16 ms·

The babies who nap in sub-zero temperatures

• voidbox 14y ago
  Next: Kids are outside in -15C wearing only jackets!
  • balabaster 14y ago
    My kids routinely go outside in sub-zero temperatures with just sweaters on. I can't keep clothes on them for love nor money... every time I turn around they're missing socks and shoes. When I try and put a coat on them they're like "but we wanna be freezing"... I swear, kids are born without pain or cold receptors. Insane really.
• rayiner 14y ago
  My baby loves the cold (must be because she was born in Chicago in winter...) The thing that frightens me about the article isn't the leaving the baby outside in the cold, but the leaving the baby out where it could be stolen...
  • taylorlb 14y ago
    My relatives keep mentioning the possibility of my son being stolen, which seems absurd to me. I was very curious what the real odds of your child being stolen by a stranger in the US are. EDIT: The post motivated me to do some quick Googling... one article I found said there are roughly 40 children abducted by strangers or slight acquaintances in the US annually which would make your child "700 times more likely to get into Harvard than to be the victim of such an abduction".
    • delinka 14y ago
      Keep in mind the general state of fear in the US. If a danger even exists, it's cause for concern. Unless it involves an automobile. --d, US Citizen
      • lostlogin 14y ago
        There are few others besides the car that American citizens seem (italics would be ideal here) blinkered to. It seems obvious to an outsider - who is possibly indoctrinated the polar opposite way. however the topics are all so inflammatory that even HN can get uncivil.
        • youngerdryas 14y ago
          You can italicize a word by adding an asterisk directly before and after the word without spaces.
          • lostlogin 14y ago
            Thanks.
        • yakiv 14y ago
          (I'm an American.) I'd be interested to hear what dangers Americans seem to be oblivious of.
          • lostlogin 14y ago
            Touchy ground! The two I had in mind were the lack of effective gun control and the problems associated with a lack of socialised healthcare. I would characterize these as both being partly due to an us/them 2 party government system, which encourages exclusion. I should add that New Zealand isn't free of gun issues, healthcare system problems or political parties playing BS games, its just they seem to pale compared to US paper headlines. I should note that prevailing views here on HN, are vastly different to those I notice in US papers and TV.
          • dalke 14y ago
            No matter the topic, some Americans will be worried about it. Still, the list might include: Many western countries have a state television service, funded by a TV fee or a special billing system. The goal is to have a news source which is (nominally) independent of the government and which is not beholden to advertisers. The US was once worried about this, but the FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Most of the citizens of the other western countries are agog at the US for insisting on privatized medical care. (As lostlogin also pointed out.) My experience in visiting Europe is that nationality and ethnicity are much more closely tied. A second generation Arab in France or Turk in Germany may still be considered a foreigner. Apparently we are more oblivious to the need to regard the grandchildren of immigrants as still untrustworthy. (At the very least, xenophobia in Europe feels different than in the US.) GMO restrictions are much, much higher in Europe than the US. Apparently Europeans believe in this concept of "freedom of choice to the farmers and consumers", and insist that GMO foods be labeled as such, while the US does not require that labeling. Privacy laws are higher in Europe, in part because of strong memories of how "World War II-era fascist governments and post-War Communist regimes" used that information. Someone from Bhutan might say that the US and most other countries are too interested in their country's Gross Domestic Product and not in Gross Domestic Happiness.
    • avar 14y ago
      Here are some statistics about it: http://www.ncmec.org/en_US/documents/InfantAbductionStats.pdf http://www.ncmec.org/en_US/documents/InfantAbductionStats.pd... The kid is probably more likely to be struck by lightning while you're walking around in the park on an overcast day than being abducted by strangers. But parents of newborns are rarely sensible about their risk assessment, and obsess over amazingly unlikely scenarios while forgetting about the plausible and common ones.
      • taylorlb 14y ago
        I've really enjoyed talking to my family and strangers about their irrational fears that exist around children. It's incredibly fascinating to me. That said, I have been totally terrified to board an airplane for the last 3 years (use to fly once a month) so I don't have much of a leg to stand on.
      • rayiner 14y ago
        Risk analysis isn't just about probability. It's about the cost of prevention relative to the probability of a bad outcome multiplied by the cost of a bad outcome. Parents worry about children because the cost of losing a child is ruinously high to a parent. Meanwhile, little preventative measures like not leaving them outside are cheaper than putting them in little baby Faraday cages on cloudy days. Hence why parents worry about child abduction and not lightning strikes.
