: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
by Richard Louv, copyright 2005
"A sense of wonder and joy in nature should be at the very center of ecological literacy." -- page 221
The first part of this book asks, Why? Then Louv wants us to decide, How?
1. Why?
Why do we need nature?
.....for health, creativity, stress-relief, spirituality, finding future stewards of nature
Why are children not outside more?
.....time constraints, fear, changes in education, criminalization of nature
2. How?
How do we reunite children with nature?
.....nature as teacher, camp revival, decriminalizing natural play
How do we build a movement?
.....think green, believe in seeds, help good works take root, create a zoopolis
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Questions:
1. What direct experiences with nature did you have as a child?
2. Have the places for these experiences disappeared?
3. Are our children and grandchildren spending less time outdoors? Why?
4. Why is direct experience with the natural world so important for children?
5. What would be a good way to get children back to nature?
6. Do you have any ideas for fostering awareness of the human need for nature?
7. What hopeful things do you see happening in your own town or neighborhood?
8. How does direct experience with nature provide spirituality and promote sustainability?
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3 comments:
1. What direct experiences with nature did you have as a child?
I played in the woods, climbed trees, swung on vines, went camping and hiking and swimming in freezing cold mountain lake waters. I suffered the itchy pain of poison ivy and poison oak, rode a bike with my hair blowing in the wind, played in the grass, dug in the ground, got stung by bees. I saw a "dark wood" cut down to make way for small houses in the city, only a block or so from my house. I ate plums while sitting in the plum tree, planted okra and radishes that we actually ate, smelled my grandmother's hyacinths near my sandbox in the back yard. Mother took us to feed the ducks at East Lake Park. I watched my cat have kittens, had a variety of pets over the years ~ cats, dogs, turtles, fish, and two white ducks that were later served for dinner. I couldn't eat my friends.
2. Have the places for these experiences disappeared?
Many of them have, but there are still places near the homes of my children and grandchildren. My children grew up with cats, dogs, turtles, fish, and a hamster named Herman. They had a treehouse beside the mountain stream running (and sometimes flooding or raging) through our back yard. That's where my children watched frogs, captured salamanders, and shivered at the sight of snakes on the warm stones.
3. Are our children and grandchildren spending less time outdoors? Why?
My 19-year-old granddaughter says her little sister, age 6, doesn't play outside as much as SHE did as a child. Maybe it's because the little one has nobody to play with. Maybe it's because her mother doesn't allow her outside alone. Maybe there just isn't as much time for play as there used to be.
4. Why is direct experience with the natural world so important for children?
I think we need to be in touch with Mother Nature so we can know ourselves better. My ex-husband truly didn't know that popcorn comes from corn, and he was born in 1934. Some of us experienced nature more directly than others of us, though the problem may be worse now than in the past.
5. What would be a good way to get children back to nature?
Take them to places like Reflection Riding, the duck pond in White Oak, or anywhere big enough to fly a kite. Get a microscope and let the children look at pond water they have collected themselves. Get a bird book, put a bird feeder outside your window, and then help the children identify the visitors.
6. Do you have any ideas for fostering awareness of the human need for nature?
Being a teacher, my first thought is always that we need to educate people. Perhaps I can do that through writing letters and articles for the local newspapers and here on my blog.
7. What hopeful things do you see happening in your own town or neighborhood?
Chattanooga has gone from the city with the worst polution in the 1960s to a really beautiful place today. We continue to beautify our town, especially along the waterfront ~ see, for example, a picture of Coolidge Park at the bottom of this blog, also showing the Walnut Street Bridge, which has been turned into a walking bridge that brings in people from all over town. We have set aside natural places like Audabon Acres and Reflection Riding for people, not just indoor museums which we also have.
8. How does direct experience with nature provide spirituality and promote sustainability?
We don't respect something if we don't KNOW it, so we need to help people KNOW nature if we ever hope to encourage them to save it from what we are collectively doing to our planet.
Another look at the first three questions:
1. What direct experiences with nature did you have as a child?
Hyacinths
We moved into my Grandmother Reynolds’s house after she died in 1943. Beside my sandbox in the backyard were the hyacinths she had put there. To this day, the smell – or even sight – of hyacinths takes me back to that shady corner of the yard, with the birds flying and chirping above.
