Get out of the woods!
While living at a small apartment complex in the Adirondacks, surrounded by woods and streams and about a half mile from a river, I often observed children — varying in age from about four to twelve — playing in the parking lot. They didn’t play ball in the open grass. They didn’t climb trees in the woods. They didn’t play in the brooks running through the woods. They played on the blacktop.
I once asked a kid why he played in the parking lot instead of exploring the woods. “I’m not allowed to,” he said sadly.
When I walked my dog in the woods nearby, if one of the kids saw me, they always wanted to tag along, and were filled with questions about everything they saw. It seemed their parents never walked in the woods with them. They were always worried about coyotes. I imagined that their parents put that fear into them with silly stories.
One day a handful of boys between the ages of about seven and ten were running around playing, and found their way into the woods. I heard them out there from my window, and thought, “Good for them!”
Sure enough, within an hour I heard a man’s voice booming, “Get out of the woods!”
Get out of the woods? Get OUT of the WOODS? GET OUT OF THE WOODS??? This is something to say to a child?
When I was a kid, besides our house yard, the woods for miles around were our playground. It would have been unimaginable to hear my father yelling, “Get out of the woods!” On the contrary, he was more inclined to yell at us for running through the shrubs he planted around the house, using them for shelter in water-gun fights and hide-and-seek, complaining that we had so much woods to play in, there was no reason to be crashing through his plants.
What is a childhood without climbing trees? Without getting wet in the brook? Without catching frogs? Without digging rocks out of a stream to pile up in futile efforts to make a dam? What is a childhood without dirt? I believe that it leads to an adulthood lacking a realistic sense of reality, an irrational fear of Nature, and an imbalanced inner self lacking the inspiration of Nature. There are faculties of mind and body that only Nature can nurture. No television, computer, or electronic game can do it.
In an article for the National Wildlife Federation magazine adapted from his book, Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficiit Disorder, the author relates how his sixteen-year-old son asked him, “Dad, how come it was more fun when you were a kid?”
Louv explains about his son’s concern, “He was right. For eons, human beings spent most of their formative years in nature. But within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically.”
He adds, “Our children’s world, limitless in cyberspace, is shrinking in reality. A 1991 study, reported in the journal Environment and Behavior, found that by 1990 the radius within which children were allowed to roam on their own from home had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. … Society is sending an unintended message to children: Nature is the past, electronics are the future, and the bogeyman lives in the woods.”
Yeah, so what? Well, it matters.
Louv points out why:
Environmental psychologists report that exposure to nature around the home, or simply a room with a view of a natural landscape, helps protect the psychological well-being of children. Children with disabilities gain enhanced body image and positive behavior changes through direct interaction with nature. Studies of outdoor-education programs geared toward troubled youth—especially those diagnosed with mental-health problems—show a clear therapeutic value. Some of the most interesting research has been conducted at the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Researchers there have discovered that children as young as five showed a significant reduction in the symptoms of attention-deficit disorder when they engaged with nature.
Research also shows that schools that use outdoor classrooms and other methods of direct-experience learning produce students with improved standardized test scores and grade-point averages and enhanced skills in problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making. Last year, the California Department of Education and the American Institutes for Research revealed that sixth-grade kids in environment-based programs improved their math and science scores 27 percent. They were also more engaged in the classroom and more open to conflict resolution. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that time in natural surroundings stimulates children’s creativity.
It works for adults, too. Louv calls it “nature-deficit disorder,” and I believe that adults are susceptible to it, too.
Louv defines nature-deficit disorder as “… not an ordained medical diagnosis but my shorthand description of the human costs of alienation from nature. Among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. This disorder damages children and shapes adults, families, whole communities and the future of nature itself.”
Get out INTO the woods! For some ideas about how to reunite yourself and your children with nature, visit the NWF Greenhour page.
There is a related article link and blog postings on this topic in the Wall Street Journal blog, “The Juggle.”
Not convinced that there’s such a thing as nature-deficit disorder? Consider the growing number of research reports available at the Children & Nature Network, with titles like these:
- Direct Experience in Nature Is Critical and Diminishing
- Unstructured Free Play Brings Cognitive, Social and Health Benefits
- Direct Experience and Mentoring Are Key Elements
- Contact with Nature Is Important for Children
- Nature-Smart Kids Get Higher Test Scores
- School Achievement Is Enhanced When Curricula Are Environment Based
- More Evidence Corroborates Environment-Based School Achievement
- Outdoor Experience for Teens Has Self-Reported Life-Changing Results
- Green School Grounds Foster Achievement and Responsibility
- Naturalized School Grounds Benefit Children and Communities
- There Are More Benefits from Naturalized Playgrounds and School Grounds
- Schoolyard Habitat Projects Bring Natural Benefits to School and Students
- Natural Settings Provide Psychological Benefits
- Access to Nature Nurtures Self-Discipline
- Nearby Nature Reduces Stress in Children
- Nearby Nature Boosts Children’s Cognitive Functioning
- Design Cities Where Children Can Play and Learn Independently
- City Parks Bring Social, Community Health and Economic Benefits
- City Parks Offer a Sense of Place
GET INTO THE WOODS!
- The Balsamean
