Children need nature for the healthy development of their senses, and therefore, for learning and creativity.
How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?
Each of us-adult or child-must earn nature’s gift by knowing nature directly, however difficult it may be to glean that knowledge in an urban environment.
There is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy.
Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it’s not wholesale.
Studies of children in playgrounds with both green areas and manufactured play areas found that children engaged in more creative forms of play in the green areas.
All spiritual life begins with a sense of wonder, and nature is a window into that wonder.
Green exercise improves psychological health.
There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.
No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.
Now, more than ever, we need nature as a balancing agent.
As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.
Reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.
Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they’re doing pretty well, all things considered.
When you’re sitting in front of a screen, you’re not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.
These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.
A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that’s not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define ’nature.
As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.
I do not trust technology. I mean, I don’t think we’re in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.
If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There’s not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.