Danish Way Of Parenting Quotes

Emotional honesty, not perfection, is what children truly need from their parents. Children

By not being authentic, you undermine your child’s ability to sense what is true and false. Kids

When you substitute "we" for "I" even "illness" becomes "wellness".

The best gift you can give your children is to keep yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually healthy.

I believe adopting free unstructured play, within an appropriate framework, has rich potential in bringing up happy, well-balanced and resilient children.

Resilience isn’t cultivated by avoiding stress, you see, but by learning how to tame and master it.

Being aware of yourself and choosing your behavior is the first step towards powerful life change. This is how we become better people. This is how we become better parents.

Teach respect, be respectful and you will be respected

Emotional honesty, not perfection, is what children truly need from their parents.

Sometimes we forget that parenting, like love, is a verb.

Happy kids grow up to be happy adults who raise happy kids, and so on.

Remember to distinguish the behavior from the child, because here isn't a bad child, just bad behavior.

Children are constantly focused on their parents and will mirror them. Therefore, what they experience in the home will be crucial for their empathy development. Parents have a big responsibility because they are the primary example of empathy and must practice being empathic themselves.

The language we use is extremely powerful. It is the frame through which we perceive and describe ourselves and our picture of the world.

Feeling connected to others gives meaning and purpose to our lives.

Learning to act on intrinsic goals, such as improving relationships or engaging in hobbies you love, rather than on extrinsic goals, such as buying a new car, is what is proven to create true well-being.

Praise is closely connected to how kids view their intelligence. If they are constantly praised for being naturally smart, talented, or gifted (sound familiar?), they develop what is called a “fixed” mind-set (their intelligence is fixed and they have it).

In English it is called the “terrible twos,” whereas in Danish it is called trodsalder (the “boundary age”); children pushing boundaries is normal and welcomed, not annoying and terrible. When you see it that way, it is easier to welcome the misbehavior rather than seeing it as bad and deserving of punishment.

Emotional honesty, not perfection, is what children truly need from their parents. Children are always observing how you feel anger, joy, frustration, contentment, and success and how you express it in the world. We have to model honesty for our children and let them know that it is OK to feel all of their emotions.

Not only do we want to protect our children from stress, but we also want to build their self-confidence and make them feel special. The standard method of doing this is to praise them, sometimes excessively, for insignificant accomplishments. But in our quest to increase confidence and reduce stress, we may actually be setting them up for more stress in the long run. Building confidence rather than self-esteem is like making a nice house with little foundation. We all know what happens when the big bad wolf comes.

PARENT—play, authenticity, reframing, empathy, no ultimatums, and togetherness—

Good begets good. Calm begets calm. It isn´t the child who is bad; it is the action that is bad.

Realistic optimists merely filter out unnecessary negative information.

Focus on what you can do, not on what you can't.

It's not mindfulness, it's we-fullness-the Danish art of Hygge

孩子不需要大人帶他們進行活動或玩玩具。大人愈放手讓孩子自己主導遊戲、運用想像力、自己想辦法，孩子就會做得愈好。孩子遊戲時學到的技能是無價之寶。我們太擔心孩子應該參加多少正規活動，也太煩惱他們學到多少東西，卻忘記讓孩子自由玩耍的重要性。別再懷有罪惡感，讓孩子玩，不代表父母失職。孩子缺的正是自由玩耍！

to use more tempered, less severe language. Use less judgment and more acceptance, and you will find yourself in fewer power struggles with your kids and your partner.

Building confidence rather than self-esteem is like making a nice house with little foundation.

We can't change the way we were raised, but we can 100% change the way we raise our children.

If we change the way we see our children, the way they see themselves will change. Always look for the good.

The language we use is extremely powerful. It is the frame through which we perceive and describe ourselves and our picture of the world.

Always think of your child's age. Every age has a "theme" of what can be expected from it. Children are not small adults.

We sometimes think we are helping kids by pushing them to perform or learn faster, but leading them in the right moment of their development will yield much better results—not only because of the learning itself, which will surely be more pleasurable, but because the children will be more assured of the mastery of their skills, since they feel more in charge of acquiring them.

Allan Holmgren, a well-known Danish psychologist, believes that our reality is created in the language we use. All change involves a change in language. A problem is only a problem if it is referred to as a problem.

We agree to spend “Sunday dinner” in hygge. We all promise to help one another as a team in creating a cozy atmosphere where everyone feels safe and no one needs to have their guard up. We agree to try to . . . Turn off the phones and the iPads. Leave our drama at the door. There are other times to focus on our problems. Hygge is about creating a safe place to relax with others and leave the everyday stressors outside. Not complain unnecessarily.

