Richard Louv
There is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy.Collection: Nature
Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I’m not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors. As far as physical fitness goes, today’s kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren’t outside.Collection: Kids
The real cultural war is between the culture of narcissism and what might be called the culture of renewal.Collection: Real
We do not raise our children alone.... Our children are also raised by every peer, institution, and family with which they come in contact. Yet parents today expect to be blamed for whatever results occur with their children, and they expect to do their parenting alone.Collection: Children
Use all of your senses.Collection: Nature
Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it's not wholesale.Collection: Kids
Increasingly the evidence suggests that people benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Giving Up
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.Collection: War
If we desire a kinder nation, seeing it through the eyes of children is an eminently sensible endeavor: A city that is pro-child,for example, is also a more humane place for adults.Collection: Children
Natural playgrounds may decrease bullying.Collection: Bullying
Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Kids
It takes time--loose, unstructured dreamtime-- to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because we intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play.Collection: Meaningful
Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation; the first truly multicultural generation; the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television; the first post-sexual revolution generation; the first generation for which nature is more abstraction than reality; the first generation to grow up in new kinds of dispersed, deconcentrated cities, not quite urban, rural, or suburban.Collection: Change
The dugout in the weeds or leaves beneath a backyard willow, the rivulet of a seasonal creek, even the ditch between the front yard and the road-all of these places are entire universes to a young child.Collection: Weed
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.Collection: Character
Nature is one of the best antidotes to fear.Collection: Nature
The future will belong to the nature-smart.Collection: Smart
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?Collection: Meaningful
By letting our children lead us to their own special places we can rediscover the joy and wonder of nature.Collection: Nature
We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn't count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.Collection: Kids
When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children's, and of what our children's future will hold.Collection: Children
These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.Collection: These Days
Green exercise improves psychological health.Collection: Exercise
The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories-and I hope theirs.Collection: Meaningful
What happens when all the parts of childhood are soldered down, when the young no longer have the time or space to play in their family's garden, cycle home in the dark with the stars and moon illuminating their route, walk down through the woods to the river, lie on their backs on hot July days in the long grass, or watch cockleburs, lit by morning sun, like bumblees quivering on harp wires? What then?Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Nature
This tree house became our galleon, our spaceship, our Fort Apache...Ours was a learning tree. Through it we learned to trust ourselves and our abilities.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Organization
What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community?Collection: Country
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.Collection: Spiritual
It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.Collection: School
Quite simply, when we deny our children nature, we deny them beauty.Collection: Nature
Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing?Collection: Nature
The physical exercise and emotional stretching that children enjoy in unorganized play is more varied and less time-bound than is found in organized sports. Playtime—especially unstructured, imaginative, exploratory play—is increasingly recognized as an essential component of wholesome child development.Collection: Sports
Most people are either awakened to or are strengthened in their spiritual journey by experiences in the natural world.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Children
The future will belong to the nature-smart...Th e more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.Collection: Smart
Being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child's attention span.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Nature
There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.Collection: Growing Up
Children who played outside every day, regrdless of weather, had better motor coordination and more ability to concentrate.Collection: Nature
All spiritual life begins with a sense of wonder, and nature is a window into that wonder.Collection: Spiritual
To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.Collection: Nature
By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.Collection: Humility
Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child's life. You'll likely never see a slick commercial for nature therapy, as you do for the latest antidepressant pharmaceuticals. But parents, educators, and health workers need to know what a useful antidote to emotional and physical stress nature can be. Especially now.Collection: Children
There’s no denying the benefits of the Internet. But electronic immersion, without a force to balance it, creates the hole in the boat — draining our ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to be productive and creative.Collection: Thinking