Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder?

[livius drusus]

I read this Salon intervew (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/06/02/Louv/index.html) with the author of a new book which suggests:

that while increased exposure to nature may prove a salve for many of the childhood disorders that now run rampant, the very ubiquity of those disorders is evidence that two generations of alienation from nature may have already resulted in considerable harm to our kids.

Louv is careful to underscore that he does not consider NDD an actual psychological disorder, but rather a societal disfunction which might play a role in the spike in conditions such as childhood obesity and Attention Deficit Disorder.

Why, in the age of ADHD, did you choose such a loaded name?

Because I do think it is a disorder, just one of society. I am very careful in the book not to give the suggestion that this is some kind of clinical diagnosis. Maybe someday it will be, but until the scientists come up with a better name, that's the one I'm using.

It's an interesting contention and one that makes intuitive sense to me. I immediately thought of this post (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=20789#post20789) The Lone Ranger made a while back where he recalls his own outdoorsy childhood.

When I was a kid I had an intimate knowledge of woods and fields, to the extent that I pulled up hundreds of survey stakes to protect them from bulldozers. I really had a sense of ownership -- I had no clue that my woods were connected to other woods ecologically. It's the reverse now. Kids today can tell you lots of things about the Amazon rain forest; they can't usually tell you the last time they lay out in the woods and watched the leaves move. It's not that learning about the Amazon is bad -- it's great, and I'm glad it's happening -- the problem is, it becomes an intellectualized relationship with nature. And I don't think there's much that can replace wet feet and dirty hands. It's one thing to read about a frog, it's another to hold it in your hand and feel its life.

I could probably quote the entire interview, really, because it's all fascinating, but I'll leave it at this and see what y'all think.

What was your childhood relationship to nature? If you're a parent now, how do your kids interact with the local ecosystem?

[LadyShea]

but rather a societal disfunction which might play a role in the spike in conditions such as childhood obesity and Attention Deficit Disorder.

Which makes perfect sense if you think about it. Kids who are watching TV, playing video games, eating fast food, going from one scheduled activity to another every day etc. are always having their senses bombarded from the outside. ADD might be conditioned as these kids never learned to pay close attention to anything, contemplate things, quietly observe, or to comfort themselves, or entertain themselves.

What was your childhood relationship to nature?

All of our two week vacations when I was a child were to national or state parks. Lassen, Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, and Death Valley are ones I vividly remember. Also, we lived near hundreds (maybe thousands) of acres belonging to Getty Oil that were undeveloped (where they filmed Little House on the Prairie for an idea of what it looked like) where we would go hiking regularly. My parents belonged to various clubs that often had campouts, and went boating a lot. My grandparents lived in the Mojave desert and my brother and cousins and I would hike and catch lizards and snakes and observe the hawks, jackrabbits, roadrunner, etc.

When I was 10 we moved to Colorado, right in the foothills and forest. We played flashlight tag in the woods, snowmobiled in our backyard, and swam in the nearby lake. When I was a teen we partied at the top of Mt. Herman and would have bonfires. I grew up with nature a regular part of life.

Edited to note I have put the book on Barnes and Noble wish list. Sounds really interesting

[viscousmemories]

I was never really much interested in nature as a kid. I was way more interested in electronics (be it TV or toys). I do remember doing things like wading in the Huron River in Ann Arbor, catching tadpoles and once killing a big catfish with a big rock. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I immediately felt terrible when I saw it dead. Years later I found out the Huron River was notoriously polluted, but I haven't come down with any rare diseases yet.

[Clutch Munny]

I lived on a farm and in tiny towns. Like 50-100 people. I spent virtually all of my spare time outside, and learned shit about the natural world that I didn't know I knew until I started meeting other people who hadn't a clue about them.

Indeed, the idea of "nature" as most North Americans now conceive it didn't occur to me until I was an adult and living in large cities; before that, I didn't have sufficient separation from the idea to fully grasp it.

