Nature introduces children to the idea – to the knowing – that they are not alone in this world, and that realities and dimensions exist alongside their own.
Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.
As the young spend less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically and this reduces the richness of human experience we need contact with nature.
Now, my tree-climbing days long behind me, I often think about the lasting value of those early, deliciously idle days. I have come to appreciate the long view afforded by those treetops. The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.
This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning.
One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.
We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children’s memories, the adventures we’ve had together in nature will always exist.
The real cultural war is between the culture of narcissism and what might be called the culture of renewal.
In medieval times, if someone displayed the symptoms we now identify as boredom, that person was thought to be committing something called acedia, a ‘dangerous form of spiritual alienation’ – a devaluing of the world and its creator.
What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it’s biological name? Did it exist?
Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.
The pleasure of being alive is brought into sharper focus when you need to pay attention to staying alive.
A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level.
Another British study discovered that average eight-year-olds were better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game Pokemon than native species in the community where they lived: Pikachu, Metapod, and Wigglytuff were names more familiar to them than otter, beetle, and oak tree.
Numerous studies document the benefits to students from school grounds that are ecologically diverse and include free play areas, habitats for wildlife, walking trails, and gardens.
Quite simply, when we deny our children nature, we deny them beauty.
A natural environment is far more complex than any playing field.
If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other species, never experiences the richness of nature, what happens to that child?
Nature is one of the best antidotes to fear.
Use all of your senses.