How to be a Norwegian parent: let your kids roam free, stay home alone, have fun – and fail

In Norway, children walk to school aged six, or even travel across the country – and no one bats an eyelid. Why do these kids have so much independence, while other countries are so risk-averse?

I t’s 1.30pm. Nila and Arion arrive home after finishing school for the day. They let themselves in, make some food, then sit down to do homework, or practise piano, or do the housework they’ve been asked to do. Their parents won’t be home for a few hours yet. The children sometimes go out with friends to play in the street or wander the fields. The only real rule is no screen time unless everything else has been taken care of.

So far, so normal, perhaps, except the sister and brother are just 10 and eight, and they’ve been living this kind of unsupervised mini-adult life for years.

They live in Stavanger, on the south-west coast of Norway. Like all of their friends, they’ve been walking to and from school alone since they first attended at the age of six. They were given their own set of house keys soon after. This is the parenting way in Norway – it’s decidedly free-range, with an emphasis on independence, self-determination and responsibility, with a dash of outdoor fun thrown in for good measure.

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