        • bjornsing 14y ago
          Baby Faraday cages, that's the best thing since sliced bread! :)
        • lostlogin 14y ago
          Not that long ago some friends were mid argument when we turned up. She was saying that, hypothetically, if she ended up in a river with her baby she would hold it up, save it, and drown if it required that to save it. Her husband was saying save yourself first, you're no good dead and if you drown, the baby drowns too. And they wouldn't shut up. I hadn't seen anything like it before, but now we have a child, and strange crap happens.
    • speeder 14y ago
      Depends on the country and how much the population is mixed. Yes, it may sound evil or anti-immigrant, but it does not matter where, if the location has people of uniform ethnic identity, they tend to treat everyone around them as distant cousins (and there are biological reasons for that) and some negative actions people don't feel like doing it. In places with lots of random ethinic identities mixed, leaving your baby outside is BAAAAAAD idea.
      • PavlovsCat 14y ago
        Nordic countries are just as diverse as the US.
        • speeder 14y ago
          I do not mean specifically the US. And Sweden is NOT diverse as US, Sweden has as the "biggest minority" the Finnish (that are not that different from Swedes), any other population is very small except on some specific cities. US has a great population of people from several backgrounds. Also the same is in my country (Brazil). Here, I see people being much more lax with their security when everyone near them are of the same ethnic background, be it white, black, native american, whatever. It is just that everyone is born to not trust strangers, foreigners, etc... And "race" is a very quick way to assess that. Not that I think we should go hating each other or anything like that, but it is how it works, and it is very visible, the more mixed a place is, the less people trust each other, with some specific exceptions (ie: places that are truly cosmopolitan like Universities or some workplace cities).
          • vinkelhake 14y ago
            The Finnish minority is followed closely by immigrants from former Yugoslavia (166k vs 155k). Sweden has accepted a large number of refugees from Iraq & Iran, together they outnumber the Fins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
          • guylhem 14y ago
            As shocking as it may sound, I noticed the same thing in the caribbean where population is very mixed. It's not about racism - it's more as if a shared group identity encouraged cooperative behaviour. Even weirder - there seems to be a trigger effect : until the non visible minority reaches 5% the cooperative behaviour keeps working. Funny thing - it seems to works even if you account your own ethnicity - i.e. when you are in the <5% you will get more cooperation by people with a different ethnicity than you !! Cross the 5% mark and it won't work as well - apparently even with people of the same ethnicity as you. Weird. Some may call that parochialism. I find that interesting. I've been quite puzzled by this (it contradicts all the mainstream thoughts about diversity) and I would love to know more about such issues (scientific research - can anyone with a sociology background give more details about that?)
    • antiterra 14y ago
      That kind of statistical hand waving is irritating. First, it's 40 abductions where parents are characterized as being paranoid about their child being kidnapped. The statistic says nothing about how leaving your kid on a sidewalk might affect the chances of abduction. Your chances of getting hit by lightning aren't as slim if you're a golfer. Also, 700x more likely to get into Harvard as an applicant or just a US born child? Does that include post-graduate Harvard institutions? How is 'getting into Harvard' a useful benchmark for acceptable risk?
      • rz2k 14y ago
        Clearly leaving a child unattended is going to have an effect, and so are many other factors going to have an effect on admission to Harvard. Furthermore, the hand waving statistics are off by an order of magnitude as far as I can tell. 40 * 700 = 28,000, but the cohort of births in a given year result in a student body closer to 2,800 than 28,000.
        • antiterra 14y ago
          It probably came from comparing accept percentage of Harvard (6% now but 7% a couple years ago) with a kidnap chance calculated for the whole of children born in the US. Of course applicants are already a selected subset and not representative of all candidates born in the same year. It's a pretty useless comparison. e.g. 40 kidnaps per year for 10 years = 400. 400 * 700 'times more likely' = 280,000. Divide that by 4mil children born in a year to get 7%.
  • jeremyarussell 14y ago
    I can't say for certain since I don't live there, but a cursory search for baby kidnappings in Sweden pulled up a famous guy and that baby was stolen from a crib. Baby kidnapping isn't an issue for them, otherwise I imagine they would not be leaving their kids outside. It's like if no one steals stuff, you don't have to always keep your door locked.
  • plehoux 14y ago
    We personally have a closed garden (Canada), so we don't have to worry about this. In Europe, most people have closed garden.
    • asmosoinio 14y ago
      > In Europe, most people have closed garden. Do you have any statistics evidence to back that up? As a European, I disagree.
      • dalke 14y ago
        In Canada, they think all Europeans are the same. :) I've noticed that England tends to have more walled gardens and restricted access than where I've lived in Sweden. Then again, Sweden's right of public access is also stronger than England's right to roam.