Improve meaningful relationships Try using empathy to patch up some of your own relationships. Having fractured relationships has been proven to cause physical and psychological damage. Empathy and forgiveness activate the same region of the brain, which means the more you hone your empathy skills, the easier it is to forgive and be forgiven. Meaningful friend and family relationships are the most important factors determining true happiness, well above having a lot of money.

Being humble is a very important value in Denmark. This dates far back in history and is a part of the Danes’ cultural heritage. This value of humility is about knowing who you are so well that you don’t need others to make you feel important. Therefore, they try not to overload their children with compliments.

Talk with your children about how important honesty is in your family. Make it a value. Let them know you put more emphasis on honesty than on the punishment for bad behavior. If you confront your kids accusingly with anger or threats and are punitive when they misbehave, they might become afraid to tell the truth. If you make it safe for them, they will be honest. Remember, it takes a lot to confess or tell the truth for anyone at any age. It doesn’t always come naturally. It’s up to us to teach them to be courageous enough to be honest and vulnerable and confess when necessary. Be nonjudgmental. This kind of honest relationship, if fostered well, will be paramount during the teenage years.

The researchers discovered that there was a dramatic shift from an internal to an external locus of control in children of all ages, from elementary school to college. To give you an idea of how great a shift it was, young people in 1960 were 80 percent more likely to claim that they had control over their lives than children in 2002, who were more prone to say they lacked such personal control.

Be careful praising for failures or mistakes. Saying things like “Well done!” “You did your best!” “Better luck next time!” can be heard as pity. Focus on what they did accomplish and how it can be worked on—“I know you missed the goal, but it was very close! Let’s get out and practice next week so you’ll get it next time! Remember, practice is the key!” By focusing on the effort involved in learning, we create a growth mind-set.

Increasing our self-awareness and making conscious decisions about our actions and reactions are the first steps toward powerful life change. This is how we become better parents—and better people. And this is how we create a legacy of well-being to pass on to the next generations. Is there a greater gift you can give to your children and your children’s children than helping them grow up to be happier, more secure and resilient adults? We don’t think so. And we hope you’ll agree.

Groundbreaking research in neuroscience has revealed what scientists are calling the “social brain.” This is a brain region that lights up when we are engaged in social interactions. Matthew Lieberman, a social cognitive neuroscientist, writes: “This network comes on like a reflex and it directs us to think about other people’s minds, their thoughts, feelings and goals. It promotes understanding and empathy, cooperation and consideration.” Lieberman believes that we are wired not only for self-interest but also for the welfare of others.

Social groups are also a big part of Danish life. Called foreningsliv (or “association life”), these groups are based on a shared hobby or interest. The objective can be economic, political, academic, or cultural. Their function can be to change something in society, such as in a political association, or to express themselves in a way that meets the members’ social needs, such as in a choral society or a bridge club. Statistics show that 79 percent of Denmark’s business leaders have been active in associations before the age of thirty. Respectively, 94 percent, 92 percent, and 88 percent of managers with experience in associations believe that these years of involvement benefited their social skills and interpersonal skills and gave them a strong network. Ninety-nine percent of Denmark’s governors believe that participation in these voluntary associations promotes young people’s professional skills.

No Ultimatums is a reminder that power struggles can lead us to lose our temper. Many parents scream or use physical punishment as a form of discipline. We lose control, and yet we expect our children not to. In an authoritarian parenting style, trust and closeness with their kids is replaced with fear. It works in the short term but can have consequences in the long run. The Danish, more diplomatic parenting style fosters trust and resilience in children. Kids who feel respected and understood, who in turn are helped to understand and respect rules, develop a much stronger sense of self-control and ultimately grow up to be happier, more emotionally stable adults. Togetherness and Hygge are ways of fostering our closest relationships, which are one of the biggest predictors of a person’s happiness. By learning how to hygge, or cozy around, we can improve our family get-togethers to make them more pleasant and memorable experiences for our kids.

Play helps children develop many essential life skills. Resilience, coping and negotiation skills, and self-control are just a few of the valuable lessons learned in unstructured play—as well as stress management, which lowers children’s chances of struggling with anxiety as adults. Play helps develop an internal locus of control, giving kids confidence in their own capabilities, which powerfully lays the groundwork for happiness. Authenticity helps children develop a strong internal compass because they learn to trust their emotions. Teaching honesty to ourselves and to our children fosters a strong character value. And remember that all emotions are OK. Furthermore, different types of praise affect children differently in terms of how they come to see themselves in the world. Giving empty praise or focusing too much on being smart can set kids up for feeling insecure and risk-averse. By engaging in process praise, we foster a growth mind-set rather than a

Make an action plan. What are your values with regard to your children? Include both your own and your partner’s. Are you spanking or hitting? Make a vow to stop. It isn’t necessary, and it doesn’t foster trust and respect. Are you yelling too much? Make a vow to stop. Use it only when necessary. Yelling isn’t pleasant for anyone. Your children mirror you; you are their role model. If you want them to control themselves and behave, then you have to set the example of controlling yourself.