I worry that my kids are alienated from the natural (I guess meaning "independent of humans) world. My solution is to send them out into the backyard or otherwise get them to play outside in unstructured ways -- to break down the increasingly common assumption that outdoor play should be organized and scheduled into soccer, baseball, camp games or whatever. Just get out there. Get bored. Stay out there until you start poking around, noticing the thirty different kinds of seeds on the ground, and what they all look like when you peel them open with a thumbnail, and which kinds of grass have a "second stage" that slides out easily, leaving a tasty pale green chewable end... and a million similar things.

[Beth]

What was your childhood relationship to nature? When I was four, I would run barefoot in the fields with my best friend, AJ. We would catch Daddy Long Legs, dig up worms and pink snakes(?) and catch fireflies in the twilight. I would attach a couple of lizards' mouths to my ears and wear lizard earrings - my friends dubbed me with the nickname lizard guts and then just liz.

When I was older, we moved into the middle of a city. The apartment complex had a small park, I spent my time there. I was always in the trees. We moved into another part of the city after that, this time it was more country, it was a log cabin that had a huge oak that grew through the middle of it ( the builder had built the house around the tree early 20th century.) I climbed trees, hunted for snakes, went fishing in a desolate creek near there, played with snapping turtles, hunted for gators to observe and played with snakes.

Then we moved to an unincorporated part of the county, way out in the country, woods were all around us. I would go walking in the woods, picking berries, hunting for wierd critters. I climbed trees, caught snakes, played with frogs and locusts and lizards.

Our vacations consisted of disgusting visits to the ghastly Disney Theme Parks, weekly visits to the beach- summertime we went almost daily, trips to Valdosta, Georgia, or the Blue Ridge Mountains. We went to the Hillsborough River State Park frequently and paddle boated or canoed. We would go hiking there or at other various parks. When we went to Georgia- about twice yearly- I would hike either alone or with my brother in the desolate thousand or so acres that we owned. We would jump into a bubbling creek or pick berries. We would look for deer and always be on the lookout from being shot by nearby hunters.

We would go up to the mountains to hike out or to camp. Sometimes we would just sit outside and just watch things and meditate.

If you're a parent now, how do your kids interact with the local ecosystem?
They react pretty much the same way as I did, but find nature a wee bit more annoying than I do. But come to think of it, back then, I wanted urban and not nature. We moved to one of the least developed areas in my county so that my kids could get to live in the country and enjoy a more carefree childhood.

We have wetlands in our yard so the kids get to observe that ecosystem.

Honestly, I am not sure how I should word how they interact with the ecosystem. Do you want specifics, or just generalized stuff?

[livius drusus]

Which makes perfect sense if you think about it. Kids who are watching TV, playing video games, eating fast food, going from one scheduled activity to another every day etc. are always having their senses bombarded from the outside. ADD might be conditioned as these kids never learned to pay close attention to anything, contemplate things, quietly observe, or to comfort themselves, or entertain themselves.

True that. I think it plays into Louv's point about how being out in nature actually works out all 5 of the senses in a way that the bombardment of images and sounds from TV or video games does not. It's not just that fast pictures and booming bass keep your attention by jerking it around, but that there are entire fields of sensory information that they shut out.

Usually hyper-vigilance -- behavior manifested by always being on guard and ready to fight or flee -- is associated with trauma in childhood. But the hyper-awareness gained from early experience in nature may be the flip side of hyper-vigilance — a positive way to pay attention, and, when it's appropriate, to be on guard. We're familiar with the term "street smart." Perhaps another, wider, adaptive intelligence is available to the young? Call it "nature smart." One father I spoke to said he believes that a child in nature is required to make decisions not often encountered in a more constricted, planned environment -- ones that not only present danger, but opportunity. Organized sports, with its finite set of rules, is said to build character. If that is true, and of course it can be, nature experience must do the same, in ways we do not fully understand. A natural environment is far more complex than any playing field. Nature does offer rules and risk, and subtly informs all the senses.

I think it's hugely cool that you've been to so many state and national parks, Shea (I'd never even heard of Lassen :blush: ), and the Getty Oil on the Prairie connection is amazing. Did you wear lizards as earrings too? :D

I was outside a lot as a kid, but mainly just in the yard. Before we moved to Rome, we were in small towns in the north and I know I was outside all the time then, even though my recollection is very sketchy indeed. One of my earliest memories, though, is hanging out on the Trebbia river in northern Italy with some older kids and watching aghast as they stoned a harmless little river snake to death. The broken flesh was pinkish orange like salmon. I've felt very protective of snakes ever since.