  • TamDenholm 14y ago
    This is the direct result of the news. The news reports things like child molesters and terrorists when your child is far more likely to be hit by a car or something. I'm sure theres a name for this kind of thing. I've always found the following saying a good rule to live by. "Theres no truth in the news and no news in the truth."
  • ry0ohki 14y ago
    That was my favorite takeaway from the article, that there is not the irrational paranoia of child kidnapping that exists here in the US. I mean what would someone do with a stolen child anyway? Unless you are rich there is little odds of ransom, and the risk/reward of selling or keeping the child for your own seems high. If people really wanted to steal babies, they would do so at gunpoint as well, which I've never heard of happening.
    • pyre 14y ago
      There are instances of people stealing babies out of maternity wards. Sometimes this people just want to steal the baby just to raise it as their own. They want a child, and the easiest way seems to be stealing someone else's for whatever reason (e.g. maybe they are infertile).
    • CrazedGeek 14y ago
      I believe one of the common fears is pedophilia.
    • khebbie 14y ago
      Hi from Denmark here - the neigbour country to sweden. Where we do the excact same thing... Anyway there was a danish woman who moved to USA once and left her kid outside a cafe while she was inside. I think she was arrested or something. It made a great deal of fuss in Denmark, since no one steals kids here (of course thats an understatement - probaly it has happend)
  • peterwwillis 14y ago
    What would someone even want with a baby anyway? - Lazy, won't go look for a job. - Loud and obnoxious. - Not very tasty, smells bad. - Black market? Good luck finding a fence. - Sexual deviant? They don't go for babies. Adults dressed as babies, maybe. - Crazy person? Okay, that's in the realm of possibility, just because you don't know how they'll behave. But that's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a probability. I get that parents have irrational fear and want to protect their kids. And if the risk isn't worth it, yeah, don't put them outside. But worst case you can crack open a window.
  • ednc 14y ago
    That was the first thing I thought too. But then I realized maybe this is more of a fear (rational or not) for those of us in the US. However, leaving the strollers that close to a road (as in one of the photos) just seems like a bad idea no matter where you are.
  • acheron 14y ago
    If you wanted a child to be abducted by a stranger, you'd have to leave him alone for something like 7000 years on average before it happened. Almost every "child abduction" report is actually a custody dispute. Fearing that your child will be stolen by a stranger is ludicrous. I recommend reading the "Free Range Kids" blog/book, by the way. It may help you see past the media distortions.
    • ptaipale 14y ago
      Fearing that your child will be stolen by a stranger is ludicrous. Well, almost. I remember one case in Finland where a stranger took a baby who was sleeping in a pram outside. It was such an uncommon occurrence that it made national news, although the episode took only a few minutes and no one was harmed. Touching someone else's baby who is sleeping out is just a no. (Looking at it to make sure it's well is OK, of course). But some fear about this is understandable. Parents worry about everything, sometimes not very rationally. Mostly this is about trust within society. Finland is still very homogeneous, people share the same values, and the level of trust among citizens is high.
• plehoux 14y ago
  Funny to read this since me and my girlfriend do the same with our baby in Quebec city, Canada. Its all about good cloths and making sure the hands, feet and head stay warm. You would be amaze by the quality of cloths and stroller our baby has to face the ever changing Quebec temperature, she got a cold baby sleeping bags, a bear fur cover, and many different cloths, ...
  • mmastrac 14y ago
    We used to take our kid out in the cold when he a had a cough (Alberta). The cold air definitely helps with breathing. BTW, quick English tip: you should use "clothes" instead of "cloths" for 'vêtements'.
• ph0rque 14y ago
  The same sentiment exists in Russia.
  • bearmf 14y ago
    Napping on balconies is indeed popular. But few people would leave a stroller with a baby on the street in a Russian city.
    • ph0rque 14y ago
      True... I was referring to the concept of babies sleeping in the cold.
• gdilla 14y ago
  Didn't know about the napping. at the pre-school we have in Ottawa, children go outside to play everyday unless it's colder than -15C.
  • randlet 14y ago
    I'm in Ottawa too and our daughter will often nap in her stroller at temperatures of -10C or more while we're out for a walk. I probably wouldn't specifically stick her outside for a nap but in general the cold (or indeed sleeping in the cold) is no big deal for kids as long as they're dressed well.
