An emotionally smart, gem of a book.The Danish Wayoffers a shining alternative to high-stress modern parenting, and families from New Delhi to New York will shout with joy. Forget the pursuit of happiness, this book gets to the authentic roots of family happiness. I guess I'm Danish. --Heather Shumaker, author ofIt's OK Not to ShareandIt's OK to Go Up the Slide "Everyone around the globe can gain something from the valuable wisdom found in this book. Concepts such as reframing and hygge prove useful to families from all cultures. It's wonderful to see that Danish parenting has so much in common with Positive Parenting! I highly recommend this book!" --Rebecca Eanes, author of Positive Parenting: An Essential Guide "With a profound understanding of the positive impact that empathy and connectedness bring to parenting,The Danish Wayempowers parents across the globe to check their own default settings and consider the whole child. Their take on the importance of free play is a breath of fresh air in a time when young children are over-scheduled and under stress. Highly recommended for parents everywhere." --Katie Hurley, LCSW, author ofThe Happy Kid Handbook "Having studied the the reasons behind the Danish happiness model for years. I found this book to be a clear-sighted, very useful and smart guide on how to improve your own happiness level as a parent and how to foster happier children the Danish way. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to give themselves and/or their children the best chances of a happy life." --Malene Rydahl, keynote speaker and Goodwill ambassador of CopenhagenI believe in free play. I read this amazing parenting book called The Danish Way of Parenting, which talks so much about free play and how it really develops their mind."--Kristen Bell, on Parents.com About the AuthorJessica Alexanderis an American columnist and mom living in Europe, with her Danish husband and kids.Iben Dissing Sandahl is a licensed psychotherapist and family counselor working for many years in her private practice outside Copenhagen, Denmark.Learn more at: thedanishway.com.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Play Authenticity Reframing Empathy No Ultimatums Togetherness and Hygge (Coziness) Whats the Secret to Danish Happiness? Denmark, a small country in the north of Europe famous for Hans Christian Andersens fairy tale The Little Mermaid, has been voted as having the happiest people in the world by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) almost every year since 1973. 1973! Thats more than forty years of consistently being voted the happiest people in the world! If you stop to think about that for a second, its a staggering accomplishment. Even the new World Happiness Report that was recently launched by the United Nations has seen Denmark top the list every year since its inception. What is the secret to their consistent success? Countless articles and studies have been devoted to solving this mystery. Denmark? Why Denmark? 60 Minutes did a report on it called The Pursuit of Happiness; Oprah did a show on it, Why Are the Danes So Happy? and the conclusions are always conveniently inconclusive. Is it the size of their social system, their houses, or their government? It cant be the high taxes or the cold, dark winters, so what gives? The United States, on the other hand, the country with the pursuit of happiness built into its Declaration of Independence, isnt even in the top ten. Its barely in the top twenty, closer to number seventeen after Mexico. Despite having an entire field of psychology devoted to happiness and an endless sea of self- help books instructing us on how to attain this elusive state, we arent really that happy. Why is that? And moreover, why are the Danes so content? After many years of research, we think we have finally uncovered the secret of why the Danes are so happy. And the answer, quite simply, is in their upbringing. The Danish philosophy behind parenting and their way of raising children yields some pretty powerful results: resilient, emotionally secure, happy kids who turn into resilient, emotionally secure, happy adults who then repeat this powerful parenting style with their own kids. The legacy repeats itself, and we get a society that tops the happiness charts for more than forty years in a row. Through this amazing journey of discovery, we have decided to share this knowledge about the Danish Way of parenting with you. In this step- by- step guide, our goal is to help mothers and fathers who are about to embark on or have already begun one of the most challenging and extraordinary jobs in the world. Incorporating this method takes practice, patience, resolve, and awareness, but the outcome is well worth the work. Remember that this is your legacy. If your goal is to raise the happiest people in the world, then please read on. The real secret of the Danes success is inside. Jessicas Story When my friends heard that I had cowritten a parenting book, they all laughed. You, the most non maternal woman we know, cowrote a parenting book? The irony is, it was precisely my lack of natural mothering skills that made me so interested in the Danish Way in the first place. It had changed my life so profoundly that I knew if it could help me, it could definitely help others. You see, I wasnt born with all those innate nurturing mother skills supposedly all women are born with. I dont have a problem admitting it. I wasnt a kid person. I didnt even like kids that much, if I am to be completely honest. I became a mom because thats what people do. So you can imagine my deep- seated fear when I got pregnant and thought, How in the world am I going to do this? Surely I am going to be a terrible mom! And so I got busy reading every parenting book I could get my hands on. I read a lot. I learned a lot. But still, the fear remained. To my good fortune, I was married to a Dane. For more than eight years I had been exposed to the Danish culture, and one thing I noticed was that they were clearly doing something right with their children. Overall, I consistently observed happy, calm, well-behaved kids, and I wondered what their secret was. But there was no parenting book I could find on the subject. When I finally became a mother, I found myself doing the only natural thing for me, which was to ask my Danish friends and family for every single answer to every single question I had. From breast- feeding to discipline to education, I preferred their off- the-cuff answers to all the books I had on my shelf. Through this journey, I discovered a philosophy of raising children that opened my eyes and changed my life completely. My good friend Iben and I discussed the idea. Iben is a Danish psychotherapist with many years of experience working with families and children, and together we asked the question, Does a Danish way of parenting exist? To her knowledge, it didnt. We looked high and low for some literature on the subject, but there was nothing. In all her years working in the Danish school system and being a family psychotherapist, she had never heard of a Danish Way. She knew all