Epidemic Nature Deficit

Grace Mitchell
14 March 2011

The Epidemic Sweeping Our Nation

This epidemic cannot be spread by a sneeze or a cough. It won’t directly put you or members of your family in the hospital. Though, it might require medical attention if ignored. This is a serious epidemic and the children of this country are being hit the hardest. Some people call it laziness, others…Nature Deficit Disorder.
Today’s average eight year old child can more commonly identify characters from a cartoon television program than a common oak leaf or a beetle. This may be in part because a child in today’s society spends an average of about 6.5 hours a day watching television or on the computer. When I came home from school, I finished my homework then went out to play until I got hungry, heard Mom calling or the street lights turned on. Today, children come home with their ear plugs in, sit down in front of the TV or computer, and hang out with their friends…online, alone, secluded in their bedrooms.
Researchers are beginning to prove the enormous benefits that experiencing nature can have on a child. While the amount of time a child spends outside decreases, childhood obesity rates and the number of children diagnosed with ADHD rises. Unsurprisingly, the 25% of children that are considered to be obese in America correlates with the children that watch television for five hours or more each day. Frances Kuo, a social psychologist from the University of Illinois in Champaign, found that children between the ages of 7 and 12 that had been diagnosed with ADHD experienced a 20% increase in their ability to concentrate in the classroom after spending time outdoors. Rather than medicating a child with stimulants such as Ritalin, simply spending half an hour on the playground a day has shown signs of improving behavior. Beyond that research has shown that children that get outdoors have less stress, more creativity and higher self-esteem.
The biggest obstacle a child faces is not finding a place to explore outdoors. Most parks and forests can be reached by foot, bicycle, or public transportation. The biggest obstacle for children is parental fear. We have become a paranoid society afraid of people kidnapping our children, afraid of germs and afraid of the big, unknown outdoors. There are safe ways to slowly step into the outdoors. There are nature centers that provide guided walks. There are programs, like that with the Chicago Park District, which provides tents, sleeping bags and meals for families that have never been camping before for a small fee of $40. I hope that parents will weigh the odds and see that taking the time to introduce nature to children is such an enormous benefit to both parent and child.
There are so many things that parents can do in your own neighborhood or backyard for their children.
• Set up the hose or sprinkler, kids love playing in water.
• Plant shrubs, grasses, ferns, flowers and trees in your yard, it provides kids with places to hide and climb. Even better, make the plants native to your area so that they will attract wildlife.
• Have a dirt pile for them to dig and build things in. Don’t worry parents, kids do wash. It is not the end of the world if kids get a little dirt on their hands. Think of the hours of fun they will have.
• You could start a vegetable garden. It gives kids outdoor time, and you have vegetables for dinner.
• As a family, you could camp in the backyard or maybe just a snack outside in August during the meteor shower.
• Look under a log with a magnifying glass or catch fireflies in a glass jar.
The list is endless! Use your imagination!
The exercise and social and cognitive benefits to a child’s development cannot be overlooked. From the beginning of human kind, children have been playing outdoors and now society is taking that right away from them and they are silently suffering. As Rachel Carson once said, “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” Parents take your children outside and witness the magic that happens when they turn over the log. I’m afraid for the children of future generations. If we do not introduce and share the wonder of nature with them, who will protect the forests after we are gone?

Louv, Richard. “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”
Millett, Katherine. "People Nurture & Nature." Chicago Wilderness http://www.chicagowildernessreports.org/pdf/people_nurture%20&%20nature.pdf