  • DavidAdams 14y ago
    We live in the snowy mountain town of Park City, Utah and our kids have a long recess break during school where they play outside no matter how cold and snowy it is. The only time they have to stay inside if if it's warm enough to rain. So there are places in the US where people aren't neurotic about kids being cold. But we're big into winter sports and being outside here.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
    You'll probably find that in most cold places. Here in Minnesota, the preschool and kindergarten I'm familiar with have the kids play outside at recess at least 2x a day unless the temperature is below 0F (I think; it might be -10F). Considering that the temp here can stay below freezing essentially continuously from mid-December to early March, it makes sense. Otherwise the kids would never get to play outside for months.
• calinet6 14y ago
  "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing." Love that. Growing up with Patagonia clothes (family works there) we had constant proof. Skiing in sub-zero temperatures was always fine for us, just put on more layers. Meanwhile everyone around us was freezing their hands off. The other secret is that gloves are always cold because the fingers are separated; wear mittens instead.
  • pkulak 14y ago
    Exactly. I commute to work by bike, and though it doesn't get too cold here, it does rain a lot, so a large fraction of my rides are in the low 40s/high 30s and rain. Most people do everything they can to avoid going out it the rain, but if you wear the proper gear it's great.
    • davidw 14y ago
      I grew up in Oregon, and did a lot of riding in weather like that. With proper gear, you stay dry and warm about an hour, and then you start getting wet and cold anyway, because with enough rain, it seeps through pretty much anything. 5 degrees C and rain is way worse than snow and -5C for staying outdoors for long periods of time.
      • rcthompson 14y ago
        There's a saying among sailors: "Waterproof means that once the water gets in, it can't get out again."
        • jlgreco 14y ago
          This is the thought I have about chilly/damp weather. If the extent of your time outside is going from one building to another then (at least until the temperature actually drops far enough to become dangerous), less clothing is better. If it's in the mid-30s and slightly drizzling outside, but it's only a 20 minute walk to work, then a t-shirt and jeans are the way to go. The instant you step into a building you'll be warm and dry as a bone while everyone else will be damp and chilled for some time. My jacket only goes on if I perceive a hypothermia risk, and gloves only get used if I think frostbite might become a risk.
• sonabinu 14y ago
  yep, a little fresh air never hurts anyone - true in Minnesota !!!
• tokenadult 14y ago
  This is very funny for someone who lives in Minnesota. My wife grew up in Taiwan, and didn't see snow for the first time until she was twenty-one years old. When we moved to Minnesota a year after we were married over in Taiwan, she then got BIG TIME acquainted with snow, as we moved in February (about twenty-eight years ago today, now that I think of it). Our four children all pile outside in Minnesota winter weather with very minimal clothing on--indoor wear even when there is snow on the ground, and light jackets even when the temperature is well below freezing. My wife spent years being horrified at seeing her half-Taiwanese children going out lightly dressed in temperatures that were unimaginable to her when she was growing up, while I just smiled and said, "Our children are just reflecting their Norwegian ancestry." Today we've all learned to deal with the cold. My wife and I had a very enjoyable walk to the public library (one mile out, one mile back) yesterday, and I reflected that she has proved her adaptability by living so much of her life in weather that she never experienced at all in childhood. Personally, my second stay in Taiwan (1998-2001) seems to have permanently reset my body's thermostat, so much so that I NEVER feel hot anywhere in the United States, but now feel cold from time to time during winter in Minnesota. I'm probably more adapted to Taipei's semitropical climate now. But whatever the weather trade-offs, it's a delight to be outdoors, and I encourage our children and myself to get out of the house every day, in all seasons, wherever we live. When we do that, we have the children WITH us, because we want them to experience the different sights and sounds as we are on the move. I have not tried what the interesting submitted article specifically mentions, leaving a baby carriage (pram) outdoors while the baby is immobile. That sounds a bit radical to me, but apparently it works in its cultural context.
  • b0o 14y ago
    When I go to Taiwan in the winter, everyone's wearing thick coats, and its only about 50-70F, that's perfect weather in California, and there I was just in shorts and a t-shirt. I stopped and conformed to wearing at least a jacket after I kept getting odd looks everywhere I went, also my grandma kept yelling at me to wear more than just shorts. But I'd probably die in minnesota.
    • Retric 14y ago
• venomsnake 14y ago
  I was raised for the first three years of my life in a mountainous region. I have been put to sleep outside on the balcony every day. My mother told me that once my grandmother visited she was panicked to find out I was MIA, to which Mother calmly replied "the snow has made a drift out of the stroller again". What is left from all that is the habit to sleep every night on wide open window (winters usually I am single ... may have some correlation) and the inability to catch cold or flu for more than a day. Getting out of the warm bed on -17 C in the room is unique and highly recommended experience. So it is perfectly normal in lots of places in the world.
