There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather

by Linda Åkeson McGurk

  “I let them play Minecraft for half an hour or so,” Nellie’s mom, Therese, reports almost apologetically when I pick Maya up from her house one day. She quickly adds, “But they were outside for an hour jumping on the trampoline as well.”

  Nora too has made plenty of new friends at preschool, but it takes a little longer for her to get set up with playdates, partly because I don’t know any of the parents at her school. Finally, I pick up the phone and call the mom of Kerstin, a girl whom Nora has bonded with. Her name is Mari and she says sure, the girls can play. Even though we live in a small community where people generally trust each other, contacting strangers out of the blue and then leaving your kid there to play for a few hours feels a little bit like going on a blind date. What kind of parenting choices have they made? What are their likes and dislikes? What will they think of my child? You just don’t know who’s going to show up when you ring the doorbell.

  In this case, it’s a friendly former professional shot-put athlete turned IT manager named David, also known as Kerstin’s dad. David is tattooed up to his neck, speaks six languages, and, as I’m just about to discover, is a storyteller extraordinaire. While Kerstin and Nora run off to play, David invites me to join him and Mari for fika. While holding and comforting his and Mari’s two-year-old daughter, Rakel, he makes coffee and tells me about his upbringing in northern Sweden and Saudi Arabia, where his father worked for a multinational company; his subsequent stint as a broke exchange student in Louisiana; his massive weight gain after giving up his sports career; and getting told by five doctors that he would have to take statins for the rest of his life. Then he explains how he went on a raw vegan diet and started exercising madly, dropped eighty pounds, and proved them wrong.

  “I’m a problem solver. I just don’t like it when shit comes to me too easily,” he says.

  David and Mari’s home, a one-of-a-kind former church community building with an open floor plan and eighteen-foot ceilings, was once featured in an interior-décor magazine and is nothing short of stunning. As I sit at their dining room table made out of massive slabs of reclaimed wood and drinking tea out of a cup with no handles, I’m thinking that we’re a mismatch. These people are clearly way too stylish and 100 percent more hipster than me.

  Then a different narrative emerges—our mutual passion for the outdoors. David tells me that he and Mari moved here a couple of years ago from Gothenburg, the second-biggest city in Sweden, following some green-wave dream to leave the city and go “back to the land” or, in this case, back to the forest. When David’s not busy managing over a hundred programmers, some of his favorite pastimes are exploring nature with his daughters, looking for frogs, fishing, foraging for berries and mushrooms, and geocaching, a form of modern-day outdoor treasure hunt using GPS-enabled smartphones. Once he signed up for a survival course in the wilderness to prepare himself for solo camping with his dog and ended up spooning random strangers through the freezing night.

  “When Rakel was younger I would put her in a sling on my back, push Kerstin in the stroller with one hand, and hold the dog with the other,” David says. “There’s always a way to get outside.”

  When I come back to get Nora a few hours later, David is cooking dinner (vegan Mexican/Middle Eastern fusion rolls with mint sauce) while his wife, Mari, is enjoying the sun with Rakel on the expansive back porch. Nora and Kerstin are digging holes in the sandbox, where they have spent the better part of the afternoon, and they’re so absorbed by this activity that Nora doesn’t even notice my presence. Her jeans are caked in filth and she has sunk her hands deep down in the mud, carefully massaging it. Periodically she pulls her hands out of the hole for inspection. “Look, Mommy, I’ve got brown hands!” she says elatedly once she finally sees that I’m there.

  Mari, who works as a school counselor, watches calmly as Kerstin and Nora proceed to smear mud on their arms and faces, war-paint style. “Dirty kids are happy kids,” she says. “All play is based on creativity, and I think this is creative if anything. This is all a part of the exploratory process that is such an important part of being a child.”

  This creative process unfortunately needs to come to an end before Nora gets into the Saab, so Mari sets out a tub of soapy water and some wet wipes on the deck for the girls to wash off with. They strip down and start to clean themselves up, still playing and giggling madly.

