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

moon illuminating their route, walk down through the woods to the river, lie on their backs on hot July days in the long grass, or watch cockleburs, lit by morning sun, like bumblebees quivering on harp wires? What then?

Creativity is so difficult to define and measure, so subjective by definition. Surely this limits our ability to apply scientific inquiry. Therefore, part of this discussion must take place where control groups never venture, in the realms of the poet, artist, or philosopher. Nature may inspire different kinds of creativity and different art than the built environment. Contemporary urban poets have moved away from Wordsworth and the Romantics, whose metaphors were shaped by sublime natural forces, whose rhythms were so often set by the cycles of nature. The newer language of art emanates from the human-built environment, from the street, from computers. This urban or electronic expression of creativity speaks to and for modern ears and eyes, and it has its own rhythms and metaphors.

Parents who wish to raise their children in a climate conducive to modern—or postmodern—creativity do well to expose them to that world, but not at the exclusion of the natural world.

Nature—the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful—offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. Nature presents the young with something so much greater than they are; it offers an environment where they can easily contemplate infinity and eternity. A child can, on a rare clear night, see the stars and perceive the infinite from a rooftop in Brooklyn. Immersion in the natural environment cuts to the chase, exposes the young directly and immediately to the very elements from which humans evolved: earth, water, air, and other living kin, large and small. Without that experience, as Chawla says, “we forget our place; we forget that larger fabric on which our lives depend.”

8. Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Restorative Environment

WITH IDEALISM AND TREPIDATION, a graduating college student anticipates becoming a teacher; but she is puzzled and upset by the school environment she experienced during her training. “With all of the testing in schools there is no time for physical education, let alone exploring the outdoors,” she says. “In one of my kindergarten classes, the kids get to run to a fence and then run back. That’s their P.E. They have to stay on the blacktop, or they can use one of the two swings available.” She doesn’t understand why P.E. is so limited, or why the playground can’t be more conducive to natural play. Many educators share her sentiment.

At least her school has recess. In the United States, as the federal and state governments and local school boards have pushed for higher test scores in the first decade of the twenty-first century, nearly 40 percent of American elementary schools either eliminated or were considering eliminating recess. In the era of test-centric education reform and growing fear of liability, many districts considered recess a waste of potential academic time or too risky. “Lifers at Leavenworth get more time in the exercise yard,” commented Sports Illustrated columnist Steve Rushin. School-based physical education was already on the wane. Between 1991 and 2003, the percentage of students who attended physical education class dropped from 42 percent to only 28 percent. Some states now allow students to earn P.E. credits online. Field trips were also cut. Even as school districts decreased students’ experiences beyond the classroom walls, they increased the number of school hours. Ironically, the detachment of education from the physical world not only coincided with the dramatic rise in life-threatening childhood obesity but also with a growing body of evidence that links physical exercise and experience in nature to mental acuity and concentration.

Now, for some good news. 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. Some researchers now recommend that parents and educators make available more nature experiences—especially green places—to children with ADHD, and thereby support their attentional functioning and minimize their symptoms. Indeed, this research inspires use of the broader term “nature-deficit disorder” as a way to help us better understand what many children experience, whether or not they have been diagnosed with ADHD. Again, I am not using the term nature-deficit disorder in a scientific or clinical sense. Certainly no academic researchers use the term, yet; nor do they attribute ADHD entirely to a nature deficit. But based on accumulating scientific evidence, I believe the concept—or hypothesis—of nature-deficit disorder is appropriate and useful as a layperson’s description of one factor that may aggravate attentional difficulties for many children.

First, consider the diagnosis and current treatments of choice.

Nearly 8 million children in the U.S. suffer from mental disorders, and ADHD is one of the more prevalent ones. The disorder often develops before age seven, and is usually diagnosed between the ages of eight and ten. (Some people use the acronym ADD, for attention deficit disorder, to mean ADHD without the hyperactive component. But ADHD is the more accepted medical diagnosis.) Children with the syndrome are restless and have trouble paying attention, listening, following directions, and focusing on tasks. They may also be aggressive, even antisocial, and may suffer from academic failure. Or, in the language of the American Psychiatric Association: “The essential feature of ADHD is a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity, impulsivity . . . more frequently displayed and more severe than is typically observed in individuals at a comparable level of development.” Some of the uninformed public tends to believe that poor parenting and other social factors produce the immature behavior associated with ADHD, but ADHD is now considered by many researchers to be an organic disorder associated with differences in the brain morphology of children.

Critics charge that often-prescribed stimulant medications such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamines (Dexedrine), though necessary in many cases, are overprescribed, perhaps as much as 10 to 40 percent of the time. Methylphenidate is a central nervous system stimulant and shares