Plum Tree
Beside the driveway at that some house (3208 5th Avenue) was a plum tree, which became my climbing tree. I would pick ripe, purple plums and eat their warm, juicy flesh there in the tree. When we had watermelon, it was under that tree that we ate it, getting all sticky from the juice. Afterwards, we rinsed off using the outdoor faucet that was under that tree, coming up from the ground a foot or two. Nearby were two rows of Concord grapes growing along prepared wooden fences.
A Dark Wood
A block and a half from that house, our street ended at 31st Street where the big trees looked black and menacing like the forest Hansel and Gretel got lost in. Before I was old enough to explore those woods, “they” came in, but down ALL the trees, put in streets, and “planted” little boxy houses that are there to this day. Instead of a dark woods, I could see only small 1940’s houses and the brightness of open sky, all the way to East Lake Courts.
Swinging Vines
When we moved (to 1517-1/2 East 26th Street), I played in the woods there. We neighborhood children tramped paths through those woods and had our favorite places. All of us kids especially liked the fat vines hanging from near the tops of some trees near a red-dirt bank. Someone would grab a vine and swing it to you as you stood atop the bank. You’d grab it and swing out into the woods where you’d let go and drop a LONG way down. You’d have to time it just right or you’d land in scratchy bushes or against another tree!
Climbing Tree
Was I a child at 28 or 30? Sure, probably, because I still had a climbing tree in our yard on East Brow Road. One year when David was very young, he gave me a green Duncan yo-yo for my birthday. The string was WAY too long, and any sensible person would have tied a know and cut the string to fit. Instead, I yealled “C’mon!” to the kids and ran down the stairs, through the basement garage, and out to our climbing tree – a big dogwood beside the driveway. I climbed the tree and yo-yo’ed with that long string, while David laughed with glee and both girls encouraged me to get down before one of the neighbors saw me!
Camping
Between the ages of 10 and 14, I went camping in the summers at Fall Creek Falls, once with Carolyn and the Girl Scouts, and other times with the Methodist youth. We hiked through the woods, crossed a swinging bridge, swam in a freezing lake fed by a mountain stream. My kneecaps may have been chattering up and down, but that’s where I learned to swim. When we hiked to Cane Creek Falls once, we were allowed to swim in the water below the falls, scrambling over the wet, round boulders. On another hike, Pat Turner put a baby snake in her shirt pocket while the rest of us girls screamed.
Lumpy Snake
Still a child at 41 or so? Yeah, I think I’ve kept my childlike spirit. One day while working in the den with the windows open to sounds of nature – like the stream flowing over the rapids in the corner of our yard – I heard a change in the sounds of nature. A couple of birds were screaming as they flew madly around a tree, darting at the tree and flying away. I went outside and stood at the bottom of the tree, where I could see slithering down a long snake with two or three “lumps” in its belly. The birds were expressing their outrage at the snake for stealing their babies.
Ocean Battle
When my sister and I were in our teens, we were in the ocean at Daytona Beach, riding the waves in to shore side-by-side on a float. One wave picked up our feet, tossed our legs into the air, and pushed us shoreward with our heads down in the water. The float gave the wave a solid wall to push against, keeping our heads in place on the other side. I couldn’t breathe for so long that I was sure I was going to die. On a calm, clear, beautiful day, I learned about the power of the sea.
2. Have the places for these experiences disappeared?
Yes, and no. The dark woods at the end of my street disappeared in the 1940s. Fall Creek Falls is no longer a camp site, but a resort. My grandmother’s yardwork continued to flower for over 40 years after her death, even though we had moved away. (I would drive by that house and look at her towering crepe myrtles occasionally, though I couldn’t see what was happening in the backyard where the hyacinths grew.) The plum tree and grandmother’s grapevines are long gone, but her white-flowering bushes along the front porch lived years and years. The swinging vines are gone, along with the houses on East 26th Street, cleared out when Interstate 24 went through the neighborhood.
On the other hand, the United Methodists now have Camp Lookout and the Girl Scouts have Camp Adahi. Children can still hike in the woods at those camps on Lookout Mountain. The dogwood tree still stands beside the driveway on East Brow Road, and my children’s children have had “tree houses” built in their yards. Also, new greenways have been opened so people can have a place to go.
