Mommy,” she declares as we walk into the preschool on the third morning. “I want to go by myself. I’ll be fine.”
With this, we settle into our new routine, with Maya at school and Nora at preschool while I stay at the Shack and write. Since Maya’s school day ends already at one o’clock, we decide that she will stay at the school’s fritids until four most days of the week. In Sweden, fritids is a subsidized childcare service that is available for students ranging from six to thirteen years old, and its mission is twofold: to give kids something meaningful to do after school, and help cover the childcare gaps for working parents. Our local fritids is open from six to eight in the morning and then again from one in the afternoon to six in the evening, and it’s a popular alternative for kids who either aren’t old enough to be latchkey or simply prefer to stay after school to hang out with friends. At Maya’s fritids, which typically focuses on active play and creative arts, the kids are outside from one to two thirty, when they come in for a snack or, on nice days, sometimes eat outside. The rest of the time is usually spent playing or crafting, either inside or outside. Soon, Maya starts to bring home muddy pants, a gazillion bead crafts, and—in a particularly proud moment—a pink hat for her little sister that she knitted herself.
Aside from solving parents’ childcare woes, fritids makes it easier for the kids to get to know each other outside of school, and it doesn’t take long before Maya, who has always been a bit of a loner, has a throng of new friends. A logical extension of all this is that fritids becomes an important hub for initiating casual playdates. In a few short weeks, Maya has exchanged phone numbers and—with my permission—made plans with several other girls to play after school. The parents are just the facilitators and overseers of this process, the one
s who will generally say yes if they don’t have anything else going on that day and no if the family already has other plans. Several times a week I find myself either bringing home an extra child or two from fritids or picking Maya up from a friend’s house in the evening. Not that playing after school is all that revolutionary; kids have been doing that forever. What strikes me is that so many of them seem to have so much free time after school and that the children are largely in control of it. Some of this can of course be explained by the fact that the school day is short and homework is only given once a week, which makes it easier for families to plan around it. But there also seems to be less pressure to enroll kids in organized after-school activities. And the parents are not the least embarrassed about this lack of adult-led enrichment.
“We’ve chosen not to have a lot of structured activities after school,” says Sara, whose daughter Liv is in Maya’s class and is one of her first playdates. Sara, a teacher whose unruly Scandinavian-blond curls are cut in a short bob that is often tucked behind her ears, reveals that Liv, who is nine, and her little brother Noa, who is five, only have a play-based gym class once a week for a few months in the spring and a few months in the fall. Sometimes they take a swim class or, in Liv’s case, a weekly dance class.
“I think that’s enough,” Sara says. As a teacher and herself a high achiever in school, she clearly cares about her children’s education and future. But she also likes to give them the time and space to play. “I personally don’t like having things scheduled after work and I think that having too many activities after school stresses the kids out too. When I get back at four thirty I just want to kick back and be with my family.”
Sofia, a nutritionist who lives in Borås with her husband and two sons, who are six and three years old, is on the same track: “I guess I’ve been pretty lazy about signing my kids up for activities,” she says. “I think it’s pretty nice that they don’t have that much going on, at least until they themselves ask for it. I think it’s healthy for their development to be able to influence their free time as well.”
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. For babies and toddlers who stay home with a parent, the activities are more about treating the parents’ cabin fever than about keeping the kids busy or giving them an edge over their peers. Once or twice a week, these children are most likely found at öppna förskolan. For the adults, öppna förskolan is a popular place to meet peers, drink coffee, and trade battle stories from everyday life in the parenting trenches. And the children? They just play.
I decide to visit our local öppna förskolan over Easter break, where I meet Maggan, who is home from work with her youngest son, Manne. He is teething and not feeling well enough to go to preschool for a full day, so Maggan brought him here just to get out of the house for a couple of hours. She is soon joined by Kristoffer, who is on a six-month-long paternity leave with his one-year-old son, John, and his two-year-old daughter, Ellen.
Kristoffer’s children haven’t taken part in any organized activities yet, but he says that eventually they’ll probably go to swim class. Having grown up in the country himself, Kristoffer spends a lot of his paternity leave outside with the kids. “Now that the weather is better we go outside for a while in the morning and then again in the afternoon. I definitely feel a need to go outside every day; the more the better.”
Maggan’s children have been to a baby swim class and currently go to a play-based gymnastics class once a week. She, too, feels like swimming and learning to be safe around water is important, as the family spends a lot of time on a lake. Maggan and Kristoffer both say they would like their children to take up some sort of organized sport eventually, as another way to stay active beyond everyday play. But they don’t seem to care too much what that activity is.
“If my son wants to play soccer he can, but I’ll never make him. It has to come from him, and it will when he’s ready for it,” Maggan says. “Not everybody likes team sports, and if he doesn’t, we’ll have to find something that’s a better fit.”
