Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv, Richard [best free novels txt] 📗

urbanized country where the young “have little contact with nature,” according to a survey of students from seven Dutch secondary schools by Wageningen scientist Jana Verboom-Vasiljev. “There is little sign that a love of nature is inculcated at home. Indeed, about three-quarters of the pupils thought there was only ‘a bit of interest’ for nature at home, and eleven per cent said there was none.” More than half never go to nature reserves and parks, zoos or botanical gardens. Most students were unable to name a single endangered plant species and knew only a few endangered animals. “The list of wild animals or plants they would miss if they became extinct was dominated by cuddly mammals or animals featured on television. . . . It was a surprise to find even pets and domesticated animals on the list,” said Verboom-Vasiljev, reporting the research findings. Although the research was conducted in the Netherlands, “the picture we obtained may also apply to at least the more urbanized regions of Europe where the cultural, economic and social climates are broadly similar.” Indeed, in Amsterdam, a study compared children’s play in the Netherlands in the 1950s and 1960s to child’s play in the first years of the twenty-first century: Children today play outside less often and for briefer periods; they have a more restricted home range and have fewer, less diverse playmates.

In the United States, children are spending less time playing outdoors—or in any unstructured way. 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. Also, Hofferth reports that children’s free play and discretionary time in a typical week declined a total of nine hours over a twenty-five-year period. Also, children spend less time playing outdoors than their mothers did when they were young, according to Rhonda L. Clements, a professor of education at Manhattanville College in New York State. She and her colleagues surveyed eight hundred mothers, whose responses were compared to the views of mothers interviewed a generation ago: 71 percent of today’s mothers said they recalled playing outdoors every day as children, but only 26 percent of them said their kids play outdoors daily. “Surprisingly, the responses did not vary a great deal between mothers living in rural and urban areas,” Clements reported. “However, this finding coincides with research conducted in England and Wales.” The results of those studies negated the assumption that children living in rural areas would have access to greater public space for play and recreation. They found that farmlands, with their restricted use and lack of local supervision for children’s activities, did not offer the rural child more opportunities for outdoor experiences.

Some researchers have suggested that the nature deficit is growing fastest in English-speaking countries. That may be true, but the phenomenon is occurring in developing countries in general. The Daily Monitor, published in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, issued a plea in March 2007 for parents to get their children out of the house and into the outdoors, noting that “many Ethiopians will have reached adulthood far removed from outdoor experiences.”

One U.S. researcher suggests that a generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces. Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology (the study of human movement), calls them “containerized kids”—they spend more and more time in car seats, high chairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children do go outside, they’re often placed in containers—strollers—and pushed by walking or jogging parents. Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long-term health of these children is compromised. In the medical journal the Lancet, researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland reported a study of toddler activity where the researchers clipped small electronic accelerometers to the waistbands of seventy-eight three-year-olds for a week. They found that the toddlers were physically active for only twenty minutes a day. Similar patterns were found among Ireland’s rural children. Clearly the childhood break from nature is part of a larger dislocation—physical restriction of childhood in a rapidly urbanizing world, with nature experience a major casualty.

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.

Nature-Deficit Disorder

The overarching importance of this research combined with our knowledge of other changes in the culture demands a shorthand description. So, for now, let’s call the phenomenon nature-deficit disorder. Our culture is so top-heavy with jargon, so dependent on the illness model, that I hesitate to introduce this term. Perhaps a more appropriate definition will emerge as the scientific research continues. And, as mentioned earlier, I am not suggesting that this term represents an existing medical diagnosis. But when I talk about nature-deficit disorder with groups of parents and educators, the meaning of the phrase is clear. 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. Nature deficit can even change human behavior in cities, which could ultimately affect their design, since long-standing studies show a relationship between the absence, or inaccessibility, of parks and open space with high crime rates, depression, and other urban maladies.

As the following chapters explain, nature-deficit disorder can be recognized and reversed, individually and culturally. But deficit is only one side of the coin. The other is natural abundance. By weighing the consequences of the disorder, we also can become more aware of how blessed our children can be—biologically, cognitively, and spiritually—through positive physical