Solstice Blog: In Honor of Nature
I’m reading the astounding Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Nature Deficit Disorder? Initially, I didn’t want to read it. First, out of disgust for this disorder-for-everything kind of culture we live in and secondly because I couldn’t believe, have we gotten to that point already? But I am wrong on both counts. In the first case, Richard Louv, the author, states right away that this is not a medical diagnosis, just a way of describing the growing separation of nature from childhood that he had been keeping tabs on for the last decade. And in the second, I find out that people have been concerned about this issue for years. Since 1877 (!) a non-profit called Fresh Air Fund out of NYC has been providing inner-city kids with free country vacations so that they could get the obviously health-enhancing benefits of…nature. Okay, point(s) taken.
It’s sad that we have somehow become so removed from nature that we have to advocate to be near it. Louv sites, among other things, the decline of the family farm, intellectualization of the natural world (understanding acid rain but never playing in the river), the rise of community associations that place strict rules on natural space, and our recent tendency to scare our kids out of wandering out into nature as characteristics of this, the “third frontier”. He provides mind-boggling facts like, “between 2000 and 2003, spending on ADHD for preschoolers increased 369 percent,” and tells the story of the three boys who built a tree fort in their yard only to be shut down for not having building permits.
The tone reminds somewhat of Deep Economy , the book that Brenda blogged about earlier. With these important but rather gloom-and-doom books, I try to hang on to what positive points I can. There are always helpful solutions at the end and the hope that we can make the right decisions. And I hang on to simpler things: watching my kids play outside in our yard, making “soup” out of hose water and yard debris, and our mutual delight in butterflies. And for my myself, when I notice the changes in my body—that it’s almost time to grab a GladRag out of my drawer—I know I’m keeping a connection with the lunar cycle and the aspect of nature that is my very own body.
–Michelle
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October 5th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Michelle,
Thank you for drawing to light the overwhelming number of kids that are currently being medicated for ADD ADHD. As an educator, I am disturbed by this trend and attribute it in part to diet (sugar, red dye, gluten), lack of inspiration and appreciation from and for educators, as well as the nature disconnect that you eloquently mention. It is almost like we are trying so hard to take the “mothering and fathering” out of child rearing…that we are taking the child out as well. I think I’ll take my home schooled gifted middle schooler and my cloth diapered extended breast feeding toddler out for a midnight view of the stars from our rural back porch…blessed be, shannon