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What Happens When All The Parts Of Childhood Are Soldered Down, When The Young No Longer Have The Time Or Space To Play In Their Family's Garden, Cycle Home In The Dark With The Stars And Moon Illuminating Their Route, Walk Down Through The Woods To The River, Lie On Their Backs On Hot July Days In The Long Grass, Or Watch Cockleburs, Lit By Morning Sun, Like Bumblees Quivering On Harp Wires? What Then?

-Richard Louv

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What Happens When All

Richard Louv

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What Happens When All The Parts Of Childhood Are Soldered Down, When The Young No Longer Have The Time Or Space To Play In Their Family's Garden, Cycle Home In The Dark With The Stars And Moon Illuminating Their Route, Walk Down Through The Woods To The River, Lie On Their Backs On Hot July Days In The Long Grass, Or Watch Cockleburs, Lit By Morning Sun, Like Bumblees Quivering On Harp Wires? What Then?

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Use All Of Your Senses.

Kids Are Plugged Into Some Sort Of Electronic Medium 44 Hours Per Week.

Nature Is Often Overlooked As A Healing Balm For The Emotional Hardships In A Child's Life. You'll Likely Never See A Slick Commercial For Nature Therapy, As You Do For The Latest Antidepressant Pharmaceuticals. But Parents, Educators, And Health Workers Need To Know What A Useful Antidote To Emotional And Physical Stress Nature Can Be. Especially Now.

We Cannot Protect Something We Do Not Love, We Cannot Love What We Do Not Know, And We Cannot Know What We Do Not See. Or Hear. Or Sense.

The Future Will Belong To The Nature-smart.

Deeper Understanding

One Of My Students Told Me That Every Time She Learns The Name Of A Plant, She Feels As If She Is Meeting Someone New. Giving A Name To Something Is A Way Of Knowing It.

How Can Our Kids Really Understand The Moral Complexities Of Being Alive If They Are Not Allowed To Engage In Those Complexities Outdoors?

As A Species, We Are Most Animated When Our Days And Nights On Earth Are Touched By The Natural World. We Can Find Immeasurable Joy In The Birth Of A Child, A Great Work Of Art, Or Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

Each Of Us-adult Or Child-must Earn Nature's Gift By Knowing Nature Directly, However Difficult It May Be To Glean That Knowledge In An Urban Environment.

Numerous Studies Document The Benefits To Students From School Grounds That Are Ecologically Diverse And Include Free Play Areas, Habitats For Wildlife, Walking Trails, And Gardens.

An Indoor (or Backseat) Childhood Does Reduce Some Dangers To Children; But Other Risks Are Heightened, Including Risks To Physical And Psychological Health, Risk To Children's Concept And Perception Of Community, Risk To Self-confidence And The Ability To Discern True Danger

Self Confidence

In Our Bones We Need The Natural Curves Of Hills, The Scent Of Chaparral, The Whisper Of Pines, The Possibility Of Wildness.

Nature Is About Smelling, Hearing, Tasting, Seeing.

If War Occurs, That Positive Adult Contact In Every Shape Is Needed More Than Ever. It Will Be A Matter Of Emotional Life And Death. There's Not A Handy One-minute Way Of Talking To Your Kid About War.

Nature Is Beautiful, But Not Always Pretty.

This Seems Clear Enough: When Truly Present In Nature, We Do Use All Our Senses At The Same Time, Which Is The Optimum State Of Learning.

Here Is The Beginning Of Understanding: Most Parents Are Doing Their Best, And Most Children Are Doing Their Best, And They're Doing Pretty Well, All Things Considered.

Nature Does Not Steal Time, It Amplifies It.

A Lot Of People Think They Need To Give Up Nature To Become Adults But That's Not True. However, You Have To Be Careful How You Describe And Define 'nature.

Progress Does Not Have To Be Patented To Be Worthwhile. Progress Can Also Be Measured By Our Interactions With Nature And Its Preservation. Can We Teach Children To Look At A Flower And See All The Things It Represents: Beauty, The Health Of An Ecosystem, And The Potential For Healing?

We Can Conserve Energy And Tread More Lightly On The Earth While We Expand Our Culture's Capacity For Joy.

As The Nature Deficit Grows, Another Emerging Body Of Scientific Evidence Indicates That Direct Exposure To Nature Is Essential For Physical And Emotional Health. For Example, New Studies Suggest That Exposure To Nature May Reduce The Symptoms Of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (adhd), And That It Can Improve All Children's Cognitive Abilities And Resistance To Negative Stresses And Depression.