Every summer we stayed with my grandmother in Connecticut for a month and those days were packed with peat bogs, exploring the local woodsy bits and taking "nature walks" with my dad who loved uncovering things he knew would freak me out at first and then fascinate me (what he called snake spit, for example -- some kind of cocoon thing which looks just like somebody horked it up onto a bush).

Edited to note I have put the book on Barnes and Noble wish list. Sounds really interesting

I put it on my Amazon wish list. :yup:

[Clutch Munny]

In the tall grass just below our backyard there are praying mantises in the summer. We all love them, and are pretty bloodthirsty about feeding smaller bugs to 'em when we can catch one or two at a time. (Catch and release, by the way -- after a day or two we send them back into the jungle. They eat mosquitos, after all.)

They leave large-ish firm eggs sacs on the stems of tall grass or slender bushes, sort of hardened "snake spit".

[livius drusus]

Oh God... egg sacs... :vomit: My dad's techniques remain effective, as you see.

[Dingfod]

When I was a child I was outside anytime the weather allowed, sometimes even when it didn't. I remember summers where I couldn't wait to get my daily chores done so I could take off. I remember many a summer day leaving the house by 9:00 AM and not returning until 9:00 or 10:00 PM, starving but fully entertained. Barefoot most of the time, of course.

My most sadistic childhood activity was burning red ants with a magnifying glass, they made such a nice crackle and sizzle. They were red for a reason you know, they were evil, stinging you just for being around, demon bugs. No, wait, the most sadistic was catching a grasshopper or a cricket and putting them in a Mason jar with a bunch of angry red ants.

[livius drusus]

I was never really much interested in nature as a kid. I was way more interested in electronics (be it TV or toys). I do remember doing things like wading in the Huron River in Ann Arbor, catching tadpoles and once killing a big catfish with a big rock. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I immediately felt terrible when I saw it dead. Years later I found out the Huron River was notoriously polluted, but I haven't come down with any rare diseases yet.

Do you think there might be something in Louv's idea that detachment from nature and the skills/sensory knowledge gained from being outdoors might play a part in later attention disorders? Were any of your siblings more of the outdoorsy types?

[JoeP]

I haven't come down with any rare diseases yet.
Or else you've stopped taking the memory pills the nice doctor gave you.

In any case, post proof or retract.

[JoeP]

I don't think my daughter gets enough nature any more. She used to be fascinated by parktown prawns (image available on request) and other creepy-crawlies. But now she's 10 and too grown-up for all that; the DVDs and the computer are much more serious.

We have a big enough garden, but it's still an urban area. We have to go on holiday to get real nature. Pretty much like my upbringing. Poking sea-anemones and stuff like that. Of course, there's more actual wild nature here than in Britain.

[Clutch Munny]

Oh God... egg sacs... :vomit: My dad's techniques remain effective, as you see.


They're really remarkable critters. Voracious and fearless, they'll basically attempt to eat any moving thing smaller than themselves. Other mantises included. Did I mention that they eat mosquitos?

What recently blew me away, though, was watching Daughter the Eldest's gecko eat a fat caterpillar 90% its own body length (excluding tail). It ignored the thing for a few minutes, making me think that it really was too huge for the poor fella to choke down. Then we gave him a small waxworm, which he hoovered up. Apparently this had the effect of an appetizer. Gulp -- long pause -- gulp -- long pause -- gulp... and it was gone. Unfrickinbelievable.

[Dingfod]

Going back to the OP, my children have been nature-deprived for the most part since we moved to the city in 1989. Taking them to play on playground equipment in the sterile sand and rubber padded concrete of the local park isn't exactly getting them out in nature.