  David, Mari, and I are chatting in the kitchen that is adjacent to the deck when Kerstin, butt naked, comes up to the open patio door and informs us that she needs to go potty.

  “Just go in the grass, honey,” David says.

  As Mari brings out towels for the girls to dry off with and helps them get dressed, I notice that she doesn’t scold them for getting just about every square inch of their clothes and bodies dirty, including the lining of their nostrils. I’m not surprised. Messy, wild play is seen as a perfectly natural, even cherished part of childhood in Scandinavia, and the way I was raised, muddy hands, piles of filthy clothes, and wet boots were almost considered badges of honor, a testament to a day filled with adventure, new experiences, and lots of trial and error. The adult me has a slightly more complex relationship with messes. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a neat freak, but I like my house orderly and clean, and my kitchen counter free of clutter, craft glitter, and traces of homemade salt dough. Outside, however, it’s a different story. I have no problem whatsoever with my children wading knee-deep in a creek, carousing with filthy farm animals, or walking barefoot through a muddy field. They can wrestle in mud puddles all day long, as far as I’m concerned. It’s almost as if nature itself manages to pacify my type A tics. Or maybe I’m just calmed by the knowledge that the kids will leave their muddy clothes in the garage on their way back inside the house, thereby keeping the mess contained and manageable. Either way, I truly feel like sending kids outside to play and then barring them from getting dirty is like giving them an eight-week-old kitten and telling them they’re not allowed to pet it. It’s just not right.

  Mari was apparently a kindred spirit, and in Sweden we were far from unique.

  “Of course children should be able to get dirty when they play outside; it goes without saying,” says Johanna, a mother of two preschool-age girls, whom I meet at an outing with a nature play group. Her husband, Marcus, agrees: “There is this fantastic invention called a washing machine. We have one and it runs a lot.”

  “I think jumping in puddles is part of childhood,” another mom tells me. “It’s also a form of risk assessment. ‘How much can I splash around before I get wet?’”

  This acceptance of children being a bit wild and getting dirty likely originates in the Romantic era, when nature was glorified by thinkers and philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was a vocal critic of civilization. He argued, somewhat radically, that the purest people were found in primitive societies rather than civilized ones. The farther removed humans were from what he called the original “state of nature,” the more morally corrupted and decadent they would inevitably become. Children were viewed as close to nature because they hadn’t yet become broken down and destroyed by civilization, and according to Rousseau’s logic it was desirable that they stay in that natural state as long as possible.

  The idea that children are natural was popularized again in the twentieth century, and eventually nature became a symbol of the good childhood in Scandinavia. Children’s books, like the ones written by beloved Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (in the US most famous for her stories about Pippi Longstocking), helped reinforce the idea that wild, free, messy play outdoors is the ultimate childhood experience. In Lindgren’s story collection The Children of Noisy Village, based on her own childhood in southern Sweden in the early twentieth century, seven boisterous kids race bark boats down a creek, spontaneously try to ride a docile bull, have tea with their dolls in a cow pasture, dance around a bonfire, jump in the biggest mud puddles they can find, and wade in ditches until their boots are filled with water.

  T
he ideals from Lindgren’s books very much prevail in Sweden today, partly thanks to the Swedish Outdoor Association, which holds that all children enrolled in its forest schools have a right to “become dirty, stay active and be inspired by nature,” Although the forest schools blazed a trail for messy play, these ideas are now embraced by more traditional day cares and schools as well. Swedish veteran preschool teacher and author Ann Granberg sums it up well when she writes that “too much order and cleanliness hampers play. Children must be allowed to get muddy, get in the water with their clothes on, make a mess and be rowdy; they should be spontaneous, improvise and do things that are not thought-through.”

  Interestingly, the difference in attitude toward dirt in Scandinavia can also be traced semantically. The Swedish equivalent of shit—widely considered one of the rudest swear words in the US—is skit. Except in Sweden, since this is synonymous with dirt or poop, it’s not really considered a swear word at all. Both kids and adults use it as an interjection no worse than, say, the word oops in English. The only problem is that, since most Swedes are excellent English speakers and more fascinated by American pop culture than most Americans, children and adults both gravitate toward using the English version of skit.