If Getting Our Kids Out Into Nature Is A Search For Perfection, Or Is One More Chore, Then The Belief In Perfection And The Chore Defeats The Joy. It's A Good Thing To Learn More About Nature In Order To Share This Knowledge With Children; It's Even Better If The Adult And Child Learn About Nature Together. And It's A Lot More Fun.

Unlike Television, Reading Does Not Swallow The Senses Or Dictate Thought. Reading Stimulates The Ecology Of The Imagination. Can You Remember The Wonder You Felt When First Reading The Jungle Book Or Tom Sawyer Or Huckleberry Finn? Kipling’s World Within A World; Twain’s Slow River, The Feel Of Freedom And Sand On The Secret Island, And In The Depths Of The Cave?

The Physical Exercise And Emotional Stretching That Children Enjoy In Unorganized Play Is More Varied And Less Time-bound Than Is Found In Organized Sports. Playtime—especially Unstructured, Imaginative, Exploratory Play—is Increasingly Recognized As An Essential Component Of Wholesome Child Development.

We Have Such A Brief Opportunity To Pass On To Our Children Our Love For This Earth, And To Tell Our Stories. These Are The Moments When The World Is Made Whole. In My Children's Memories, The Adventures We've Had Together In Nature Will Always Exist.

The Future Will Belong To The Nature-smart...th E More High-tech We Become, The More Nature We Need.

Deeper Understanding

We Tend To Block Off Many Of Our Senses When We're Staring At A Screen. Nature Time Can Literally Bring Us To Our Senses.

Children Who Played Outside Every Day, Regrdless Of Weather, Had Better Motor Coordination And More Ability To Concentrate.

Quite Simply, When We Deny Our Children Nature, We Deny Them Beauty.

The Dugout In The Weeds Or Leaves Beneath A Backyard Willow, The Rivulet Of A Seasonal Creek, Even The Ditch Between The Front Yard And The Road-all Of These Places Are Entire Universes To A Young Child.

To Take Nature And Natural Play Away From Children May Be Tantamount To Withholding Oxygen.

The Pleasure Of Being Alive Is Brought Into Sharper Focus When You Need To Pay Attention To Staying Alive.

Studies Of Children In Playgrounds With Both Green Areas And Manufactured Play Areas Found That Children Engaged In More Creative Forms Of Play In The Green Areas.

As The Young Spend Less Of Their Lives In Natural Surroundings, Their Senses Narrow, Physiologically And Psychologically And This Reduces The Richness Of Human Experience We Need Contact With Nature.

We Attempt To Remember Our Collective American Childhood, The Way It Was, But What We Often Remember Is A Combination Of Real Past, Pieces Reshaped By Bitterness And Love, And, Of Course, The Video Past--the Portrayals Of Family Life On Such Television Programs As "leave It To Beaver" And "father Knows Best" And All The Rest.

When We Raise Our Children, We Relive Our Childhood. Forgotten Memories, Painful And Pleasurable, Rise To The Surface.... So Each Of Us Thinks, Almost Daily, Of How Our Own Childhood Compares With Our Children's, And Of What Our Children's Future Will Hold.

There's A Generation Now That Didn't Grow Up In Nature. Some Of These Adults Are Parents And They Know That Nature Is Good For Their Kids But They Don't Know Where To Start.

Nature Introduces Children To The Idea—to The Knowing—that They Are Not Alone In This World, And That Realities And Dimensions Exist Alongside Their Own.

Increasingly The Evidence Suggests That People Benefit So Much From Contact With Nature That Land Conservation Can Now Be Viewed As A Public Health Strategy.

Our Kids Are Actually Doing What We Told Them To Do When They Sit In Front Of That Tv All Day Or In Front Of That Computer Game All Day. The Society Is Telling Kids Unconsciously That Nature's In The Past. It Really Doesn't Count Anymore, That The Future Is In Electronics, And Besides, The Bogeyman Is In The Woods.

An Environment-based Education Movement--at All Levels Of Education--will Help Students Realize That School Isn't Supposed To Be A Polite Form Of Incarceration, But A Portal To The Wider World.

What If More And More Parents, Grandparents And Kids Around The Country Band Together To Create Outdoor Adventure Clubs, Family Nature Networks, Family Outdoor Clubs, Or Green Gyms? What If This Approach Becomes The Norm In Every Community?

