ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

“Many children now spend less than 30 minutes per week playing outside. It’s not just kids and their preoccupation with iPads and video games, or busy streets and ‘stranger danger’ that is fueling the disinclination to get outdoors. It’s a widespread phenomenon. Grown-ups fare little better. Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency suggest that adults, too, spend 93% of their lives inside buildings or vehicles, living under what nature writer Richard Louv calls ‘protective house arrest.’”

Author James Campbell continued, “One of the great American conservationists, Aldo Leopold, knew something about getting his children outside. The Leopolds kept a ‘shack,’ a rebuilt chicken coop, on land along the Wisconsin River…. Leopold and his wife, Estella, and their five kids fished, hunted, explored, tended a garden, cut firewood, restored native prairie and planted trees — together. Leopold and Estella certainly had never heard of natural environment phobia, but they did notice that when their children returned from their outings, they were physically and emotionally renewed by their contact with the outside world. They were happier.

Perhaps more parents should take a lesson from the Leopolds. Though most of us do not have our own riverfront land, we can find a nearby park or a trail. Getting outside and breaking the stranglehold of electronics—on ourselves as much as our kids—requires a concerted effort. And yet it’s worth it to make room for nature in our lives, especially as parents. By spending time in nature with our children, we teach them that we value two things: being with them and the natural world.”

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