  “It just means dirt! It’s not a cussword!” my mom will protest every time I scold her for loudly dropping the s-bomb in the checkout line at the grocery store while visiting us in Indiana, regardless of how many times I’ve explained to her that it is in fact considered a cussword and I would very much appreciate it if she would start treating it as such. During our time in Sweden, Maya and Nora are in for a reverse culture clash.

  “One of the boys said the s-word three times today!” Maya reports in dismay after one of her first days of school. “I told the teacher and she told him off, but I heard him say it again later.”

  The next day, it’s somebody else. And the next day. I tell Maya that her classmates may just not understand that the s-word is a really bad word in English and suggest that she explain it to them. She does, but fails to convince them. After complaining to the teacher again, the issue of the s-word usage makes it all the way to the school’s Great Council, a monthly gathering where all the students and teachers meet to discuss policies and current events. There, the teachers again reinforce that cussing is not appropriate at school, even if it happens to be in English. For a few days after the meeting, it seems like the situation has cooled off, but it doesn’t take long before things revert to the old order. Maya soon realizes that she’s fighting a fruitless battle. Once again, some things just don’t translate well.

  Dirt Is Good

  * * *

  When North Dakota native Ania Krasniewska enrolled her daughter in a Danish forest school, she didn’t quite know what to expect. Ania, who lived in Copenhagen for several years while her American diplomat husband was stationed there, initially leaned toward one of the international schools that are typically favored by expat families. But then she decided to look at some options that were closer to their house in the exclusive suburb of Charlottenlund. The forest school, she was told, was a “very traditional Danish school,” one where children spend most of their day outside in the forest and, inevitably, come home dirty.

  The first time she saw the school her eyes welled up with tears, which she did her best to hide.

  “When I saw the crates that were full of dirty toys, that looked like they were some castoffs, it reminded me of the orphanages around the world that I used to volunteer at,” she says. “I’ve always been a hands-off type of parent, but when I saw all the dirt at the school, it took me a while to separate the two different types of dirt—the dirt that comes from playing outside and the dirt that is due to neglect.”

  Ania’s experience is not unique. To the outsider, Scandinavians’ affinity for messy play can be perplexing. Ebba Lisberg Jensen, a human ecology researcher at Malmö University whose research focuses on the relationship between humans and nature, experienced this firsthand when she brought a Vietnamese friend to a dinner at the home of a middle-class family in southern Sweden. As is typical for a Swedish dinner party, the children were running around outside in somewhat raggedy summer dresses, barefoot, dirty, and with messy hair. The parents thought everything was dandy, as it fit right in with their romantic ideas of a perfect childhood experience. But the Vietnamese dinner guest was confused.

  “She discreetly whispered to me, ‘Why do the children look like that? Why are they dirty and barefoot? Why are these people not taking care of their children?’ ” says Lisberg Jensen. “And that’s when I realized that dirty, barefoot children with ripped clothes is maybe something you can allow yourself to have when that’s not tied to your prestige.”

  To me, the story sounds familiar. When we’re invited to a dinner party at my friend Malin’s house together with a couple of other families, the patio doors by the kitchen and dining area are wide open so that the kids—about ten of them in all—can run in and out. It’s drizzling, but the kids couldn’t care less. One girl, who’s just about to turn four, is maneuvering a ride-on backhoe digger in the sandbox, barefoot and wearing a pink flowery dress that looks more suitable for a tea party than a mud session with the neighborhood kids. Her mom, Emilia, shrugs.

  “It’s no big deal. I can always wash out the stains. You’ve got to let them be kids. You know, let them play, even if they’re in their nice clothes.”

