How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?
From Richard Louv
We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.
Time spent in nature is the most cost-effective and powerful way to counteract the burnout and sort of depression that we feel when we sit in front of a computer all day.
No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.
When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.
By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.
As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.
It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.
If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There's not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.
There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.
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