In Norway, kids nap outside even in sub-zero temperatures
In Norway, childhood is very institutionalized. When a kid turns 1 year old, he or she starts going to Barnehage (Norwegian for “children’s garden”), which is basically state-subsidized daycare. Parents pay a few hundred dollars a month and their kids are taken care of from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Toddlers spend a ton of time outside at Barnehage, even in extremely cold temperatures. It’s not uncommon to see kids bundled up outside during a Scandinavian winter, taking a nap in their strollers.
Vietnamese moms train their babies to pee on command
Here’s a good one. In Vietnam, parents train their babies to pee on command. Kind of like Pavlov with his salivating dogs. Except this is moms with peeing babies. The Chinese do it too apparently. Parents start by noticing when their baby starts peeing and making a little whistle sound. Soon enough, the baby starts to associate the whistle with peeing and voila!
Think this sounds a little odd? Or a little like someone is conflating a kid with a pet Schnauzer? Well, researchers say Vietnamese babies are usually out of diapers by nine months. What do you think now?
Traditionally, Kisii people in Kenya avoid looking their babies in the eye
Kisii, or Gussii, moms in Kenya carry their babies everywhere, but they don’t indulge a baby’s cooing. Rather when their babies start babbling, moms avert their eyes. It’s likely to sound harsh to a Western sensibility, but within the context of Kisii culture, it makes more sense. Eye contact is an act bestowed with a lot of power. It’s like saying, “you’re in charge,” which isn’t the message parents want to send their kids. Researchers say Kisii kids are less attention-seeking as a result, so that’s something.
Danish parents leave their kids on the curb while they go shopping
In Denmark, writes Mei-Ling Hopgood in “How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm,” “children are frequently left outside to get frisk luft, or fresh air — something parents think is essential for health and hearty development — while caregivers dine and shop.”
As you might imagine, this idea sends shivers down the spines of many parents in the United States. In New York, a couple (one of whom was Danish) was arrested for leaving their child outside a BBQ restaurant while they went inside to eat. ‘‘I was just in Denmark and that’s exactly what they do,’’ Mariom Adler, a New Yorker out walking with her 2 1/2-year-old son, told the New York Times. ‘‘We would see babies all over unattended. We were stunned, frankly. But Denmark also struck us as exceptionally civilized.’’
In the Polynesian Islands, children take care of children
We’re not talking any old big brother babysitting little sister here. We’re talking organized kid collective.
Hopgood writes in her book that adults take the lead on caring for babies in Polynesia, but as soon as a child can walk, he or she is turned over to the care of other children. “Preschool-aged children learned to calm babies,” she wrote, “and toddlers became self-reliant because they were taught that that was the only way they could hang out with the big kids.”
Jane and James Ritchie, a husband and wife anthropology team, observed a similar phenomenon over decades in New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands. But they don’t think it would fly in the United States. “Indeed in Western societies, the degree of child caretaking that seems to apply in most of Polynesia would probably be regarded as child neglect and viewed with some horror,” they wrote in “Growing Up in Polynesia.”
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