the academic theories and the research on parenting practices, many of which she used in her family life on a daily basis, but could there be a distinctive parenting style embedded in her very own culture that she hadnt seen? A Pattern Emerges The more we talked about it, the more it became clear that there was indeed a Danish parenting philosophy, but it was woven so tightly into the fabric of daily life and Danish culture that it wasnt immediately visible to those of us in the midst of it. The more we looked at it, the more the pattern emerged from the fabric. And there it was, laid out before us: The Danish Way of Parenting. The Danish Way is our theory based on our more than thirteen years of experience, research, supporting studies, and facts about Danish culture and daily life. Iben is an expert in her field, bringing professional insight as well as many supporting studies and cultural examples, along with her personal experience. We have both learned so much along this journey, having researched and conducted extensive interviews with parents, psychologists, and teachers regarding the Danish school system. The collaboration was wholly equal, and all the supporting studies can be found in the back of the book. We would like to clarify that this is not a political statement, nor is it a book about living in Denmark. It is a parenting theory, which we believe is one of the leading factors as to why the Danes are voted so consistently happy. Happy kids grow up to be happy adults who raise happy kids, and so on. Happy kids grow up to be happy adults who raise happy kids, and so on. We also know that parenting style is not the only reason the Danes are happy. We know there are many factors contributing to their happiness and that there are certainly unhappy people living there as well. Denmark is not utopia, and surely it has its own internal matters to deal with, as does every country. Nor is this book in any way meant to be disparaging to the U.S. This is an enormous country, and the facts and observations we state in the book are generalizations. Jessica, personally, is very proud to be American and loves her country dearly. She has simply had the opportunity to see the world with a very different pair of glasses onthrough Danish lenses, if you willand it has changed her whole perspective on life. We would like to offer you these glasses to put on for yourself and see what you think when you look through them. If this book helps you see things differently, then, for us, it has been a success. You might not go from the most non maternal person to a happier parent and better human being, as Jessica has, but we hope the changes will be positive ones. And we hope you will enjoy the journey. what is the best book ever The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
69 of 69 people found the following review helpful. Not a "Crime and Punishment" novelBy KEFAn upfront confession: When we want to change something about ourselves, say our style of parenting, it's often very difficult to do with nothing more than desire. I've found, however, that if I can see the issue differently it often becomes much easier to operate differently, even when the circumstances are the same.The Danish Way of Parenting encourages us to take a long view in children's development, and this can allow us to see our role as parents in a new way. For example, the authors claim that in Denmark there is no such thing as the "Terrible Twos." Of course two-year-olds in Denmark are not some placid freaks of nature, but the Danes call this step in children's development the "Boundary Age," and don't see it as something to dread or get upset about. In other words, while we in US tend to see a two-year old at a defiant, willful stage that we must deal with by establishing our authority, the Danes see this age as the time when children start growing and experimenting to find out about the world and their abilities. Part of that experimentation involves the child learning where his boundaries are. No one argues that the child should get his way through temper tantrums, but it's easier not to overreact to children's behavior if we don't frame it as a direct challenge to our authority, but instead see it as an attempt to find out where their boundaries are.Much of the Danish way to parent seems to depend more on both parents being more involved in hands on parenting than we usually see in the United States. And their culture seems to encourage more interaction with the extended family than ours does, with their socializing appearing to be more child centered than ours. Those sorts of conditions require a larger number of people being on the same page to support children, and may not be useful as a model here. But the general way Danes see children's development and their relationship to their children might shed a lot of light on child rearing practices we can, and perhaps should, change.130 of 140 people found the following review helpful. Excellent Overall, with a couple of reservationsBy Jessica C.This was overall a really good parenting book--easy, quick read, and I loved--LOVED-- the first few chapters on teaching empathy, reframing, play and authenticity and should be read by every human being as a requirement for life, not just for parenting, but for looking at life in a different more positive and an understanding way. But I don't give a 5 star for a couple of reasons.First, some of the way that she writes is a little bit annoying at times. She keeps reminding the reader that they are the happiest people so everything they do must be right. I remember watching a documentary or something on the fact that Danes are the happiest people in the world, and when several Danes were told that by the interviewer, they responded first with surprise and then said that the reason was probably because they had low expectations. It is nonetheless a good read and this little bit was easy to skim over.The second reason I cannot give it 5 stars is that the chapter on no ultimatums sort of lost me. I wish I would have skipped it, actually, because it tainted how much I loved the rest of the book. She seems to assume that all children act rationally and can be reasoned with all the time and if you parent them with authority you will eventually resort to what she seems to consider the American thing to do i.e. to parent with "fear" and beat your children or scream at them. Balderdash, all. You can parent with authority and at the same time respect them, not beat your kids or make them fear you.Ultimately, it is worth the read and I will recommend it to friends. You might like the no ultimatums parenting--it might work for your parenting style and you might have extremely reasonable kids, or if you think it might annoy you and ruin the book for you, tear that chapter out and read a discipline book by Ray Guarendi.5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Best parenting book!By JoshuaThis is such an excellent book! I can't stop talking about it. And it's more then just a parenting book I think too! Great things that all people can apply! I wish everyone would read this book!