The Happiest Kids In The World: Bringing Up Children The Dutch Way

Description

A recent UNESCO study of child well-being in the richest countries in the world found that Dutch children come out on top. Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison, both married to Dutchmen and bringing up their young families in Holland, examine the unique social environment and culture that they live in, to understand the special features that allow the Dutch to turn out such contented, well-adjusted and healthy kids. Is it that they go to school on bicycles, or that children are allowed the freedom to play outside without supervision? Does the fact that Dutch kids are seen and heard around the family breakfast table have anything to do with it - or is it that they eat chocolate sprinkles on buttered bread? In the spirit of French Children Don't Throw Food and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, this is a book to appeal to the same audience, frazzled mothers (and fathers) who want to look at how it's done elsewhere, with practical tips they can apply to their own children - after all, who doesn't want to raise a happy kid?

Reviews

"An eye-opening and badly-needed dose of perspective. In my next life, I want to be Dutch." -- Pamela Druckerman author of French Children Don't Throw Food "A fascinating book - one I wish I had read sooner! In fact, the more I read the more I became tempted to move our entire family to the Netherlands..." -- Sarah Turner author of The Unmumsy Mum

Author description

Michele Hutchison is an editor, translator and blogger. She was born in Solihull, grew up in Lincolnshire and studied at the universities of East Anglia, Cambridge and Lyon. She worked in British publishing before moving to Amsterdam, heavily-pregnant, in 2004. There she worked as an editor and became a prominent translator of Dutch literature. She lives in a leaky, old dyke house with her Dutch husband and two children. Rina Mae Acosta is an Asian-American writer from California currently living in the Netherlands with her Dutch husband and two young sons. She holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is the author of a successful parenting blog, Finding Dutchland.