I was recently asked to review the book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder
for a local publication, the Hudson Valley Green Times. I didn’t realize how much this book would make me recall aspects of my own childhood. It’s obvious that things are very different today compared with the 60s and 70s when I grew up, but Louv’s book points out that some of these differences are even larger, and more detrimental, than most of us realize.
Louv is the author of several books, and the founder of the Leave No Child Inside movement. Last Child in the Woods points out how nature-deprived the modern generation is. Louv has coined a term to describe this – Nature Deficit Disorder (which he makes clear is not meant to be a medical or psychological term in any literal or technical sense). Put simply, kids today do not get outside enough. A more subtle point is that even when they do play outside, it’s not usually in a truly natural setting, but to take part in an organized sport or activity. Louv is not against such activities, but he makes a strong case that children who never, or hardly ever experience nature directly are deprived in a serious and unprecedented way.
I find it a bit chilling that I can so easily recognize this problem. I say this because I was never especially in touch with nature. I grew up in two boroughs of New York City in apartment buildings. My own direct experiences with nature consisted mainly of Central Park (and a few other parks in the New York area, such as Forest and Flushing Meadow), a few day camps I attended, mostly in Queens and Long Island, and the annual excursion to the Poconos or Catskills my parents took me on. This, and the small patches of green that existed in our backyards (speaking of apartment house backyards, not the private backyards experienced by rural and suburban homeowners). Yet, reading Louv’s book, I realize that even this mainly urban upbringing afforded me more contact with nature than the average child of today.
There is another, related issue here that Louv alludes to in his book. When he points out the need for children to play and learn in nature in a free and spontaneous way, he is contrasting this with the highly structured environments most children experience today. Structure, such as playing organized sports, may teach children some valuable skills regarding teamwork, and give them good exercise, but they fall short when it comes to exercising the imagination.
So there are really two issues here – 1) the need for contact with nature and 2) the need for unstructured, spontaneous play time. The research Louv sites in this book suggests that the first is the more important. Apparently, children who are allowed to play freely in more urban type settings do not get the same benefits as those who are in natural environments. These benefits, incidentally (or not so incidentally) include better concentration, and fewer behavioral and emotional problems. Yet, as someone who was compelled to play in a not so natural, but mostly unstructured urban setting, I think this half of the formula is also quite important when it comes to developing certain qualities, especially in regard to developing independence and imagination.
When I was in elementary school in Rego Park, Queens, I used to sometimes attend a program called the After School Center, where we played basketball, dodgeball, ping pong and other sports. More often, however, I used to simply wander into my own backyard and play by myself until I met up with some other neighborhood kids. There, we might play a game of handball or punchball (basically the same rules as softball or baseball, but using a small rubber ball, either a Spalding or Super Pinky, which the “batter” would throw up in the air and punch into play) in the yard. We had to improvise many rules, such as using cracks in the concrete or drains for bases.
At other times, I’d venture a little further from home to that archetypal destination of childhood, The Schoolyard. There, everything would depend on who else was there, what equipment happened to be available and what space was free. We’d play pickup games of baseball, punchball, handball or basketball. The teams, and the number of kids on each team, varied from day to day.
There were risks (very minor by today’s standards) taking part in this unstructured play. Sometimes there would be nobody around that I knew, and I’d have to play alone. At other times, we’d get chased away by superintendents or elderly neighbors who wanted to sit undisturbed on backyard’s benches. Going to the schoolyard always meant possibly being harassed by what we called “tough kids,” who, by today’s standards, were nothing much to worry about, but at the time seemed menacing enough.
I certainly wouldn’t call this an especially adventurous or idyllic childhood. It did, however, force me, and others who grew up in similar habitats, to create our own little subcultures. There were, of course, Little Leagues, but in those days they weren’t nearly so popular. Soccer had yet to be a sport of consequence in the U.S.
Reading Last Child in the Woods, I can appreciate that adding more woods, meadows and beaches to my childhood experiences could have made a real difference, exposing me to so much more of the real real world. However, what really strikes me is how most children today get so little of either -exposure to nature or unstructured play time.
Of course, there are good reasons (as well as not so good reasons) why children are herded into organized activities so compulsively. As I already alluded to, today’s version of a schoolyard bully is likely to be armed (either with firearms or drugs); so parents cannot be blamed for not wanted their children to wander around unsupervised after school.
Schools, parents and neighborhood associations all most worry about lawsuits and liability when it comes to children’s’ safety. Then there is the more fundamental problem of there being simply less open space left in America and other industrialized nations.
Yet a lot of it goes beyond practical or safety-related reasons. The most insidious culprit of all may be technology. Many children (as well as adults) are extremely attached to their computers, televisions, cell phones and other electronic devices. It’s hard to pry anyone, of any age, away from these highly addictive nature-substitutes. Worse yet, these devices mimic nature, giving one a passive, virtual version of the real thing. When you watch a TV program or YouTube video that shows a natural environment, in a certain part of your brain you believe you’ve really been there. But your body and senses know better.
There is no simple solution, but Louv gives some good recommendations. Even in our high tech world, children still have a natural curiosity about the natural world. There are still many ways to encourage this, no matter where you live. There are now more programs being created that allow children to safely explore nature. Parents can take the time to bring their children to places where they can walk and run among trees, flowers, grass and natural bodies of water. While this may not be the same thing as the pure spontaneity that our parents or grandparents were able to experience, we have to make the best of what is now available.
Richard Louv has a website with more information about his activities: www.cnaturenet.org.
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