‘Danish Secret to Happy Kids’ reveals tips to make children more independent — and it doesn’t involve homework

When Becca and Jordan Itkowitz moved back to La Grange, Illinois, after three years in Denmark with their two sons, Evan, 8, and Max, 10, they experienced culture shock.

Soon after moving stateside in 2017, Becca received a call from school that Max had thrown a snowball during recess.

“Not at anyone, mind you,” Becca told The Post. “Just throwing a snowball because it’s fun and he’s a kid. I laughed and agreed to talk to him about American school rules and how snow can be perceived as a ‘weapon.'”

Max was also chastised for picking up a stick. “In Denmark, picking up sticks was always to build a fort or just play,” she said.

That stood in stark contrast to what they had experienced in Denmark, where children in kindergarten are given — by American norms — enormous latitude.

“They have the opportunity to play in the rain, cook over fires and are able to take safe and age-appropriate risks,” Becca explained.

Danish people can teach us quite a bit about raising children, according to British journalist Helen Russell, especially since the country has consistently been voted one of the happiest in the world since the 1970s.

New alphabet song has parents totally confused about their ABCs: ‘Didn’t all of us turn out fine?’

Currently living in Denmark with her husband and three boys, she explored neighboring Nordic nations’ unique parenting styles — a far cry from American tiger moms and helicopter parents — in her book, “ The Danish Secret to Happy Kids .”

To start, there’s “less pressure on academics,” Russell told The Post.

“You’re not starting school until the age of 6 (in Demark, 7 in Finland),” she explained, adding that there is a huge emphasis on “playing.”

“Play is so valued,” she said. “Now, there’s so much research showing how important it is, how actually learning through play is still so valuable. And in the Nordic countries, that’s kind of celebrated.”

Even the school experience is markedly different than the US educational system.

“There’s no homework till around the age of 11,” she said. “Usually there’s not tests until much later,” around the age of 16.

Russell said that inclement weather is no excuse for staying inside, sharing that there is an old adage: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.”

“The more I read books to my kids from the US or the UK, they’re all, like, ‘And the kids couldn’t go out to play because it was raining.’ And that just doesn’t happen here,” she divulged. “You get chucked out no matter what.”

Dear Abby: Do I tell my kids about their cheating dad’s affairs?

Along with improving mental health, Russell found that “time outside helps to develop mastery.”

“You’re getting stronger, more confident, more robust physically,” Russell said. “We’ve read enough lifestyle pieces to see that we feel better from it, but somehow we’re not giving that to our kids in the US, in the UK.”

And all that outside play must be doing something right: Denmark consistently tops the World Happiness Report , which rates people’s happiness from 130 countries and takes into account life expectancy, the DGP and social support.

Russell also remarked that Nordic kids are not expected to go through childhood without some bruises and broken limbs.

“I would regularly pick up my kids with some scrapes,” she shared, adding that oftentimes it had come from some physical activity like climbing a tree.

However, she astutely noted that this laissez-faire attitude is a “massive privilege of having tax-funded health care so that a broken arm is not a medical bankruptcy. It’s just a broken arm.”

Russell said it’s not like Danish parents want their children to get hurt; there is instead an attitude that parents are harming their kids “if we do not let them have adventurous, risky play.”

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR MORNING REPORT NEWSLETTER

“They think that giving kids these experiences and letting them stretch themselves, like being outside in all weathers, helps them to develop kind of confidence and to be more resilient.”

Sean McEvoy, who lived in Denmark for seven years from 2017 to 2023 with his wife, Amy, and three sons, said they also noticed the differences immediately.

“Three-year-olds were like whittling with sharp knives and, like, tending and starting fires,” he told The Post. “And then, you’d be, like, ‘Where did that 3-year-old go?’ and then you would look up and they’d be in like the tallest branches of the tree, and the parents were either cooking their own sausages or drinking a beer or just kind of around but not, like, hovering over the toddlers to make sure that they didn’t like come to some terrible calamity.”

McEvoy said he also realized that there is a huge difference in the way Danes approach education.

“We lived in New York City for a very long time, and the culture around school and education and academics was extremely hands-on,” he said. “What we found in Denmark, especially at younger ages, is the Danish sort of philosophy of education is children need to learn to love learning before they’re going to be ready to be tested on anything.”

He admitted that it took some getting used to as they would ask one of their sons what he had learned at school, “and he would reach in his pocket and pull out stones and dead bugs and be, like, ‘I found all of these and we made a fire.'”

Their concerns grew when they would visit stateside family and cousins their son’s age would be reading. However, McEvoy explained that “in six months, it was like a switch flipped, and all of a sudden he was reading and reading at a very high level.”

“I think their philosophy is, like, ‘Don’t do it until they’re ready, but get them ready very gradually. Don’t burn them out on desk learning early like getting them to a point where they’re ready to really take on more rigorous academics.’

“But don’t do it too early, or you’ll turn them away and bore them.”

For the latest in lifestyle, top headlines, breaking news and more, visit nypost.com/lifestyle/