[viscousmemories]

Do you think there might be something in Louv's idea that detachment from nature and the skills/sensory knowledge gained from being outdoors might play a part in later attention disorders? Were any of your siblings more of the outdoorsy types?
I'm not really sure. I was a bit unusual in that despite my being fascinated with electronics, for years of my childhood we didn't even own a TV, much less anything else sufficiently distracting. So while none of my siblings were (to my recollection) particularly outdoorsy, all of us were into coming up with ways to entertain ourselves and/or playing games like Scrabble, Boggle, etc. So we might've gotten similar mental stimulation from that kind of thing. I think we were in a sort of weird gray area between nature-oriented and digital age. :shrug:

[LadyShea]

True that. I think it plays into Louv's point about how being out in nature actually works out all 5 of the senses in a way that the bombardment of images and sounds from TV or video games does not. It's not just that fast pictures and booming bass keep your attention by jerking it around, but that there are entire fields of sensory information that they shut out.

Yes, very good points. If we get a kid, there is little danger of that happening...we live in a frickin' jungle here...but had we stayed in Vegas I can imagine any kid being totally unable to cope with the natural world.

I think it's hugely cool that you've been to so many state and national parks, Shea (I'd never even heard of Lassen :blush: )

Did you look it up? Amazing place, they had park ranger led programs for kids that lasted for the whole week, and my best friend came with us that particular camping trip. One of my bestest childhood memories.

Getty Oil on the Prairie connection is amazing.

The undeveloped part started at the end of my street, so though we were in a SoCal city, we got the benefit of nature. We went to the Little House set once :)

Did you wear lizards as earrings too? :D

LOL, no I wasn't that brave! One time though, we found an enormous lizard someone had shot with a BB gun, amazingly it got lodged under his skin and didn't kill him. I put him on my shoulder and carried him around with me during the day, and put him in a shoe-box-turned-habitat at night, for a week until the hole healed and he was able to go about his little lizard business. It was cool that he stayed on my shoulder with no issue all that time though.

I was outside a lot as a kid, but mainly just in the yard. Before we moved to Rome, we were in small towns in the north and I know I was outside all the time then, even though my recollection is very sketchy indeed. One of my earliest memories, though, is hanging out on the Trebbia river in northern Italy with some older kids and watching aghast as they stoned a harmless little river snake to death. The broken flesh was pinkish orange like salmon. I've felt very protective of snakes ever since.

Oh ug, why are kids so cruel?

[The Lone Ranger]

When I was four, I would run barefoot in the fields with my best friend, AJ. We would catch Daddy Long Legs, dig up worms and pink snakes(?)...

Maybe Eastern Worm Snakes (http://www.snakesandfrogs.com/scra/snakes/wormsnk.htm)? They're more or less pink in color, and about the size of an overgrown earthworm. I used to catch them all the time as a kid, myself.


I consider myself exceptionally fortunate to have grown up in the country. I spend my days climbing trees, roaming the woods in search of interesting plants and animals, catching frogs and turtles and crayfish in the creek, and generally enjoying life. At night, I'd lie back and watch the stars or catch fireflies.

My mother always made me empty my pockets before she'd let me back in the house in the evenings, since if I caught a particularly interesting lizard or small snake, I'd put it in a pocket. She wasn't happy about having a snake crawl out of the washbasket, which happened on at least one occasion.


None of my sisters showed such an affinity for the outdoors as I did, but all of them nonetheless have chosen to live in the country, rather than in a city. Still, it saddens me to note that most of my nieces and nephews spend virtually every waking moment either watching television or playing video games, and seem to go outside only when forced to.


I think there are lots of important things to be learned from an outdoorsy life. Since I grew up on a farm, as did everyone else I knew at the time, I was shocked to get to college and discover that most of my new acquaintances seemed to have no idea where eggs and milk and meat come from. I remember taking an ecology class and being amazed that the instructor thought it necessary to explain that plants capture sunlight to produce food, and that all animals are directly or indirectly dependent upon plants for their food. Didn't everyone know that? Apparently not.

I can remember sitting for hours and watching a spider build her web, and being utterly fascinated. It's hard to imagine any of my nieces or nephews doing such a thing, and I feel genuinely sorry for them.

When I was their age, there was nothing quite so pleasant to contemplate as a day spent exploring. I'd wander for miles and no one thought that unusual or alarming.



