The other night my daughter and I sat down to watch a Danish kids’ TV program called Wild Friends. It’s a sweet show about two young kids who are animal rescuers. They get calls from all over the countryside to save animals they bring back to a farm where they nurse...

Most parents want their children to be happy. This is universal. But what constitutes happiness and moreover, how is our modern-day idea of success getting in the way of achieving this? As the author of the Danish Way of Parenting; What the Happiest People in the...

Everything changed once I stopped telling myself I didn’t have what it takes. It was always my dream to be a writer. For 10 years I wrote the same novel five times, but I never finished it. “I’m not a writer,” I would think to myself. Then I had children, and my life...

The American author of a new book about Danish parenting writes that the Danes' focus on empathy makes them much happier than Americans who pursue material goods. I used to undervalue the importance of empathy until I married a Dane.  Through my many years living...

What I learned about how to implement Hygge to foster more connection. Denmark has constantly been voted as one of the happiest countries on earth for over 40 years in a row. As an American married to a Dane, I always noticed the calm, serene, and happy nature of...

American students are falling behind on valuable social skills. In Denmark, one simple classroom tradition works. We all know what a Danish pastry is — that delightful caloric bomb of glazed breakfast deliciousness. But what about a Danish classroom cake? And...

We all know how popular divorce is. These days you have about a 50% chance of your marriage surviving and judging by the bitter divorces battles that get splattered all over the news, it’s no wonder the first sentence uttered when a split is imminent is “get a...

When I talked to my Danish husband about getting grades when I was in kindergarten, he almost fell off the bed. “What in the world did you get grades for?” We would discuss our childhoods at length and I remember thinking that my poor husband must have been neglected....

Turkey day is upon us and many of us are fretting over ingredients, travel plans and general excitement and anxiety over seeing the family. While it is lovely to be together for the holidays, most of us know that despite our best intentions, drama could be brewing...

  Denmark consistently ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world. The reason why might lie with the idea of "hygge." This article first appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. In November, GGSC is...