Nature-the Sublime, The Harsh, And The Beautiful-offers Something That The Street Or Gated Community Or Computer Game Cannot. Nature Presents The Young With Something So Much Greater Than They Are; It Offers An Environment Where They Can Easily Contemplate Infinity And Eternity.

The Future Will Belong To The Nature-smart-those Individuals, Families, Businesses, And Political Leaders Who Develop A Deeper Understanding Of The Transformative Power Of The Natural World And Who Balance The Virtual With The Real. The More High-tech We Become, The More Nature We Need.

Now, More Than Ever, We Need Nature As A Balancing Agent.

If We Desire A Kinder Nation, Seeing It Through The Eyes Of Children Is An Eminently Sensible Endeavor: A City That Is Pro-child,for Example, Is Also A More Humane Place For Adults.

Reconnection To The Natural World Is Fundamental To Human Health, Well-being, Spirit, And Survival.

There Is Another Possibility: Not The End Of Nature, But The Rebirth Of Wonder And Even Joy.

The Woods Were My Ritalin. Nature Calmed Me, Focused Me, And Yet Excited My Senses.

What Would Our Lives Be Like If Our Days And Nights Were As Immersed In Nature As They Are In Technology?

Being Close To Nature, In General, Helps Boost A Child's Attention Span.

Every Child Needs Nature. Not Just The Ones With Parents Who Appreciate Nature. Not Only Those Of A Certain Economic Class Or Culture Or Set Of Abilities. Every Child.

There’s No Denying The Benefits Of The Internet. But Electronic Immersion, Without A Force To Balance It, Creates The Hole In The Boat — Draining Our Ability To Pay Attention, To Think Clearly, To Be Productive And Creative.

In Nature, A Child Finds Freedom, Fantasy, And Privacy: A Place Distant From The Adult World, A Separate Peace.

This Tree House Became Our Galleon, Our Spaceship, Our Fort Apache...ours Was A Learning Tree. Through It We Learned To Trust Ourselves And Our Abilities.

Most People Are Either Awakened To Or Are Strengthened In Their Spiritual Journey By Experiences In The Natural World.

Mothers Tend To Be More Direct. Fathers Talk To Other Fathers About Their Kids More Metaphorically. It's A Different Way Of Communication.

The Centers For Disease Control (cdc) Reports That The Number Of Overweight Adult Americans Increased Over 60 Percent Between 1991 And 2000. According To Cdc Data, The U.s. Population Of Overweight Children Between Ages Two And Five Increased By Almost 36 Percent From 1989 To 1999.

Natural Playgrounds May Decrease Bullying.

Time Spent In Nature Is The Most Cost-effective And Powerful Way To Counteract The Burnout And Sort Of Depression That We Feel When We Sit In Front Of A Computer All Day.

American Family Life Has Never Been Particularly Idyllic. In The Nineteenth Century, Nearly A Quarter Of All Children Experienced The Death Of One Of Their Parents.... Not Until The Sixties Did The Chief Cause Of Separation Of Parents Shift From Death To Divorce.

Passion Is Lifted From The Earth Itself By The Muddy Hands Of The Young; It Travels Along Grass-stained Sleeves To The Heart. If We Are Going To Save Environmentalism And The Environment, We Must Also Save An Endangered Indicator Species: The Child In Nature.

Leave Part Of The Yard Rough. Don't Manicure Everything. Small Children In Particular Love To Turn Over Rocks And Find Bugs, And Give Them Some Space To Do That. Take Your Child Fishing. Take Your Child On Hikes.

We Are Telling Our Kids That Nature Is In The Past And It Probably Doesn't Count Anymore, The Future Is In Electronics, The Boogeyman Is In The Woods, And Playing Outdoors Is Probably Illicit And Possibly Illegal.

Another British Study Discovered That Average Eight-year-olds Were Better Able To Identify Characters From The Japanese Card Trading Game Pokemon Than Native Species In The Community Where They Lived: Pikachu, Metapod, And Wigglytuff Were Names More Familiar To Them Than Otter, Beetle, And Oak Tree.

If A Child Never Sees The Stars, Never Has Meaningful Encounters With Other Species, Never Experiences The Richness Of Nature, What Happens To That Child?

Nature Has Been Taken Over By Thugs Who Care Absolutely Nothing About It. We Need To Take Nature Back.

Research Suggests That Exposure To The Natural World - Including Nearby Nature In Cities - Helps Improve Human Health, Well-being, And Intellectual Capacity In Ways That Science Is Only Recently Beginning To Understand.