3. Are our children and grandchildren spending less time outdoors? Why?
My Children
When the Mitchells bought the property on East Brow Road between our house and the Holts, we lost our wooded area on that end of the house. I got a photo of David, crying, as he hauled branches and limbs out of the woods as he dismantled his fort. A depression left from a long-gone tree had been the center of his fort, a place already lower than the ground level. He lost his fort and playground to progress.
Clyde built the children a “tree house” platform beside a tree. He nailed boards on the tree so they could climb up onto the platform, which had a railing all around it. Underneath he added boards to the legs to form a sandbox for them to play in. That one was near the house and I could keep an eye on them as they played. When they were a bit older, he built them an enclosed tree house in the woods near the stream. There were windows cut into the walls, with hinges that allowed them to open or close the windows, and access was by rope ladder through a hold in the floor. That tree house was roofed so they could play inside even on rainy days. Clyde painted the whole thing a dark gray so it would blend in better with the woods.
We had a 19-foot Lightning sailboat when our children were young. They were not particularly fond of sailing, but they did love to dive off the boat as we approached the shore and race each other to the floating dock. It helped to improve their swimming.
One daughter, Sandra, chose as her Science Fair project to see if talking to plants made a difference to their growth. Sure enough, the plant she talked to grew bigger and taller than the other plant. On the day of the Science Fair, she proudly took the plants to school and set up her display. After the Science Fair, I learned there had been a big, big problem. Sandra was worried that the judges wouldn’t see the plants in time because things were changing rapidly. It seems the children who came through to see the various projects were ruining hers … by talking to the poor little plant. Believe it or not, that plant started growing, too, basking in the glow of all the attention given by the children!
We also took our children on outings to places like Chickamauga National Park, where we wandered among the monuments on the battlefield. We once took along our bicycles and took to the roads in the park. The playground and swimming pool on Signal Mountain was a frequent destination, and as they got older they were allowed to ride their bicycles all over the mountain. Once my son, David, returned to say he had looked in the library that was newly opened – and I had more books at home than they did.
When my son was a toddler and the twins not much older, we used the little pink bathtub as a sled in the snow. It was David’s turn to come down the sloping hill from the driveway, so Barbara and Sandra helped get the “sled” started while I waited at the bottom of the hill to stop it from going into our cold mountain stream. Oops! The little baby tub stopped a few feet from where it started. I trudged up the snowy hill to get it moving, but that, dear hearts, was not a great idea. I got it moving, all right, zipping right along, and – plop! – dumping poor David into the cold water. He was gasping from the cold when I got to him, but no problem. We just ended the sledding a bit sooner than planned!
My Grandchildren
All of them have had swingsets in their yards and wooded areas around them, but they have lots more scheduled activities now than children once had. Chase and Jamey developed an interest in skateboards, so they spent time out of doors. Most of them have been to the beach. One big difference is that, because their parents work, most of the grandkids have spent a lot of time in daycare. I was a stay-at-home mom and could take my toddlers for neighborhood walks, push them down snowy hills, and climb trees with them. My children don’t have the time I did.
From the book:
Madhu Narayan was three months old when her parents, recent immigrants from India, took her camping for the first time. A few years later, they drove across the West, camping as they went. Narayan figures her parents didn’t have a lot of money, and camping was an inexpensive way to see their nation of choice. “We moved through days of beautiful weather, and then the rains came,” she says. During a lightning storm, the wind blew away the family’s tent, and they slept in the car listening to the banshees of wind and rain howl and crash through the woods. Even now, at thirty, Narayan shivers as she tells this story. -- page 151
Clyde and I took the children camping in Florida one year. We reached the beach, but could see a storm approaching. We cleared a spot, channeled a “moat” around it so rain would not go UNDER the tent, and then we got that tent up as fast as we could, just as the rain hit, hard! We zipped ourselves inside the tent and kept from getting wet, but all our things were still inside the station wagon, parked a wet-making run from where we sat on the floor of the tent. The children were bored within minutes. The rain went on and on and on for hours, or … lol … for at least 30 minutes, but guess what? We all survived the wind ruffling the tent, the rain soaking the sand around us, the impossibly long wait. And that’s the most exciting thing that happened on the whole trip.
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