WARNING: NO DRUGS REQUIRED, JUST A LITTLE TIME OUTSIDE

by Jedd Ferris

It’s no secret that kids these days are seeing less green space and more screen space.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average American child spends 44 hours per week-more than six hours a day-staring at some kind of electronic screen. According to the American Obesity Association approximately 30 percent of children between the ages 6 to 11 are overweight and 15 percent are obese.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, refers to this growing problem as “nature deficit disorder.” He believes nature-deficit disorder is causing more problems than just obesity. He argues that many mental and spiritual health problems facing kids and adolescents today stem from a lack of connection to the outdoors. Kids are so plugged into television shows and fixated on their Play Station 3s that they’re forgetting about the natural world. Research has shown that access to nature can reduce stress, increase attention spans, and ultimately make children better learners.

“When a child is out in nature, all the senses get activated,” Louv said in an interview with Parent and Child. “He is immersed in something bigger than himself, rather than focusing narrowly on one thing, such as a computer screen. He’s seeing, hearing, touching, even tasting. Out in nature, a child’s brain has the chance to rejuvenate, so the next time he has to focus and pay attention, perhaps in school, he’ll do better.”

Fortunately Louv’s book has started a national dialogue. In the Blue Ridge there are efforts being made to get more kids into the outdoors.

The Outdoor Industry Foundation recently launched the successful Asheville Teens Outside in North Carolina last spring. Throughout the past year 50 kids were introduced to climbing, mountain biking, and kayaking. Less than a year ago the non-profit Blue Sky Fund, based in Richmond, Va., started taking groups backpacking and climbing in an effort to get low-income urban teens out of the metro rut and expose them to the outdoor opportunities that are often not very far from their outskirts.

“Some of these kids have never even been down to the James River, which runs through our city, and that’s a tragedy to me,” says Lawson Wijesooriya of the organization.

But ultimately Louv argues that it’s coming down to parents, who are suffering from media-induced paranoia over letting kids play by themselves outside. Even active kids are usually only involved in regimented team sports, not able to openly explore the wonders of nature.

Parents are also spending too much time in the workplace. According to a study by the National Sleep Foundation, the average employed American works a 46-hour workweek, and 38 percent of the respondents in their study worked more than 50 hours per week. Factor this in to a culture that takes two weeks vacation per year, as opposed to five six weeks in Western Europe. With parents being busy, kids have become too structured and over-stimulated. It makes sense that many teachers have noticed.

“I often ask the children if they are going to play outside when they get home, and most of them say that their parents will be at work and they are not allowed to go out of the house when their parents are not at home,” says Betsy Grossman, fifth grade special education teacher at Powell Valley Middle School in Big Stone Gap, Va. “It seems as though many parents have forgotten that they are responsible for the activities of their kids. In recent years students seem to know all about video games and very little about the outdoor world around them.”

Some teachers are taking matters into their own hands. Grossman challenges her students to go home and explore some basic natural phenomenon, like watching tadpoles develop or a planet easily visible in the night sky. Jason Collier, a high school ecology teacher in Crozet, Va., makes his classes as hands-on as possible. They include taking GPS units out on the school grounds, hiking nearby nature trails, drawing and identifying different plant species, and documenting erosion.

“This year I had kids who swore they would never go outside picking caterpillars out of the dirt and talking about their place in a forest food web,” Collier says.

To help get parents on the right track the Washington, D.C.-based National Wildlife Federation (NWF) created the Green Hour program. It encourages parent to give kids one hour a day outside where they are engaging in some kind of unstructured play and interaction with the natural world. If anyone knows how to turn kids on to nature, it’s the NWF. They’re the organization that created the kid favorite Ranger Rick magazine 40 years ago.

“It’s frightening that we’re raising a generation that has no connection to nature," says Bethe Almeras of the NWF. "Also, as conservationists we have to worry about our future voters. These kids won’t care about what they don’t know.”

Green Hour will first focus on getting the message out through its website. They are encouraging parents to get kids outside for simple activities like a walk on a park nature trail or a day planting a garden. In addition to offering regularly updated tips for getting kids into the outdoors, the goal is to also foster an online community that will start an ongoing dialogue between parents.

“We want to reach the parents,” says Almeras. “That’s the only way we are going to get kids outside. We’re trying to make nature a family value.” •