Since Maggan is single and works full-time, her boys spend most of the week at preschool, where they play outside for three to four hours per day. On the weekends she usually takes them to the playground or, once the weather gets warmer, spends time with them on the big deck in their backyard. “My kids love to bounce around, run, and crawl under things, so I usually make obstacle courses on the deck to keep them busy,” she says.
As I start to look into extracurricular activities for my girls, I soon find that our options are limited. For Nora, there is a weekly play-based gymnastics class. That’s it. I could drive twenty minutes to Borås for a weekly swim class for preschoolers, but other than that, there is not a whole lot going on for kids her age. Maya has a few more options. Besides the gymnastics class, there is choir on Tuesdays, and a jazz dance class is supposed to start in the spring. For those in third grade and up, there is Scouts on Wednesdays. (In line with Sweden’s tradition of equal treatment of the genders, Girl Scout and Boy Scout organizations here merged in the 1960s and ’70s, with the result that all troops are coed.) And then there is, of course, soccer, the cherished national sport, which, unlike just about any winter sport, gives Sweden a rare chance to outshine its neighbor to the west, Norway. It’s the one sport that can drive grown men to tears and fist-fights, the sport that you will find Swedish kids playing in every one-stoplight town—or, in this case, a no-stoplight town.
Despite soccer’s status as a national obsession, Swedish parents seem to be in no rush to hothouse the next Zlatan Ibrahimovic´, the country’s most famous and admired soccer player of all time. In general, Swedish children don’t start playing soccer until they are around six or seven years old, and regular, weekly games usually start even later. Zlatan himself got his first cleats when he was five but didn’t start playing on a team until he was seven. And he says that he learned most of his tricks and refined his technique while playing casual pickup games on a rough gravel lot between the high-rises of Rosengård, a poor suburb on the outskirts of Malmö. “When I played soccer for fun in Rosengård, that’s where all my ideas came from. I brought that with me to the big arenas,” he told the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter in an interview.
My nine-year-old, soccer-crazed nephew, Oliver, is a big fan of Zlatan. And, like many other Swedish mothers, my sister Susanne is utterly uninterested in soccer. “You know me, I’m definitely no ‘soccer mom,’ and I can’t say I enjoy going to these tournaments,” she tells me when I ask her about it, “but I do love that he has a hobby and something that he’s passionate about.”
By American youth sports standards, my nephew doesn’t even have a very busy schedule. In the winter he has practice once a week, and up until now he hasn’t had any regular games, just four or five tournaments per year. Now that he’s nine, he will have practice on Thursdays and usually a game or practice again on Sunday. Plus, that’s his only after-school activity, unless you count building with Legos in his bedroom. In the summer, aside from the occasional soccer day camp there’s no organized soccer at all—or any other organized activities, for that matter—since Swedish parents are extremely protective of their vacations. And typically they spend at least a few of those five to seven weeks of annual time off in a camper van or cabin near the ocean, or sunbathing in a place with a more consistent supply of sunshine than Sweden.
“What I really like about soccer is that the kids are not dependent on us parents to play. They keep playing whether they have practices or not. As soon as the snow melts in the spring, they play during recess at school. In the summer, they all gather by the soccer fields and play all day,” Susanne muses. “It’s just in their blood.”
Some teams have a tougher practice regimen than my nephew, and far from all parents are as relaxed about the sport as my sister. Nonetheless, the Swedish soccer federati
on seems determined to uphold a playful atmosphere among its youth teams. In 2017, the organization went as far as banning the practice of crowning overall winners of soccer series and tournaments for children age twelve and younger. This was not an uncontroversial decision, as many parents felt like learning how to lose is an important part of life and helps build resilience. Youth leaders, however, welcomed the rule, as it helped pacify the small subset of aggravated parents who used to cause problems for referees and the opposing team during high-stakes games.
Naturally, there are many benefits of participating in organized sports. It can teach kids a lot about hard work, social skills, self-discipline, sportsmanship, and other desirable traits. But too much too early means there is very little downtime for kids to “just” play outside; additionally, it reduces parents to frazzled, grumpy chauffeurs. Of those who start too early, many are burned-out and lose interest by the time they are twelve, according to Hansi Hinic, a researcher at Halmstad University in Sweden, who specializes in the psychological effects of organized sports on children.
“Parents book up their kids’ schedules and push them because they care. But if they’re not receptive to their children’s signals, they may be missing them,” he tells the Swedish daily Upsala Nya Tidning. “The well-being of the child is the parent’s responsibility, and they are the ones who need to make sure that the kids don’t have too much going on.” A former soccer coach, Hinic believes children in general start organized sports too early, and that most children of preschool and early elementary school age benefit more from playing outside. “Kids shouldn’t get enrolled in organized sports until they want to themselves,” he says. “Sometimes you’ve got to wonder if it isn’t the parent that wants the child to start playing soccer, more than the child himself.”
There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather Page 10
