I’ll borrow this from Jennie. Warning! The following post will contain some major generalizations:
Where I come from, we celebrate children. We put them up in the air and smile at them. We buy too many things for them. We tell them they are the best (even if they’re not). We ask them questions at the dinner table and allow them to take up space. This is both good (it can create strong self confidence and self-worth) and bad (it can produce over confident children who have no idea of their surroundings and don’t care (bryr sig inte) about anyone else but themselves).
In my specific family, when a new child is born we have personalized chocolate candy bar wrappers with the child’s name, size, place of birth etc. Maybe this is over the top, but I think it is cute. And so do many Swedes.
This is when we get back to the concept of lagom, or sufficient, enough. But those words don’t really describe it.
Lagom is a mindset. For example, this morning I dropped off my daughter at daycare (dagis). I put her on the sled and dragged her through the woods. In my pocket, I had ten of these candy bars with my son Herman’s name on them. When I got to dagis I put a few of the bars in some of the kids’ cubby holes, and gave a few to the teachers.
One of the teachers looked at me, and said, “Oh, this is so cute. A lot of other countries do this, but not in Sweden.”
“Yes,” I said, “In Sweden you shouldn’t celebrate your children too much.”
“Exactly,” she said. “It has to be lagom.”
But where do you draw the line?
Swedes don’t love their kids any less than anyone else. In general, I think most childen in Sweden are given more space to develop and this in part helps them mature faster than American children. I would say with some confidence that most Swedish 17-year-olds are more mature than most American 17-year-olds. I also think for the most part Swedes are well-behaved, except when they invade the Alps or the Sun Coast in Spain for vacation.
On the other hand, too much lagom can dampen your spirit, and a child can get lost. It’s not good to tell your kid they are the best at everything, but it is important to tell them they are good every once in a while.
If Sweden is the land of lagom, America is the land of excess. How about a middle ground?
What about going lagom with the lagom?
How do children and lagom interact where you come from or in your family?
