Recently I wrote an article for Time Magazine about Danish children’s TV and in particular the show ‘Vild Venner’ (wild friends). Let’s talk about death!It’s a sweet show about two kids who rescue animals. I sat down very unassumingly one evening with my...
The Road Less Taken: More to hygge than cosy chocolate consumption
If you haven’t already been hit by hyggemania, you probably will be soon. There have been nine books and counting launched on hygge in 2016 alone – a year in which it was named one of the top ten words by both the Collins and Oxford dictionaries along with the...
The Road Less Taken: Is Danish happiness an inside job?
Some weeks ago I was conducting research at Danish schools trying to gain a deeper understanding of how Danes actively teach empathy there. Standards set at schoolSeeing as empathy is now considered one of the single biggest factors in predicting successful leaders...
The Road Less Taken: Blind to gender gaps, but not age gaps
Recently there has been some uproar about the new French president Emmanuel Macron’s older wife. Double standardsThere was some speculation that “he cannot love his wife” because she is 24 years older than him. “If I had been 20 years older than my wife, nobody...
The Road Less Taken: New year resolutions and the courage to fail
As we head into 2018, it is the time of New Year resolutions being put to the test. Many, if not most of us, will fail. According to Forbes, only 8 percent of us will achieve our New Year resolutions, and this is mainly because people give up when they have a few...
The Road Less Taken: Is Lego a building block of Danish happiness?
We have all thought about what it means to be a parent from time to time, but have you ever wondered how our culture affects the way we view what we think is the right way to parent? In Norway, parents regularly leave children to sleep outside in -20 degree weather,...
The Road Less Taken: More fluidity, parents, and “Just say Know”
I recently contributed to the LEGO Play Well Report, a study of 13,000 people in nine countries, which found that families who play for five or more hours together a week were happier than those who played for less. I concur that Denmark’s belief in the importance...
Gender equality and a woman’s right to age
The Local's columnist Jessica Alexander argues that Denmark is ahead of Hollywood when it comes to realistic approaches to women's ageing. Why happy endings don’t make us happy (18 Jun 15) A little known secret to the Danes' happiness (01 Jun 15) Let's talk about...
The lifelong effects of empathic thinking
The Local's columnist Jessica Alexander, whose book 'The Danish Way of Parenting' focuses strongly on how Danes teach empathy, says we'd all be better off if we were more understanding and trusting of others. You would think that co-writing a parenting book would...
Singing your way to happiness with the Danes
Columnist and parenting expert Jessica Alexander on the Danes' obsession with group singing 'I am not a runner': Putting Danish resilience to the test (29 Jan 16) Four ways that Danes are socializers, not socialists (03 Nov 15) Why happy endings don’t make us happy...

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I Told Myself I Couldn’t Pursue My Dream, and That’s What Held Me Back
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 Danish way’ trumps the American dream
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...