Reframing is a powerful way to change our children’s perceptions about life—and our own. How we choose to see things affects the way we feel things. Realistic optimists don’t ignore negative information; rather, they simply focus on the other information at hand to write a richer, more loving story about themselves, their children, and life in general. Reframing can change our experience of the world, and it makes our own and our children’s lives happier in the process. Passing on the skill of reframing to our children may be one of the greatest gifts we can give, fostering future happiness for them and for following generations. Empathy is an essential, and essentially human, tendency. While the level of empathy in our society has dropped and the level of narcissism has increased, research shows that we are wired more for empathy than for selfishness. By being less judgmental and shaming, we can better understand the vulnerability in ourselves and in others, which brings us closer together, forging deeper,

Hitting or biting others is unacceptable, and in those cases, you should be firm and hold the child and tell her “No!” forcefully. Have her look at you and give you an apology sound and a caress so she learns the meaning of sorry and the nonuse of physicality early on. Remember, this needs to happen fast, because children forget in an instant what they did. You have to deal with that behavior directly in the moment. They may not understand the meaning of sorry in the beginning, but with time and learning to empathize they will.

Put a little of everything on your children’s plates, and let them eat their food as they wish. Food situations should be nice and cozy above all, not marked by tension and focused on the fact that children have to eat.

Researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pooled data from 148 studies on health outcomes and its correlation to social relationships. They gathered every research paper on the topic they could find, involving more than 300,000 men and women across the developed world. They found that people with poor social connections had on average 50 percent higher odds of dying earlier (about 7.5 years earlier) than people with robust social ties. That difference in longevity is about as large as the mortality difference between smokers and non-smokers. And it is larger than any health risks associated with many other well-known lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise and obesity.

When you substitute the “I” for the “we” even illness becomes wellness

First and foremost, I think we must remain calm as parents and try not to lose control of ourselves. For how can we expect our kids to control themselves if we can’t do it? That seems unfair.

7. Be real If you want to play with your kids, you must be 100 percent real in what you do. Don’t be afraid to look silly. Let them guide. Stop worrying about what others think of you or what you think of yourself. Get down on their level and try to let go for even 20 minutes a day if it is difficult for you. Even a little playtime on their level is worth more than any toy you could buy.

Geert Hofstede, a world-renowned cultural psychologist, concluded in a very famous study about cultural differences that America had the highest level of individualism in the world. That is pretty incredible. We are so programmed to think about “I” that we probably don’t even realize it.

America, we believe that praising kids for how smart they are builds their confidence and motivation to learn. We are rather obsessed with the idea of talent and genius and innate abilities. We freely praise our children and others because we think it is helpful. But three decades of research done by Stanford psychologist Carol S. Dweck has proven otherwise.

In the English translations of Andersen’s fairy tales, adults have paid close attention to what they think children should be spared. In Denmark and in older versions, it is more up to the readers to come up with their own conclusions and judgments. Danes believe that tragedies and upsetting events are things we should talk about too. We learn more about character from our sufferings than our successes and therefore it’s important to examine all parts of life. This is more authentic and it creates empathy and a deeper respect for humanity. It also helps us feel gratitude for the simple things in our life we sometimes take for granted by focusing too much on the fairy-tale life.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning, but for children play is serious learning.” Mr. Rogers

What if we told you that free play teaches children to be less anxious. It teaches them resilience. And resilience has been proven to be one of the biggest factors in predicting success as an adult! The ability to “bounce back”, to regulate emotions and cope with stress are key factors in a healthy, functioning adult.

Happy kids grow up to make happy adults who make happy kids and so on.

Sometimes we forget that parenting, like love, is a verb. It takes effort and work to yield positive returns. There is an incredible amount of self-awareness involved in being a good parent. It requires us to look at what we do when we are tired and stressed and stretched to our limits. These actions are called our default settings. Our default settings are the actions and reactions we have when we are too tired to choose a better way.

Most of our default settings are inherited from our own parents. They are ingrained and programmed into us like a motherboard on a computer. They are the factory settings we return to when we are at our wit’s end and not thinking and they have been installed into us from our upbringing.

Is there a greater gift you can give to your children and your children’s children than to grow up to be happier, more secure and resilient adults? We don’t think so.

Empathy and joy of life are closely connected. For most of us, deep and intense moments of happiness are often, if not always, tied to deep and intense contact with others. Training our empathetic abilities is therefore also training joy of life.

Highlight your unique and authentic perspective, and your child´s, by saying “for me” Try adding “for me” after a sentence to emphasize your understanding that your experience of a given situation isn´t necessarily the same as your child´s.