  • spoiledtechie 14y ago
    Seriously?? -17C? Have you done it? Im totally tempted to try...
    • venomsnake 14y ago
      Yeah ... although for almost half an hour before that I tried my best to convince myself that my bladder will cope just fine with pressures more suitable for combustion engine. I couldn't so I had to get up.
  • lostlogin 14y ago
    Is there a correlation between getting cold and catching a cold? I didn't think there was?
    • DavidAdams 14y ago
      The notion that getting cold causes illness is basically discredited, and in fact the reason that people get sick more during cold seasons is because they tend to stay indoors in closer contact with other people. That supports the nordic practice of having babies spend more time outside in fresh air even when it's cold.
      • petercooper 14y ago
        While the cold doesn't cause illness, it seems to have the potential to reduce immune response which can then result in more illness than if one hadn't gotten cold. From Wikipedia's page on the common cold: While colds are caused by viruses and not cold temperatures, there is some controversy over the role of body cooling as a risk factor for the common cold; the majority of the evidence suggests that it may result in greater susceptibility to infection. It may have been coincidental but I fell ill with colds a day or two after both times I got caught out in the cold with inadequate clothing this winter so I had to look this up.
• mandariini 14y ago
  Normal stuff in Finland, I have been sleeping outside when I was baby, so was my wife and our children sleep.
  • brunnsbe 14y ago
    Same her, and enjoyed it in the Finnish army as well (except for the survival camp without any blankets). Sleeping outside just makes you a lot more rested.
  • FrejNorling 14y ago
    http://www.wtftoday.eu/wp-content/2010/03/meanwhile1.jpg http://www.wtftoday.eu/wp-content/2010/03/meanwhile1.jpg
• dougk16 14y ago
  Leaving kids to nap outside a coffee shop in winter...I'd love to see the horror on people's faces in the US. Makes perfect sense to me, and I do this outside my house from time to time (secluded backyard of course), but I'm pretty sure child protective services would be hauling me off before I finished my latte.
  • laut 14y ago
    A Danish mother did that in New York: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/nyregion/toddler-left-outside-restaurant-is-returned-to-her-mother.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/nyregion/toddler-left-outs...
    • runejuhl 14y ago
      ..and that article is from 1997. I wonder what the response would've been today. Not better, I fear. Being a Dane myself I can't help smiling when seeing the parent story. I've got a 15 month old daughter, and throughout her entire life she's slept outside for daytime naps. Besides the random playing kid making too much noise, it's been completely uneventful. As a bonus, it means that you've got 1-2 hours of lovely silence indoors before hell breaks loose again...
  • willholloway 14y ago
    My brother in law is from Denmark and he told me about this practice many years ago as a way of relating to me just how neurotic and afraid parents are in America. I asked him why he moved here, and he said "America is where you get rich". I often meditate on whether he made a Faustian bargain or not. I spend a lot of time trying to understand the country I was born in. What's the right approach to this place? Is this a community or a marketplace? Newt Gingrich says marketplace, and that seems to be the opinion of the owners in this country. Is this place so far gone that a reasonable man will try to extract as many resources and expatriate his money and his family to Norther Europe? Hunter S. Thompson called America a Kingdom of Fear and then shot himself. Al Giordano tried to help through activism but concluded this country is psychopathic and moved to S. America. N. Europe beats the US on almost every quality of life metric. The towns, cities and trains in Europe I see on travel shows just look prettier than the sprawling pattern of chain restaurants and gas stations I see here. Sprawl bothers me on a very base and fundamental level. I overpay for crappy broadband and healthcare and my neighbors are irrationally afraid and half our tax dollars fund a bloated war machine. For the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, things kind of suck here. I've moved to some of the best cities this country has to offer and I found them lacking. In Austin and Boulder my girlfriend would be repeatedly harassed by schizophrenics let loose on the streets. I spent an hour conversing with a mentally unstable tattooed skin head in Austin armed with a claw hammer for protection from other homeless. If he is to be believed, and he seemed sincere, the police bound and gagged him to a chair and beat him for an hour while denying him his anti psychotics. The homeless in Austin know not to ask for much. In Boulder a street kid with dreads will sneer if you give him any less than a $5. The wretched of Austin just ask for quarters. They feel lucky that they aren't scheduled for lethal injection on felony murder charges. I was in Austin when the state executed a homeless kid that not even the prosecutor thought killed anyone. Four homeless kids take LSD. One snaps and kills two others. Texas executes the one kid that didn't hurt anyone on felony muder charges. The actual murderer was given a life sentence because he took a plea. The only silver lining I can take from all this is that because things suck and the US is a huge unified market, it is a great country to innovate and solve people's problems with technology. I used to spend a lot of thought time getting political or philosophical about my complaints above, I have come to realize if we are to be saved, our salvation will only come through technological innovation.