  On the big wooden deck, Einar, three years old, is throwing a small tantrum because he doesn’t want to wear the rain boots and waterproof pants that his mom has brought for him to wear in case of inclement weather. Eventually, she decides to let it go. After all, it’s just rain. Einar elatedly joins another of the boys, who’s already barefoot and riding around on the deck on a toy tractor. After a while, Malin’s oldest daughter, Elin, comes running with a bloody knee and torn stockings.

  “My bad for not making her wear her shell pants,” Malin sighs, and unceremoniously puts a Band-Aid on the wound.

  My own kids are down by the swing set, singing and spinning around in the light drizzle. Nobody is telling the kids to come inside, clean up, calm down, or stop playing in the mud. Instead, after dinner, they are sent back outside, and they are more than happy to comply. If it hadn’t been for the rain and the fact that Malin’s patio lacks cover, dinner would’ve been served outside as well, since most Swedes tend to have an unstated goal of eating as many meals as possible in the open air during the warmer months. This time, however, we have to settle for eating in the dining room.

  “Maybe it’ll clear up before it’s time for dessert,” Malin says, and optimistically looks for signs of blue in the sky.

  It’s a typical Swedish dinner party in the country.

  Our reaction to dirt very much depends on our upbringing, social class, cultural context, and personal experiences. Attitudes toward hygiene have also shifted back and forth during different time periods. Before the eighteenth century, neither parents nor doctors in the Western world cared much about personal hygiene; in fact, many people believed dirt protected children against disease. In France, for example, washing a child’s head was even believed to hurt his intelligence, and leaving a layer of dirt was believed to protect against injury. In Sweden a couple of hundred years ago, it was standard practice to bathe your whole body only once a year, usually around Christmas. The turning point came in the middle of the nineteenth century, when poor sanitation was linked to the disastrous spread of cholera. Up until this point, cleanliness had been considered a privilege reserved for the upper classes. Now it became a public health concern. But it would take almost another hundred years, until after World War II, before indoor plumbing became standard in Swedish homes. In the ’50s and ’60s, the importance of cleanliness grew. For the working class, keeping your kids neat and tidy, even if they didn’t shower every day, became strongly tied to a woman’s honor and even viewed as a way to stave off poverty.

  Improved sanitation, combined with the invention of penicillin in
the 1940s, successfully helped to drastically reduce the spread of infectious disease, in Sweden and elsewhere. Soon thereafter, however, incidences of allergy and asthma started climbing in the entire industrialized world, reaching epidemic levels in the past thirty years. The highest rates of allergy and asthma are found in the English-speaking developed countries: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. Today, about one in ten children in the US has asthma, a disease that kills three thousand people in the country every year, and as many as 40 percent are affected by allergies. Combined, allergic disease, including asthma, is the third-most-common chronic condition among children under eighteen years old in the US. Meanwhile, asthma and allergy remain very rare conditions in many developing countries.

  The changes have happened too fast to have been caused by a genetic shift in the population; instead, the culprit is likely a variety of environmental factors. Many researchers believe that smaller family sizes, increased antibiotics use, less contact with animals, more time spent indoors, and an obsession with cleanliness have all contributed to our immune systems slacking off in the past fifty years.

  Our lives may be cleaner than ever—too clean, if you ask most immunologists—but our germophobia keeps reaching new heights. Corporations have found creative ways to profit from this fear, successfully marketing products like bleach-based toy sanitizers, shopping cart covers, and UV sanitizers for cell phones as necessities for parents in modern-day society. (And they’re more than happy to point out that the cell phone your toddler just licked has eighteen times more bacteria than a public restroom.) There are now enclosed “no-mess” indoor sandboxes that children access through holes with attached rubber gloves: “all the fun of playing in a normal outdoor sandbox, but without the mess and sandy clothes!” and are marketed as completely worry-free for the parents, since “bugs, dirt, and water are no longer an issue.” Some bloggers have even stopped using empty toilet paper rolls—one of the most popular recycled crafting materials of all time—simply because their readers are grossed out by the thought of the roll at one point being located within reach of a toilet.