I am not impressed by money, social status or job title. I am impressed by the way someone treats other human beings.

Being in touch with reality but focusing on the more positive angles is being a realistic optimist. Realistic optimists merely filter out unnecessary negative information. They learn to tune out negative words and occurrences and develop a habit of interpreting ambiguous situations in a more positive manner.

The light in a child´s eyes is all it takes to make Christmas a magical time of the year.

Daring to be more honest and vulnerable often leads to great response in others, as it can be recognized emotionally - and in this emotional resonance you create closer ties.

Becoming is better than being. Perfectionism doesn’t exist. We need to stretch ourselves and continue learning.

Surround yourself with friends and family who want to practice empathy and kindness. New mothers and parents are the ones who can benefit enormously from this support - we all can.

Hygge" is like a good hug - but without the physical contact.

Listening to and expressing one´s own true thoughts and feelings is what keeps us on the right track to going after what makes us happy in life. Being honest with ourselves is how we calibrate our internal compasses to set ourselves in the right direction.

Science indicates that our hearts have a much greater neurological and consciousness-wise importance as partner to our brain than anyone has earlier known. If we are anchored in our hearts while in contact with our children, and in our lives in every way, our reality becomes broader and more nuanced. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and wellbeing during childhood and beyond.

The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents’ lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

When children understand what’s happening in the brain, it can be the first step to having the power to make choices. Make it fun, make it lively, and kids won’t even realize they are learning the foundations of emotional intelligence.

If you really “hygger”, you do not perform in any way. You will not be challenged, and you do not show up as “another”, than you are. It is easiest to socialize with people who know one from several sides, and appreciate them.

The most powerful way to change the world is to live our lives in front of our children the way we would like the world to be.

I believe that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.

I am touched by your kindness and loving comments on how the messages from the Danish way of Parenting - which comes from my heart - have changed your and your children's lives. Each and every one I keep in my personal treasure chest. Your support means everything.

When your kids get excited, let them have that feeling and share the excitement with them. Sharing makes it bigger.

The Danish phenomenon “hygge" is about creating an atmosphere that is warm, relaxed, friendly, close, loving, comfortable and welcoming - a state of feeling connected and loved.

I think we must remain calm as parents and try not to lose control of ourselves. For how can we expect our kids to control themselves if we can’t do it? We are their role models.

Traditions are important because they connect people. And we all need to feel a part of something bigger. Family values can be converted into powerful routines and create strong and meaningful traditions. Traditions don´t have to be BIG and time-consuming arrangements, instead it is the atmosphere and energy you decide to put into the arrangement that matters.

Children do the best they can, with the resources they have!

The ability to reframe negative situations is a key element to being resilient.

Reframing is directly related to the language we use – both out loud and in our head. So not only does reframing change our brain chemistry, but it helps how we interpret pain, fear, anxiety, and the like. The same goes for our children.

I am touched by your kindness and loving comments on how the messages from the Danish way of Parenting - which comes from my heart - have changed your and your children's lives. Each and every one I keep in my personal treasure chest. Your support means everything!

The concept of togetherness and hygge has so many implications but essentially it is putting yourself aside for the benefit of the whole.

Children's play is a way to express innate, spontaneous creativity.

Give children kindness, presence, and respect to help them develop a deeper sense of empathy. The art of seeing and meeting others as they are.

Rewrite your child´s narrative to be more loving. Make a list of your child´s most negative qualities and behaviors and write them out as sentence. Try focusing on the positive side to your children´s behavior so they feel appreciated for their uniqueness rather than labeled negatively.

Many people feel afraid of really opening up and being vulnerable because they don´t want to be judged or rejected. And, in this fear, many relationships get reduced to superficialities.

Relations are borne by the people in them, and the child-adult relationship is borne primarily by the adult. The adult is the one who can provide the qualities he or she would like it to have. Therefore we have to develop our self-accord, our contact with our inner strength and judgment.

Lot of kids would give up any material thing in exchange for real time to spend with their family and too many relatives think a “gift” is a substitute for that time. Too many toys prevent kids from fully developing their gift of imagination and sharing a moment together with a family member or a friend is often the best we can give our children.

Help your child see others' emotions as well as experiencing his or her own without imposing your judgment.

Life consists of many different stories. A person has not just one but countless life stories that weave in between each other and together create exactly that specific life and that specific human being.

Every child needs to be loved in gigantic quantities and with unbelievable quality.

If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.

If we hold onto the good in people, to separate actions from the person, we teach our children that we forgive them when they themselves misbehave. Imagine how bad your child must feel, when doing something you have burst badly out about, maybe mocked or belittled when the neighbor's daughter did the same.

There aren’t always good reasons for a child’s emotions, or easy solutions for them, but by at least acknowledging them and trying not to judge them, we are teaching respect.