• OldSchool 14y ago
  Note that their sub-zero is Centigrade. Without wind, -5C or 23F is generally considered a nice winter day in most snowy places. From experience, I'd like to add that the myth of "once it's below -X it doesn't really matter" is just not true. -50F feels WAYYYY colder than -25F for example.
  • _delirium 14y ago
    That's one thing that's nice about coastal Nordic cities: much warmer than you might think, certainly compared to places like Eastern Europe or inland Canada. Even in February, the average daytime temperature still gets up to 31 F in Stockholm, 36 F in Copenhagen, and 29 F in Helsinki.
    • killerpopiller 14y ago
      interesting, but can't we use the metric system as well, plz?
      • _delirium 14y ago
        Eh, I tend to just go with whatever the person I reply to uses, or whatever majority usage in the audience I'm talking to is, which is why I used Fahrenheit here despite the fact that I live in Copenhagen and my own thermometers are in C. I'd use the metric system for scientific purposes, but for daily life I'm pretty comfortable with whatever mixture people want to use among such old friends as F, C, pints, oz, mL, cL, stones, kg, lbs, megabytes, mebibytes. They could hardly be weirder than the Danish numbering system!
        • mixmax 14y ago
          How is the Danish numbering system weird? I ask as a curious Dane.
          • _delirium 14y ago
            Well there isn't anything weird with the counting or mathematical usage, just the names for them seem not to use a typical decimal system. For example, in English and Norwegian, 75 and 82 are straightforward compounds of "7,5" and "8,2". In English, seventy-five, eighty-two; in Norwegian, syttifem, åttito. But in Danish, 70 isn't syv-something. Instead it seems it's halvfjerds, which sounds like half a fjerd, except a fjerd is not a number. ;-) And even more confusingly, 50 sounds awfully like half-60. From what I've read, it used to be "half four twenty" (halvfjerdsindstyve), where "half four" is an archaic way of saying 3½, so 3½ 20 = 70. Which later, I suppose, got contracted into halvfjerds. Admittedly you can just treat them like opaque symbols to memorize, so I doubt anyone thinks of 75 as "5 and 3½ x 20". But the Norwegian numbers seem more orderly...
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• ckarmann 14y ago
  My wife used to put our little one on the balcony when he was a few months old at around zero celsius temperature. I admit I was a bit scared by the idea. Not only that it was cold (but I could understand that good clothes help) but also that in case he was in distress or needing something, nobody was outside to hear. Eventually, I spent the nap times sitting next to him, reading a book until he wake up and nothing wrong ever happened. He always was a healthy kid and still is.
• mrgoldenbrown 14y ago
  Reminder to us wacky Americans and our archaic units - this article is talking about sub zero in Celsius, which is not quite as bad as sub zero in Fahrenheit.
• SaveTheRbtz 14y ago
  As for born in Siberia my first thought was "Isn't it normal for every child to have a nap in -35C or so?" It was rather normal for our schools back there to be closed once or twice per winter because of extreme cold, but kids where just playing hockey on the school grounds instead =)
• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I find this fascinating. And a bit surprised they don't get some sort of frost bite but if it works, hey it works. I'll admit though when I read it I was wondering if this was parents with cranky children trying to trigger some sort of latent hibernation reflex :-).
• whaevr 14y ago
  Wow this is really interesting. I read the title and honestly didn't know what to expect from the article when I clicked on it. My mind was wandering towards some kinda sci-fi setup or something. Hooray cultural ignorance! The more you know.
• zwieback 14y ago
  Seems hard to imagine it's beneficial for the kids other than in situations where there are fewer germs outside but as cultural idiosyncracies go it makes a lot more sense to me than the fear of sleeping with a running fan in Korea. In Germany there's an obsession with stale air in rooms, during the day you "auslueft" the room but when you're in the room you close the windows and doors to prevent uncomfortable or even unhealthy drafts. Irrational health beliefs are very stubborn, like many Germans my mom and her sisters believe that sitting on a cold surface can lead to bladder infections, here in the US nobody seems to know about this.
  • TeMPOraL 14y ago
    > or even unhealthy drafts. I'm pretty sure there is no such thing. (unfortunately, most people I know not only believe in it, but are also afraid of such drafts; the result is that, for example, I find it uncomfortable to work in any office because of stale air most of them accumulate throughout the day).
