in sweden kids are free to swing and climb and break their arms

I took my kids to a renovated playground on Sunday morning, and two things stood out, other than the seeping chill of early October in Sweden:  the four dads and the fact that my daughter could have easily broken her arm.

I loved both.

I recently got a request from a Canadian journalist who wanted to find a park where dads meet.  I couldn’t answer it because that encompasses every park in Stockholm.  And there is no special time either – just when kids play.  So it was no surprise that there were three other dads and me at the playground, and it was no surprise that we ignored each other (ahhh, Sweden).

But the new playground equipment was amazing – this huge climbing thing, with rope steps and balancing paths 9 feet off the ground.  There are sliding poles that fall 10 feet and which my daughter refused to acknowledge (No!  This is where you jump!)

She is 4.  She is really too young for this playground, but her preschool comes here and she is a master of the jungle gym.

And then there are the swings.  Brand new swings.

I compare this with the US, where swings are disappearing, where anything fun and challenging is disappearing.  From an editorial from Investor’s Business Daily (not a socialist mouthpiece by any means):

Fearing lawsuits over injuries, a West Virginia county is removing swing sets from elementary schools. A minor, local issue? No. America’s litigious society has changed the way kids play …

A Massachusetts elementary school has told students they can’t play tag. One Boston school forbids handstands while another in Needham, Mass., doesn’t allow students to hang upside down from the monkey bars. A pool in Hazleton, Pa., closed some years ago after a swimmer sued for $100,000 because he cut his foot running and jumping into the pool, though he’d been warned not to.

“There is nothing left in playgrounds that would attract the interest of a child over the age of four,” Philip K. Howard, lawyer and author, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2008.

I fear that I oversell Sweden sometimes.  It is not paradise.  There are huge downsides to living here.  But, paradoxically, what the socialist Swedes have that supposedly so independent Americans lack is this:  common sense and a sense of personal responsibility.

As a country, Sweden takes care of people where they truly need it (as babies, by allowing parents to stay at home) and then does not overprotect them when they do not need it (as kids, who are allowed to jump off swings, and even break their arms).

I love that.  My kid feels safe because I got to be home with her.  And she can use that safety to play and push herself and find her boundaries.

And sure I cringe and stand beneath her and nag her to be careful.

But better that than my and the kids staring at an empty field.

home with baby – the first days

Yesterday was the true Day One of my parental leave, the first day that NK went to daycare and that E headed off to study. Yep, just me and my boy and the same burning, panicky question I had the first day of my previous parental leave: How the hell will I get this kid to sleep?

Now, I put Baby B to sleep all the time, but it has gotten harder and harder, both to accomplish and on my back (I still have to “shush” him).

So there we were, both still jet lagged, and me expecting to get out a bit. But the boy wasn’t having it, grumpy and crying. So I tried to put him to sleep, and it has never gone so wrong.

About 15 minutes later, I am standing there watching him roll on the floor in absolute despair thinking that I totally misread that situation. Great job on the first day. That type of thing. I tried to dress him, feed him, play with him. Nothing. I got the stroller ready. Nothing.

So I tried to put him to sleep again. Took 15 seconds.

Sigh.

The rest of the day was short, actually. Baby B and I went to the mall and shopped and played at the library. E came home to be with him so I picked NK up from daycare on my own. Then we all did the family thing for the whole afternoon, which we have done for weeks, months, years at this point (so we decided to take more alone space, even within the apartment. I broke out and immediately went and sewed three buttons on my winter coat. It was crazy.)

Then today, I vowed to stay home and see if the baby crashed. He did not. Hours and hours passed and he was awake and happy. We played put the top back on the baby food jar for at least an hour (strangely, it lost its appeal for me after 45 minutes).

Finally he slept late and now I am stuck inside hopping back and forth from computer to baby, since he does not sleep for more than 40 minutes on his own.

Off to nap besides him.

high grass, hard sand and bird bones – stockholm in the summer

This is why we go to the country – to avoid the desert that is Stockholm in the summer. Last summer, on paternity leave with a two-year-old, we roamed playground to playground hunting for kids, any kids. Just to hear the sound of voices and not the creaking of a long-unused swing.

So we joined the exodus to the forest. We came back to town for a few days, and NK needed to play. She missed the slides and the swings. So I took her to one of our regular spots – a daycare that is quite popular on weekends and holidays with regular folk.

It looked as if no one had played there in decades, a sight common in many less-trafficked American playgrounds but not here in stroller-choked Stockholm. The grass was high and the flowers choked with weeds. The sandbox was caked over by rain, a lone toy truck half-buried like something out of Planet of the Apes.

NK ran over to climb a ladder, and then I saw it, the dead bird. Well, the bones of a dead bird. In the middle of the playground, the bird had been dead long enough for only the bones and a few feathers to remain.

I felt alone.

Then NK and I made sand cakes and played in the little log house. And I felt better.

the zen of the sandbox

Why do more parents not like the sandbox?

I do not know. I see them sitting up on benches, and I want to invite them down.

Come, I want to say. Come down with me. Take a shovel. Take a plastic sea horse. Take a rake.

Dig. Fill a bucket. Make a sand sea horse. Watch your toddler destroy it with glee.

I lose myself in the sandbox (parents in sweden spend much time in parks and in sandboxes, more than in america, I think. it has to do with city neighborhoods and sprawling suburbs, I think). Or the slide. Or on the swings (sometimes my daughter insists on pushing me … really).

I could write a self-help book about this.

Just remember to share. And do not destroy the toddler’s sea horse unless you know she will laugh (a calculated risk, I know).