Kids Are Absolutely Starved For Positive Adult Contact.

As One Scientist Puts It, We Can Now Assume That Just As Children Need Good Nutrition And Adequate Sleep, They May Very Well Need Contact With Nature.

Some Kids Don't Want To Be Organized All The Time. They Want To Let Their Imaginations Run; They Want To See Where A Stream Of Water Takes Them.

I Do Not Mean To Imply That The Good Old Days Were Perfect. But The Institutions And Structure--the Web--of Society Needed Reform,not Demolition. To Have Cut The Institutional And Community Strands Without Replacing Them With New Ones Proved To Be A Form Of Abuse To One Generation And To The Next. For So Many Americans, The Tragedy Was Not In Dreaming That Life Could Be Better; The Tragedy Was That The Dreaming Ended.

The Children And Nature Movement Is Fueled By This Fundamental Idea: The Child In Nature Is An Endangered Species, And The Health Of Children And The Health Of The Earth Are Inseparable.

There Is A Real World, Beyond The Glass, For Children Who Look, For Those Whose Parents Encourage Them To Truly See.

These Days, Unplugged Places Are Getting Hard To Find.

From 1997 To 2003, There Was A Decline Of 50 Percent In The Proportion Of Children Nine To Twelve Who Spent Time In Such Outside Activities As Hiking, Walking, Fishing, Beach Play, And Gardening, According To A Study By Sandra Hofferth At The University Of Maryland.

In A Famous Middletown Study Of Muncie, Indiana, In 1924, Mothers Were Asked To Rank The Qualities They Most Desire In Their Children. At The Top Of The List Were Conformity And Strict Obedience. More Than Fifty Years Later, When The Middletown Survey Was Replicated, Mothers Placed Autonomy And Independence First. The Healthiest Parenting Probably Promotes A Balance Of These Qualities In Children.

Today's Children Are Living A Childhood Of Firsts. They Are The First Daycare Generation; The First Truly Multicultural Generation; The First Generation To Grow Up In The Electronic Bubble, The Environment Defined By Computers And New Forms Of Television; The First Post-sexual Revolution Generation; The First Generation For Which Nature Is More Abstraction Than Reality; The First Generation To Grow Up In New Kinds Of Dispersed, Deconcentrated Cities, Not Quite Urban, Rural, Or Suburban.

I Do Not Trust Technology. I Mean, I Don't Think We're In Any Danger Of Kids, You Know, Doing Without Video Games In The Future, But I Am Saying That Their Lives Are Largely Out Of Balance.

Prize The Natural Spaces And Shorelines Most Of All, Because Once They're Gone, With Rare Exceptions They're Gone Forever. In Our Bones We Need The Natural Curves Of Hills, The Scent Of Chapparal, The Whisper Of Pines, The Possibility Of Wildness. We Require These Patches Of Nature For Our Mental Health And Our Spiritual Resilience.

Children Need Nature For The Healthy Development Of Their Senses, And Therefore, For Learning And Creativity.

It Takes Time--loose, Unstructured Dreamtime-- To Experience Nature In A Meaningful Way. Unless Parents Are Vigilant, Such Time Becomes A Scarce Resource, Not Because We Intend It To Shrink, But Because Time Is Consumed By Multiple, Invisible Forces; Because Our Culture Currently Places So Little Value On Natural Play.

Green Exercise Improves Psychological Health.

Psychological Health

Stress Reduction, Greater Physical Health, A Deeper Sense Of Spirit, More Creativity, A Sense Of Play, Even A Safer Life-these Are The Rewards That Await A Family Then It Invites More Nature Into Children's Lives.

Now, My Tree-climbing Days Long Behind Me, I Often Think About The Lasting Value Of Those Early, Deliciously Idle Days. I Have Come To Appreciate The Long View Afforded By Those Treetops. The Woods Were My Ritalin. Nature Calmed Me, Focused Me, And Yet Excited My Senses.

Natural Play Strengthens Children's Self-confidence And Arouses Their Senses-their Awareness Of The World And All That Moves In It, Seen And Unseen.

What Happens When All The Parts Of Childhood Are Soldered Down, When The Young No Longer Have The Time Or Space To Play In Their Family's Garden, Cycle Home In The Dark With The Stars And Moon Illuminating Their Route, Walk Down Through The Woods To The River, Lie On Their Backs On Hot July Days In The Long Grass, Or Watch Cockleburs, Lit By Morning Sun, Like Bumblees Quivering On Harp Wires? What Then?

