By Katie Elliott
I was staring out a window, high up in the mountains in Colorado. My lap top wasn’t cooperating for about the fourth time that day, my blackberry wasn’t getting any service, I was sick of all 39 days worth of songs on my ipod, there was nothing on TV, and so I had nothing to distract me from gazing out and just observing. I was watching tiny snowflakes falling and hawks circling above huge pine trees. A rabbit ran across the field past a single little wildflower in bloom. It was amazingly beautiful and it hit me then that I hadn’t even given it a minute of my time because of all the electronic gadgets taking up space in my attention.
I gave up on my lap top ever working again and once I convinced myself that life would go on regardless, I spent more and more time out in nature. I am already a tree - hugging, nature lover and do spend what I would guess is more than an average amount of time out in it, but there are still times I get caught up and forget it for awhile, only to come back to it with a whole new outlook on the wonderful effects it has on me.
My first day back “to work” with my repaired computer, someone e-mailed me the webpage of Richard Louv. I was excited (and none-too -surprised, thanks Universe!) to see that this man, among other things, is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal, an award for the recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of conservation and environmental protection. He is chairman of the Children and Nature Network, and honorary co-chair of the National Forum on Children and Nature. So of course I ran out and got one of his books, Last Child in the Woods; Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.
It is a very thought-provoking and insightful book about the ways in which our children have developed “nature-deficit disorder.” The book and the organizations listed focus mainly on the effects of this on children, but hey, aren’t we all just big kids anyway? It affirmed for me a lot of what I had been feeling with regard to how important a little nature is for the soul. And, it’s got science to back it.
There is more and more research on the effects that nature has on our mental, physical, and spiritual health, with several of the studies suggesting that nature “can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. Studies suggest that nature may be useful as a therapy for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), used with or, when appropriate, even replacing medications or behavioral therapies. 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.”
Turn off the TV and Internet and Go Outside
“Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle maintains that each hour of TV watched per day by preschoolers increases by 10 percent the likelihood that they will develop concentration problems and other symptoms of attention-deficit disorders by age seven.
With the rate at which American children are being prescribed antidepressants almost doubling in five years – and that being among preschool children – experimenting with a little more time in nature is definitely worth a try.
And it’s not just the kids. Thanks to the internet, Americans especially are working more at home without cutting back any at the office. Americans spend more time on the road (commuting specifically), an average of 101 minutes a day which is “five times the amount of time they spend exercising. They also take fewer vacation days and work harder than the Japanese or Europeans. (In Germany, France, Denmark, Austria, Sweden and in several European nations, hours on the job decreased between the years 2000 and 2005.)”
“Nature-deficit disorder is not an official diagnosis but a way of viewing the problem, and 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.”
— Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
Here is some of the fascinating information I discovered by reading Last Child in the Woods, and from the Children and Nature Network (C & NN) website. The excerpt below was written by Cheryl Charles, Richard Louv, Lee Bodner, and Bill Guns in a report created for C&NN and titled Children and Nature 2008: A Report on the Movement to Reconnect Children to the Natural World. (The entire report can be viewed here childrenandnature.org/uploads/CNMovement.pdf)
“Parents and grandparents, friends, family, teachers, physicians and concerned citizens—people want to do what is right and best for children. And yet, in the past 20 to 30 years, without most of us realizing what was happening, lifestyle changes have accumulated with powerful and pervasive detrimental effects on children. Obesity, attention-deficit disorder, impaired social skills and what can be characterized as a “culture of depression” are adding to the stress levels and severely impacting our young.
Those are physical and psycho-social characteristics of the changes. And then there is more—less time outdoors, more time with electronic technology, little free and unstructured time, and even a 30 percent decrease in bicycle riding.
Urban, suburban, and even rural parents cite a number of everyday reasons why their children spend less time in nature than they themselves did, including safety concerns, disappearing access to natural areas, competition from television and computers, dangerous traffic, and more homework and other pressures. Most of all, parents cite fear of strangerdanger.
Conditioned by round-the-clock news coverage, they believe in an epidemic of abductions by strangers, despite evidence that the number has remained roughly the same for two decades at about 100 each year, and that the rates of violent crimes against young people have fallen to well below 1975 levels.
Well-intended parents drive themselves literally in circles to take their children to and from school, after school activities, sports events, dance class, clubs, church and social events. All of these activities have the potential to be of value, but life for these children, and their families, is out of balance.
The result? Children have little free time. Their lives are structured, organized, and timed nearly to the minute. When they are home, and could be playing outdoors, they are often tied to electronic umbilica.
In a typical week, only 6 percent of children, ages nine to thirteen, play outside on their own. Studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, and American Sports Data, a research firm, show a dramatic decline in the past decade in such outdoor activities as swimming and fishing.
In San Diego, California, according to a survey by nonprofit Aquatic Adventures, 90 percent of inner-city kids do not know how to swim; 34 percent have never been to the beach. In suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, teachers shake their heads in dismay when they describe the many students who have never been to the mountains, visible year-round on the western horizon. And in Holland, Michigan, some young people who come to the Outdoor Discovery Center for education based outings in the out-of-doors have collapsed into tears because they are afraid of the woods, and they cannot walk more than a few hundred yards before they are exhausted by the expenditure of physical energy.