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    • goblin89 14y ago
      Drafts often seem to make my head dizzy, much worse if I nap. No such problem with windy open air, though. I wonder why.
  • LarrySDonald 14y ago
    Having someone visiting from Africa, there is apparently the inverse belief in some areas (sitting on a too-warm surface causes bladder infections/UTIs). There is definitely a European obsession with "fresh air". I'm not sure how warranted it is, I think most people (if being honest) agree that it's more of a "Ok, time out - I want to go somewhere quiet because this situation is wearing me down" and wanting "fresh air" is a good reason if you don't smoke and don't have a dog.
  • skurmedel 14y ago
    But stale is really annoying. I get an head ache if the air is poorly circulated.
• naftaliharris 14y ago
  What I found most interesting about this article is that parents felt so strongly about having their kids nap outside, despite the fact that the scientific evidence presented in the article that this is actually better than napping indoors is mixed at best. The article cites a survey of parents who say their kids nap better outdoors, (with a broken link), but surveys are far less convincing than experiments. In this case, parents should not use this survey as a reason to have their kids nap outside, because the survey is just a reflection of their own opinions. Following it would be like eating their own dog food. As for more scientific evidence, according to the article "Paediatrician Margareta Blennow says reports from the Swedish Environmental protection agency show conflicting results." So from the article, it doesn't appear that there is substantial scientific evidence that sleeping outdoors is any better for the children. Why do parents continue to do so anyway? I think it's just a cultural thing. I think many cultures have basically random opinions along the lines of "Doing X is better for your health". As long as X isn't actually very bad for you, people will continue to do X despite the lack of evidence that it's actually good for you.
  • andreer 14y ago
    Both my kids have slept outside, also in temperatures down to -10C. I don't know whether they slept better, but they certainly slept for longer - giving me more time to get other things done. I suspect thats probably the real reason for it!
  • ycombobreaker 14y ago
    I used to go on camping trips regularly. I always found that I woke up exceptionally well-rested in a tent. I attribute that to a combination of the fresh air, the possibility of a gentle breeze, and the difference of outdoor sounds vs. a 60Hz hum in the house. And it's not about sleep length, either; I would always wake up earlier in a tent than in my bed. I think the phenomenon is worthy of more in-depth scientific experimentation, but I wouldn't ignore my own experience; even with no control group and a sample size of one.
  • scotty79 14y ago
    Kids sleep longer outside. If you have a child, every hour your child sleeps is an hour of your life you won back.
• marvin 14y ago
  I was baptized during a pretty bad cold snap in Trysil in Eastern Norway. The outside temperature was -40C/-40F, and the caretakers were able to heat the church up to 5 degrees Celcius inside. I've been told that I slept in the stroller outside, even though my parents did check on me quite often. Was also supposedly wearing an incredible amount of clothes.
• lee 14y ago
  I don't know if there is any relation to this idea, but some diseases that babies catch are alleviated by cold air. For some infants with croup, cool air alleviates the symptoms.
• orn 14y ago
  Reminds me of the Danish couple that got arrested in NY years back - http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/nyregion/toddler-left-outside-restaurant-is-returned-to-her-mother.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/nyregion/toddler-left-outs...
• JimWestergren 14y ago
  Well, I am from Sweden with 2 children but I have never and would never leave one of my child sleeping unattended in a prom on the sidewalk. I reacted on the photo of the cafe.
• benaiah 14y ago
  I can personally attest to the fact that sleeping outside is not as ridiculous as it might seem at first. As a skinny, 80-90lb Boy Scout in Alaska, I camped outside overnight many times every winter, in temperatures that got down to -30F. It was cold, sure, but a little preparation and it's fine. The most annoying part about sleeping outside isn't the fact that you are cold, it's that everything around you is - we had to keep our water bottles in our sleeping bags at night so we could make oatmeal in the morning.
• worace 14y ago
  This reminds me of a funny behavior I noticed when I visited Iceland - parents would simply leave their kids outside in a pram when they went into a cafe or a restaurant. Struck me as something you would never see in the States but I guess other places just have higher levels of trust. Here's a blog with a little info on the practice: http://reykjavikdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/10/could-not-be-more-icelandic.html http://reykjavikdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/10/could-not-be...
• japhyr 14y ago
  I live in southeast Alaska, where winter temperatures are a steady 30-34F. It's really hard to stay warm, because you're always getting wet. It's easier to stay warm when it's 20-25F, and you know you'll stay dry. We took my two-year-old to the beach last week when it was 38F. All he wanted to do was play in the water, and he did so for half an hour without ever getting cold. He had waterproof boots and rainsuit on, but his hands were in the water for half an hour and he only asked us to hold his hands in ours a couple times. It's fun to watch him grow up here, totally acclimated to this environment.