Decades ago, the biologist E. O. Wilson proposed what he called the "Biophilia Hypothesis." He proposed that we have genetic predispositions toward a love of plants and animals, or at least that we tend to feel more comfortable with plants and animals around us. He has argued that this is why even city dwellers tend to have plants in their homes/offices, and pets. Wilson has suggested that people in a "sterile" and "unnatural" environment are more likely to feel stressed and to become ill. Maybe he was onto something.

Cheers,

Michael

[wildernesse]

This author was being interviewed on NPR the other day, too. It's an interesting concept.

I grew up in a rural area, and can remember my dad taking me out to the woods when I was tiny--riding his shoulders over the creek, getting scratched on the barbed wire fence when I didn't duck well enough, going deer hunting (not recommended when your daughter is a monkey) and fishing. My parents' land is adjacent to other family land, and trespassing wasn't an issue for those people whose land wasn't family-owned so we (brother and I) could play in the woods and pastures and creek and lakes around where we lived to our hearts' content. I was in the woods/pastures nearly every day that wasn't deer season until I started driving/working.

The only family vacations that didn't involve some kind of natural wonder/outdoor time were to Washington DC (does this even count if we spent so much time in museums?) and the 2 trips to DisneyWorld.

I love the outdoors even today--and it can be stifling even to me to be stuck in this little semi-suburban area. Oh, now I'm going to be depressed if I start thinking along those lines.

[Clutch Munny]

I can remember sitting for hours and watching a spider build her web, and being utterly fascinated. It's hard to imagine any of my nieces or nephews doing such a thing, and I feel genuinely sorry for them.



Michael, this resonated strongly with my own experience and with something I was thinking earlier about this thread: Nature is not user-friendly. It won't time-lapse for you or show you the cut-away illustration; seeing how things work requires patience and the willingness to pay attention as things unfold at their own pace.

This is a cognitive-emotional skill, I think, that might be hard to acquire from interactive DVDs.

[Penni]

I grew up with some nature, but not enough, esp. as I got into young adult-hood. I learned to be kind of a prissy girl that was overly concerned with cleanliness and bleach and I actually idealized nature. Like, I thought it was clean, or something, I don't know.

Now, I have my husband, and he has aggressivley introduced me to nature, its beauties and its dangers. Just last weekend we were TOTALLY alone in this huge valley in Sequoia National Forest (not Park) and it was CRAZY. I have never been so apart from other humans. I was really dirty, too, but I didn't care. Due to weight constraints, we shared one toothbruch and I had a little soap and moisturizer for my face.

It was really the best thing ever, though. All we did one day was walk to a rock and try to climb it, walk to the river and try to go in it, read our books, and eat our food. That's like the amount of stuff I do in 10 minutes in a normal day, and I was so thankful for the slow pace and the patience it taught me.

I'm not a spiritual person at all. I don't even believe in a spirit of any sort. But, there is something I feel that resonates within me when I use my body in the ways you have to when you are in the wilderness. Maybe I'm romanticizing the idea that something just feels "right" about it. It may be instead that the uniqueness of the experience is what really resonates. Regardless, I feel like I like myself better after I've been away from the grid. Of course, I also feel like I like my toilet better, and my bed better, and my shampoo better, after these trips. So, it's a win-win!

Finally, I think there is a reason that all these Outward Bound trips, and other trips that introduce Inner City kids to nature, have such an impact on these kids. It helps you step outside yourself and understand a wider perspective. Your little turf wars, politics, playground battles, etc., mean very little when you are learning how to survive in the wilderness. Having artificial and comfortable environments, like we do nowadays, have given us the luxury to get away from spending every minute on our survival. but, we've only replaced it with superfluous crap (ok, not entirely, I mean, a lot of good things have come, too).

Not to KEEP going back to Lucifer's Hammer (because I think I've referenced it about a million times now), but in the book, one of the journalists that was getting people's reactions to a possible comet colission scenario was puzzled that he kept getting the sense that people were looking forward to it. Looking forward to a situation in which their jobs didn't exist, silly politics didn't exist, etc., even with the hardships of spending all their time looking for food, shelter and protection. Like, they wanted to be forced back into nature. It was really thought-provoking.