Nature play needed for healthier kids!

RELEASE: Oct. 3, 2008 – Volume XL, No. 40

Do your children play outdoors? Not soccer or other organized sports. I mean old-fashioned play – building secret hideouts in the woods, looking for bugs to put in a jar, or jumping in piles of leaves. In other words, being kids!

In his book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, author Robert Louv explores the idea that the current generation of children is the first to spend more leisure time indoors than out. After extensive interviews with parents around the country, Louv concludes that a growing obsession with keeping our kids “safe” – from injury, predators, Lyme disease and more – is the cause. The average child isn’t engaging in the free-spirited, unstructured outdoor play that kids of earlier generations took for granted.

By protecting our children from our society’s ills, however, we are severing the almost primal connection between learning and the natural world. Louv contends the lack of outdoor time contributes to poorer health, shorter attention spans, and ignorance about and apathy toward nature.

He cites a growing body of scientific research suggesting that children who play outdoors, early and often, thrive in intellectual, spiritual and physical ways that their "shut-in" peers don’t – experiencing less stress, and demonstrating sharper concentration and better creative problem solving skills. Ongoing research suggests "nature-play" as a promising therapy for attention-deficit disorders.

What Louv examines from a “macro” sociological level, another recent book explores at the “micro” personal level.

In his delightful Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons, author Rick Van Noy looks to answer Louv’s call to action. The collection of essays chronicles his attempts to imbue his children with what naturalist Rachel Carson termed an “inner resource of strength” in her famous essay, The Sense of Wonder.

An associate professor of English at Radford University in Virginia, New Jersey native Van Noy eloquently recounts his experiences with his children: the pleasures of walking a creek, digging for salamanders and learning to appreciate vultures. The book is refreshingly accessible because it’s not about exploring the wonders of the Amazon or Arctic Circle. Rather, Van Noy describes familiar terrain – the backyard, tree house, hiking trail, vernal pools and even downtown.

Van Noy’s book is a great staring point for integrating a sense of wonder about the natural world into daily interactions with your children. No doubt, you will gain a bit of that sense, as well … and wouldn’t that be a nice change from the seemingly endless pressure and stress of everyday life?

And opportunities to explore nature are everywhere in New Jersey, despite its reputation as the Turnpike State! For example, the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association runs nearly 400 environmental education programs for about 10,000 participants each year, including many geared toward children and teens, from toddlers through high schoolers. New Jersey Audubon Society offers kids everything from summer camps to field trips to their wildlife centers throughout the state.

New Jersey has lots of local, county and state parks, as well as national wildlife areas – and new preserves are coming on-line all the time. With a little internet or phone book searching, you can easily find child-oriented environmental education activities near you. Whether you go to a petting zoo at a local farm, a nearby wildlife center or the state aquarium, you can find someone to teach you about just about any part of the natural world. Encourage your children to “nature-play” and explore, and watch them flourish!

Have fun outdoors, and I hope you’ll contact me at info@njconservation.org or visit www.njconservation.org for more information about conserving New Jersey’s precious land and natural resources.

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