By Bringing Nature Into Our Lives, We Invite Humility.

The Real Cultural War Is Between The Culture Of Narcissism And What Might Be Called The Culture Of Renewal.

In Every Bio-region, One Of The Most Urgent Tasks Is To Rebuild The Community Of Naturalists - So Radically Depleted In Recent Years, As Young People Have Spent Less Time In Nature, And Higher Education Has Placed Less Value On Such Disciplines As Zoology……the Times Are Right For The Return Of The Amateur, Twenty-first-century, Citizen Naturalist. To Be A Citizen Naturalist Is To Take Personal Action, To Both Protect And Participate In Nature.

No Other Youth Group Like The Scouts Has Trained So Many Future Leaders While At The Same Time Being A Nature Organization With Its Outdoor Focus.

What If A Tree Fell In The Forest And No One Knew It's Biological Name? Did It Exist?

A Natural Environment Is Far More Complex Than Any Playing Field.

We Do Not Raise Our Children Alone.... Our Children Are Also Raised By Every Peer, Institution, And Family With Which They Come In Contact. Yet Parents Today Expect To Be Blamed For Whatever Results Occur With Their Children, And They Expect To Do Their Parenting Alone.

In Medieval Times, If Someone Displayed The Symptoms We Now Identify As Boredom, That Person Was Thought To Be Committing Something Called Acedia, A 'dangerous Form Of Spiritual Alienation' -- A Devaluing Of The World And Its Creator.

When You're Sitting In Front Of A Screen, You're Not Using All Of Your Senses At The Same Time. Nowhere Than In Nature Do Kids Use Their Senses In Such A Stimulated Way.

Something Else Was Different When We Were Young: Our Parents Were Outdoors. I’m Not Saying They Were Joining Health Clubs And Things Of That Sort, But They Were Out Of The House, Out On The Porch, Talking To Neighbors. As Far As Physical Fitness Goes, Today’s Kids Are The Sorriest Generation In The History Of The United States. Their Parents May Be Out Jogging, But The Kids Just Aren’t Outside.

Nature Is Imperfectly Perfect, Filled With Loose Parts And Possibilities, With Mud And Dust, Nettles And Sky, Transcendent Hands-on Moments And Skinned Knees.

By Letting Our Children Lead Us To Their Own Special Places We Can Rediscover The Joy And Wonder Of Nature.

Environment-based Education Produces Student Gains In Social Studies, Science, Language Arts, And Math; Improves Standardized Test Scores And Grade-point Averages; And Develops Skills In Problem-solving, Critical Thinking, And Decision-making.

Time In Nature Is Not Leisure Time; It's An Essential Investment In Our Chidlren's Health (and Also, By The Way, In Our Own).

Nature-deficit Disorder Describes The Human Costs Of Alienation From Nature, Among Them: Diminished Use Of The Senses, Attention Difficulties, And Higher Rates Of Physical And Emotional Illnesses. The Disorder Can Be Detected In Individuals, Families, And Communities.

A Widening Circle Of Researchers Believes That The Loss Of Natural Habitat, Or The Disconnection From Nature Even When It Is Available, Has Enormous Implications For Human Health And Child Development. They Say The Quality Of Exposure To Nature Affects Our Health At An Almost Cellular Level.

Nature Is One Of The Best Antidotes To Fear.

The Times I Spent With My Children In Nature Are Among My Most Meaningful Memories-and I Hope Theirs.

Rather Than Accepting The Drifting Separation Of The Generations, We Might Begin To Define A More Complex And Interesting Set Of Life Stages And Parenting Passages, Each Emphasizing The Connections To The Generations Ahead And Behind. As I Grow Older, For Example, I Might First See My Role As A Parent In Need Of Older, Mentoring Parents, And Then Become A Mentoring Parent Myself. When I Become A Grandparent, I Might Expect To Seek Out Older Mentoring Grandparents, And Then Later Become A Mentoring Grandparent.

All Spiritual Life Begins With A Sense Of Wonder, And Nature Is A Window Into That Wonder.

It's Easy To Blame The Nature-deficit Disorder On The Kids' Or The Parents' Back, But They Also Need The Help Of Urban Planners, Schools, Libraries And Other Community Agents To Find Nature That's Accessible.

Kids And Adults Pay A Price For Too Much Tech, And It's Not Wholesale.

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