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Danish kids: Our parents are good, but stressed

The Local Denmark
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Danish kids: Our parents are good, but stressed
Children reported that they wished their parents would argue less with one another. Photo: Colourbox

Parents are too stressed and yell too often - both at each other and at their children - but overall they are doing a good job, according to a wide survey of Danish schoolchildren.

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Danish children think their parents are doing a pretty good job, even if they do yell a bit too much. 
 
The National Council for Children (Børnerådet) has released the results of a survey of 2,000 children in seventh grade (aged 12-14) that shows that a full 92 percent of kids think they have good parents. 
 
The results were not all positive, however. Stressed-out parents are the norm for Danish kids, with 82 percent of respondents saying that their parents are sometimes stressed and eight percent reporting that their parents often seemed stressed out. 
 
“There can be many reasons why parents are stressed. One should be very aware of the consequences that stress can have on children, because as stress increases, energy levels, tolerance and closeness decrease,” the council’s chairman, Per Larsen, said. 
 
“Our survey clearly shows that the more often children experience that their parents are stressed, the worse they thrive,” he added. 
 
Nearly a third of the children surveyed also reported that they wished they had more time with their parent and 15 percent said that things at home would be better if their parents fought less with one another. 
 
And although the vast majority of kids thought that they had good parents, they had plenty of suggestions for how their parents could improve. 
 
The top requests from kids were that their parents would listen more to them (41 percent), argue less with each other (37 percent), yell less at them (36 percent) and spend more time with them (36 percent).
 
“One often hears that today’s children are very critical and needy. They are seen as spoiled and overprotected, but when you look at our survey it paints a different picture. The children are not very critical of their parents and their wishes are very fair,” Larsen said. 
 
In Børnerådet’s survey, 81 percent of respondents were 13, 12 percent were 14 and seven percent were 12. 

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