• crazygringo 14y ago
  OK, serious question: what about dry throats, vocal cords, etc., and the damage caused from that? For dealing with the NYC winter, buying a humidifier changed my life. I have friends who have a "winter cough" that never goes away, because they live in a drafty apartment. When I grew up in far upstate NY, there were certain winter days below 10°F where, just being outside for 10 minutes, you could hear the effect in your scratchier voice the rest of the day. It boggles my mind how this can be healthy from a respiratory point of view. Is there any science on this?
  • scotty79 14y ago
    You get dry throat if you take cold air from outside and heat it up. This air is not dry a outside temperatures. In fact is as humid as it can be. But if you take this air and heat it up then there's much more room in the air for additional water. And water from your throat gladly evaporates to fill this room leaving you throat dry. If you spend your time in temperatures clse to outside temperatures your throat doesn't get dry.
• shanev 14y ago
  I can't believe there's not a single mention of Vitamin D in this article. People with normal levels of Vitamin D are healthier than people who are deficient. There's really no mystery there. I'm sure it's even more important for developing babies. The health effects of getting some sun > negative effects of being cold for a while. Or cold thermogenesis could actually have beneficial effects [1]. [1]: http://www.jackkruse.com/cold-thermogenesis-6-the-ancient-pathway/ http://www.jackkruse.com/cold-thermogenesis-6-the-ancient-pa...
• mcartyem 14y ago
  Pediatricians in Russia recommend taking babies outside for at least thirty minutes every day too, partly because the freezing temperature kills germs.
  • scotty79 14y ago
    Not viruses. Just bacteria. And bacterial infections are rare and usually easily treatable with antibiotics.
• jonke 14y ago
  Swede here, 4 kids, all of them have been sleeping outside down to -15 C (at least). 1) The kids are dressed more like a astronaut, wool clothing, a isolated dungaree, stuffed inside a kind of extra isolated bag. One problem is that the kids turn to overheat if you don't undress them when going indoors. 2) Sweden is very rural, there is probably bad to sleep outside in Stockholm/Gothenburg compared to sleep outside the rest of the country. 3) Sleeping next to a street is probably a bad idea regardless temperature (the picture was taken in Copenhagen which is not in Sweden, and I didn't see any snow in the picture so no winter there) 4) Swedes are obsessed with safty but we tend not to calculate threat from other people as a safty matter. Around every kindergarten there are fencing keeping the kids inside but not to keep bad people out. That some evil person should take a child has the same threat level as if an alien should come by. There have been some cases of mentally-ill patients stabbing kids but that hasn't really changed anything. 5) There was someone in a thread calling out for Vitamin D. That's true enough but every single infant/kid in Sweden gets free Vitamin D anyway. 6) I think its a very cultural thing, my kids have slept longer outside, stuffed in that sleeping bag if its cold, than they ever do when napping inside. Swedes like to think of ourselves as very outdoor, into the wild, sports, activity and health so you as a parent are supposed to be outside a lot, if you have more kids some of them are going to be tired and take that nap, wherever you are.
• confluence 14y ago
  Sounds like pretty sloppy, old wives, random cultural reasoning to me (for example in other countries people think being cold gives one a cold). > Paediatrician Margareta Blennow says reports from the Swedish Environmental protection agency show conflicting results. "In some studies they found pre-schoolers who spent many hours outside generally - not just for naps - took fewer days off than those who spent most of their time indoors," she says. "In other studies there wasn't a difference." If it isn't backed by some serious data - one probably shouldn't risk one's new born child on something so tenuously supported and specifically in an area which is subject to large random statistical effects and various psychological biases.
  • AnthonBerg 14y ago
    I propose that the purported risk is tenuously supported as well ... :)
• vivekv 14y ago
  I see the exact opposite where I come from. My kid wants to go out and play when the temperature is close to 40c (which is normal BTW). I think kids just adapt to the weather and we just get old!
• largesse 14y ago
  What I think is particularly interesting is that anyone doing this in North America would probably be tried and convicted of child endangerment purely due to unfamiliarity and outrage at the practice. It wouldn't matter whether someone presented evidence that it was a norm elsewhere. We are just wired that way.
• xmodem 14y ago
  TLDR: More fresh air is good for kids; the fact that it's cold outside is irrelevant if they have enough clothes. Well what do you know?