Why are children fearful of nature?  Author Richard Louv says “There’s this general fear of nature that’s growing...A lot of it is not about the joy of nature but the danger of nature.”

Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods is about as sobering a read as you’re going to find out there.  In it he introduces the phrase “nature-deficit disorder.”  Children simply aren’t getting the right information on nature.  They see grown men fighting alligators.  They see photographs of people who’ve been bitten by sharks.  They see films of animals chasing down and killing other animals and then eating them.  

They see nothing of the idyllic scene of a single child roaming the hills or inventing non-organized games or simply lying back and watching clouds go by near a river.  If children saw cattle being butchered everyday - would they really want a McDonalds’?

Abby Haight of the Oregonian writes that Louv has become “the face and voice for reuniting children and nature...”  He became “chairman of the Children & Nature Network and in January (08) was awarded the Audobon Medal by the National Audobon Society.”  Louv senses a rising awareness across America about the need for children to be reconnected with nature - as a fundamental part of their education.  They need to realize the importance of the natural world to their own psychological, emotional and physical well-being.  

Louv has found something amazing going on recently about the issue of children and nature. “It brings conservatives and liberals together.  It doesn’t make any difference their politics or their religion, they all want to tell me about their tree house, or that special place in the woods, that creek.  Almost everyone who had that experience has thought they could be the last generation to have it.  And to be the last generation to have it is unbearable.”

Haight writes, “Attendance had been falling in national parks for a decade until showing a small increase last year.  Studies showed that the rising sophistication of electronics in the past 10 years had accelerated society’s disengagement with nature...Despite evidence that most crimes against children are committed by family members...There was nature as destroyer, as shouted in television programs about wild animals attacks and vicious weather.  And there was nature under attack, told in earnest lectures about global warming, logging of the rain forests and unchecked pollution.”

Louv says that most of the ignorance about nature is from not letting children touch things.  When you touch a piece of bark, or a leaf, or put your hand in a creek of cold running water, those impressions go deep within.  And if the sun happens to be beaming down, that sense of peace and restfulness is unparalleled.  

Haight writes, “Parents of children with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and hyperactivity told Louv that a short walk in a park was a calming salve that allowed their children to focus.”  “When you get out in nature,” writes Louv, “all your senses are activated...That’s the very definition of optimum learning.  You’re open to knowledge.  You’re open to learning...What have we been doing?  Locking kids in windowless schools.  They can’t run on the playground.  They go home to a neighborhood association that outlaws chalk drawings” (on the sidewalk or streets).   So kids simply turn on the TV or play video games into the night.  And we wonder why they’re so bored with school?

In my next post you’ll read about the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge and how they put education and children first when it opened to the public two years ago.