Encouraging a Nature-Child Reunion

A recent editorial in the Seattle newspaper asks, “Can we help children reconnect?”

Can we give our children a way back -- past overdone fears and exaggerated safety rules, around today's electronic lures -- to the world of simple, free contact with the natural world that lightened the childhood of all our past generations?

A fine new book suggests reconnection is possible; it is spelled out in Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Nature deficit disorder is not a medical condition (though it may relate to rising trends in obesity, ADD, and depression). It is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature.

Historically, Louv notes, kids learned the natural world on farms, in families' gardens, and exploring woods and creeks and ravines, swamps and ponds where they could observe, capture minnows and bugs, collect bird eggs or snake skins -- or even build elaborate tree houses. There's strong evidence, he reports, that such independent play and exploration builds broad mental, physical and spiritual health.

But today's children, he asserts, are systematically cut off from natural play. "Well-meaning public-school systems, media and parents are effectively scaring children straight out of the woods and fields." The stated reasons seem endless, from Lyme's Disease to multiplying park rules to perceived perils of kid-snatching.

With today's superhighways, thick traffic, shopping malls and rigid control by community associations, fewer children get a chance to walk or bike to school. A study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990, the radius around the home that children were allowed to play had sunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970.

Increasingly, Louv laments, "Nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear -- to ignore." He cites a television ad that depicts an SUV racing along a breathtakingly beautiful mountain stream -- while two children in the back seat watch a movie on a flip-down video screen, oblivious to the landscape and water beyond the windows.

The irony is that much of parents' hyperawareness of dangers, and all the new restrictive rules, may make children less able to cope with their world. Natural play awakens children's self-confidence and critical skill to judge and cope with perils on their own.

Louv’s book is one new resource that camp leaders are paying attention to – making sure that our camps can be the “safe neighborhoods” in children’s lives where outdoor exploration can take place. We have intentionally chosen the style of camps that we offer, and we’ll continue to be places you can recommend to others who are looking for the kind of reconnection that Louv calls for to benefit all children.