Part of re-establishing a healthy balance for children, their families, and the environment, is to identify, synthesize and communicate the evidence about the benefits to children from having a connection to nature. The Children & Nature Network is assembling and featuring research on the consequences of “nature deficit” as well as the benefits to be gained by changing this pattern.
Research-Based Indicators of the Decline of Children’s Physical Activity Outdoors and Related Concerns
Children today spend less time playing outdoors. A Hofstra University survey of 800 mothers with children between the ages of 3 and 12 found that: 85 percent of the mothers agreed that today’s children play outdoors less often than children did just a few years ago; 70 percent of the mothers reported playing outdoors every day when they were young, compared with only 31 percent of their children. Also, 56 percent of mothers reported that, when they were children, they remained outdoors for three hours at a time or longer, compared with only 22 percent of their children.
From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children 9 to 12 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. Also, Hofferth reports that children’s free play and discretionary time declined more than seven hours a week from 1981 to 1997 and an additional two hours from 1997 to 2003, a total of nine hours less a week of time over a 25-year period.
Children at eight years old can identify 25 percent more Pokemon characters than wildlife species. The nature knowledge gap extends into the teen and college years. A researcher in England tested nearly 800 advanced level biology students (secondary school students in the United Kingdom who are generally 16 to 17 years of age) on their ability to identify 10 common wildflowers that were illustrated in color on a sheet of paper. The vast majority of these advanced biology students (86 percent) could not name more than three common wildflowers, and none could name all 10.
Children between the ages of six months and six years spend an average of 1.5 hours a day with electronic media, and youths between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media—that’s more than 45 hours a week.
Today’s children have a more restricted range in which they can play freely, have fewer playmates, and their friends are less diverse. The percentage of children who live within a mile of school and who walk or bike to school has declined nearly 25 percent in the past 30 years. Today, barely 21 percent of children live within one mile of their school. In another survey, 71 percent of adults report that they walked or rode a bike to school when they were children, but only 22 percent of children do so today.
Children predominantly play at home, with their activities monitored and controlled by adults, compared to children a generation ago. Only 3 percent of today’s children have a high degree of mobility and freedom in how and where they play. According to Stephen Kellert, professor of social ecology at Yale, experience in a surrounding home territory, especially in nearby nature, is linked to shaping children’s cognitive maturation, including the developed abilities of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
Obesity in children has increased from about 4 percent in the 1960s to close to 20 percent in 2004. Approximately 60 percent of obese children ages five to ten have at least one cardiovascular disease risk factor, while the Journal of the AmericanMedical Association reported an upward trend in high blood pressure in children ages eight to eighteen. Research has not been conducted on the specific association between nature play and obesity in children, but we do know that children are more physically active when they are outside — a boon at a time of sedentary lifestyles and epidemic overweight.
Why are children spending less time outside? One study found that 94 percent of parents surveyed said that safety is their biggest concern when making decisions about whether to allow their children to engage in free play in the out-of-doors. Similarly, of 800 mothers surveyed by a Hofstra University researcher, 82 percent cited crime and safety concerns as one of the primary reasons they do not allow their children to play outdoors. But 85 percent of the mothers identified their child’s television viewing and computer game playing as the number one reason, and 77 percent cited inadequate time to spend outdoors with their children.
These studies, and more, are best understood when contrasted with the positive benefits of nature engagement. The physical benefits are obvious—more outdoor play, of any kind, will help prevent child obesity. In fact, the role of nature experiences is underappreciated, but that could change quickly as current approaches to child obesity do not appear to be adequate.
Other benefits are more subtle and no less important: the psychological, cognitive and creative gifts that nature experience offers children. Children are smarter, more cooperative, happier and healthier when they have frequent and varied opportunities for free and unstructured play in the out-of-doors. Green plants and play yards reduce children’s stress. Free play in natural areas enhances children’s cognitive flexibility, problem-solving ability, creativity, self-esteem, and self-discipline.
Students score higher on standardized tests when natural environments are integral to schools’ curricula. Effects of attention-deficit disorder are reduced when children have regular access to the out-of-doors.
‘Natural spaces and materials stimulate children’s limitless imaginations and serve as the medium of inventiveness and creativity,’ says Robin Moore, an international authority on the design of environments for children’s play, learning, and education.
Health care providers are beginning to recognize the therapeutic attributes of nature, for attention disorders and depression in adults and children. For example, a UK study released in April, 2007 shows the benefits of “green treatment,” or ecotherapy—including walks in the woods and gardening. According to the study, 71 percent of people with mental health disorders reported that taking a walk decreased their depression and tension.
Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity, called for a shift to such treatments, augmenting traditional therapies. ‘Mind sees ecotherapy as an important part of the future for mental health. It's a credible, clinically-valid treatment option and needs to be prescribed by GPs, especially when for many people access to treatments other than antidepressants is extremely limited,’ said Mind's chief executive Paul Farmer. While most research in this arena has been done on adults, a growing body of evidence suggests the positive power of nature engagement during the most vulnerable years of human development.”
Nature is healing so think about how much time you and the children in your life spend outdoors enjoying the natural world. If you suffer from “nature-deficit disorder” it’s not too late to get out there under the sky, on the earth, and amid all the plants and creatures in between and receive some of its many offerings.
Resources:
Last Child in the Woods; Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. http://richardlouv.com
Children and Nature 2008: A Report on the Movement to Reconnect Children to the Natural World.
childrenandnature.org/uploads/CNMovement.pdf
The Children and Nature Network. www.childrenandnature.org
