Today’s Children Disconnected from Nature
by Patty Brown, THB ExCom
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder was a selection for our Nature Book Discussion Group at All Souls Church over a year ago. I was reminded of the importance of its message late in April this year when the author, Richard Louv, came to the Plaza library to speak about his book. Louv shared his heartfelt memories as a child enjoying the outdoors in the Kansas City area. He also shared his enthusiastic hope for Kansas City to be a leader of cities environmentally. “The woods are in my heart and I still go to them,” he said, even to the extent of pulling out survey stakes, back then, when he felt ownership of the area. The audience chuckled in understanding, a few admitting to being part of that “secret society.” “I dislike seeing my favorite childhood place on the pages of magazines for everyone to see and know and possibly take advantage of too much.”

The book starts out by explaining the gifts of nature, including and especially those pertaining to the nurturing of our holistic health; our physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. Louv puts our relationship with nature into historical perspective by describing three frontiers; the original American pioneers’ frontier that ended when the West was conquered, the period of farms and parks that were preserved, and the present situation of very few family farms and less parks or “nearby nature” for kids to play in. Many environmentalists learned about nature by being out in it as a child, having their special, perhaps sacred, “place.” Today young people know about ecology, but not the “woods.”

Now children spend much of their time indoors with technology, which requires a very directed attention vs. the natural fascination type of attention that one experiences outdoors. This first type is very draining, whereas the natural type, in which all of our senses are attuned, is both energizing and calming. Along with medicine and behavioral therapy, nature therapy can be seen as a third alternative to treatment for Attention Deficit Disorder—especially since there is evidence that this problem has been over diagnosed in this country, and since people are seeing nature as effective. “Even Ansel Adams was kicked out of school related to restlessness, which his parents dealt with by taking him on trips in nature,” claimed Louv. Activity outdoors has also been seen as helpful to deal with our epidemic of childhood obesity and mental illness. More and more recent research is supporting these findings.

Throughout human history, until very recently, humans have spent most of their time outdoors as hunters and gatherers, so being outdoors is part of who we are. It has been suggested that there is another aspect of intelligence, “nature intelligence,” that is related to creativity and should be recognized. It may be found in the great minds of Ben Franklin, Joan of Arc, Jane Goodall, John Muir, Mark Twain, T.S. Elliot, Thomas Edison, and Eleanor Roosevelt. E.O. Wilson defined biophilia as “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life,” and says humans have an innate affinity for nature, probably a biologically based need integral to our development. Years later in 1992, Theodore Rosak argued that modern psychology had split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our “ecological unconscious” that provides “our connection to our evolution on earth.” The American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual describes ‘separation anxiety disorder’ as excessive anxiety about separation from home and parents, but has not yet diagnosed the pervasive problem of our time, our disconnection from the natural world.

Probably the biggest problem related to this disconnect is that we are now scared of the outdoors. We live in a culture of fear that is largely due to the stories reported by the media. Stranger abduction is exaggerated and its true rate of occurrence has been steady or decreasing. Most violence against children is committed by people they know. Other dangers associated with the outdoors, such as violence in parks, are also exaggerated. Crime rates for National parks, relatively speaking, are very low. Actually staying indoors is more dangerous.  Besides the health problems already mentioned, along with family violence, the brown recluse spider, for example, is found in houses, often under clothes left on the floor, as we can remind our children, and can cause great tissue damage and even death. People are also afraid of lawsuits, and communities have ruled against such things as tree-houses, forts, flower pots, chalk drawing and running on the playground. “We need to weigh the risks with the possible benefits,” says Louv.

Environmentalists can take a look at how we have presented nature to children. Children have been educated about all the possible catastrophes, to the point that they don’t want to or can’t deal with it. The average Sierra Club member is now around 50 years old or more, so where are the future stewards of the planet? Isn’t it time to focus our energy in this direction more than we have been? In addition to the polar bear, the human child can also be seen as an indicator species. The health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable.

Nature is also discussed in the book as a spiritual necessity. When Louv testified in Congress and the discussion turned to childhood places and experiences outdoors, it was evident that it didn’t matter what political party a person was from, because people were inspired to let down their defenses finding common ground in the joy of sharing their nature memories. With children too, if you use the right approach and get children to get involved in the outdoors, they seem to be hard-wired to love it. As I saw at an area nature center recently, the new theme to encourage natural child development is “no child left indoors.”

Louv gives many examples of things we can do and that have been started to fuel a fourth frontier, a reconnecting to the land movement, on various levels; as a parent, a school, or a city. (The updated version of the book actually describes the progress of a “children in nature movement,” presents new research and contains a field guide with many actions we can take and discussion points for groups.) An interesting question related to the loss of natural history education is: If the last tree of a particular species fell in the woods and you didn’t know its name, did it exist? Louv said that when he spoke to a group of about 200 high-school kids, the group was silent. He talked about having better health in nature, about using all your senses, about the climate and about how everything was going to change. “They listened because I was hopeful.” They’ve heard too much of the negative. Louv related that his son had said, “It’s too painful to think of nature being destroyed.” The real possibility is that this may become the most creative period in human history.