the divine natural world (part one)

I read two really interesting books in the last two weeks. Now, let me pause right there just for a second to say how nice it is to be able to read two books in barely two weeks time, after two long years of spending my "leisure" hours reading public policy texts. To be able to choose my own reading material...well, it's lovely. I'll just say that.

Anyway, the two books that I read seemed to have little in common, and were actually recommended by two different sources. Yet, their coincidental materialization at the top of my reading list seems almost too timely to be coincidental. It seemed almost fated that I read these two books at the same time. They both led me to a topic I find fascinating: the divine natural world.

The first book was:

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder [LAST CHILD IN WOODS-UPDAT

Richard(Author) Louv

The last guest speaker for the Parent Advisory Board at Caroline's childcare center recommended this book as a way to reconnect children with the outdoor world. My initial reaction to the book description was well, we spend plenty of time outside. My interest was aroused nonetheless, so I ordered it from the library to see what Richard Louv had to say about the kids and the great outdoors. Louv's contention is that much of what's wrong with kids today (in the form of previously rarely diagnosed maladies affecting children like obesity, diabetes, ADHD, depression, anxiety) is due to the shift in culture away from an outside existence. The American lifestyle has become so incredibly plugged-in and shut-in, that nature, while formerly an escape and the world's biggest classroom, has become more of an abstraction for modern children.  

It goes something like this: Louv claims that the lack of commercial appeal of "true" greenspace (a la forests and foliage) has led to almost total destruction of these areas in favor of money-driven ventures like malls, housing, golf courses, etc. Even many parks are not true greenspace: manicured flower beds are flanked by playground equipment, with little area to explore and engage in truly creative play. I think we all know a little about the ugliness of urban crawl and what it's done to our neighborhoods, but Louv goes further and insists that the drying up of totally natural places for children to play and explore is directly linked to emotional and behavioral problems of children in the United States. He demonstrates that our genetic makeup as humans, formed through thousands of years of hunting and gathering and an agrarian lifestyle, still craves the sensory experience of the natural world. While the American lifestyle has become incredibly sedentary and chock full of modern convenience, our DNA has not caught up, and still needs the stimulation of the natural world for hapiness and contentment. The natural world has a physiologically calming effect on children and adults alike: being among the peace and natural setting of the outdoors, away from noise pollution, billboards, screaming telephones and chiming IM's, our heart rate and blood pressure decrease in what becomes an almost spiritual experience of reflection and calm. In children, this experience has an elevated level of importance. Not only does the natural world have a calming and educational effect on children, but it is one of the few self-directed activities proven to stimulate enormous creative potential within children. Louv notes that most activities in the life of an American child today are so over-monitored and overstructured with rules and regulations, that creative potential is utterly suffocated. A typical day looks like school, after school sports or lessons or tutoring, homework, TV time, computer or video game time, then bedtime routines. Each of these activities results in a prescribed way of life for children where no autonomy is truly learned, and no creativity blossoms. Louv asks us to imagine what this generation of children, who will have essentially never experienced creativity and judgment building activities through self-monitored play, will look like as adults. 

As I thought about it, I had to admit that even though we spend a lot of time outside and at the metroparks trail hiking as a family, Alexa's life looks very, very different from mine and hubby's upbringing. Both of us remember getting the boot outside at a young age by busy moms, dispatched to the backyard or local "woods" to play with our siblings and friends. We would spend literally all day (punctuated by routine check-in with mom) building forts, fishing critters out of the creek, catching lightning bugs and creating elaborate worlds of imaginative play. I can remember, with amazing clarity although it was over twenty years ago, climbing up the trees in our neigborhood "woods" and eating mulberries with my friends. I remember pitching old bed sheets over the clothesline in the back yard on breezy summer days, and laying on a blanket alone, reading books and eating popsicles. I remember the complex play lives my friends or my sister and I constructed in our back yard. I remember hiding under our deck in the backyard, ruminating on running away from home while picking roly-poly bugs from under the rocks. I would sit under the deck, peering through the slats and wondering how long it would take someone to notice that I was gone. It took a long time.

The weird thing is, I can safely say that if Alexa tried the same thing, we would notice her absence in minutes. There's hardly a minute of the day that her presence isn't accounted for between the two of us. We always know not just where she is, but exactly what she's doing. I didn't mean to be the kind of parent that is a little too overprotective, but I think that we are. She's ten now, and it's never occurred to me that we don't give her graduated degrees of freedom to explore. Nor would she want them. It's been a mutually reinforcing dynamic we've crafted in that hubby and I constantly watch over her, and any time we try to give her the boot to get outside, she inevitably winds up back on the step fifteen minutes later, complaining, "I'm bored." This is of course partially because she was an only child for so long, and really had nobody to play with. She's inhabited the adult realm for so long now, depending on us not just for parenting, but for companionship, that I hardly think about her any other way. The fact that she was sick for a while made it worse. But I also definitely think this is a symptom of parenting in my age. We are generally like most of our friends and neighbors as parents. All of us are much more protective as parents, and I don't know...supervisory maybe?  

I know that we could do better. We could not just spend a lot of time outside as a family, but I could encourage her to explore private worlds outside away from us. She could sorely use the alternative stimulation, and judgment skill-building that autonomous play and the wide open outdoors presents. Louv points out in the book, quite accurately I think, that the problem with many devices of entertainment for children today is that they are one-way. Emotion or reaction is dictated. There is a stimulus, with only one logical response. A sitcom is funny, so we laugh. A game asks Mario to jump for coins and slay the dragon, so we do. But in the natural world, there are an infinite number of responses. Should we climb the tree? Should we make a fort out of the tree? Should we build a birdhouse for the tree? Should we use the tree for shade and read or write or nap? Should we ditch the tree and go explore the creek? The possibilities are endless, and children have lots of choices (of the good kind) to make.  

Overall, I really enjoyed the different perspective offered by Louv on the connection between our health and happiness and the natural world. I liked the quasi-spiritual perspective he presented in relation to the natural world, because I have found the outdoors really has provided a lifetime of therapy and healing for me. I can think of little else as spiritual as the whisper of rustling leaves in the branches, the sound of gurgling water, the babbling of critters in the spring, the solitude and peace of being in a quiet, unfettered place. Further, I liked the challenge to my way of thinking about the outdoor world as far as children are concerned. I realized I could likely change some things to encourage Alexa to become more independent and creative. If any consider reading the book, I would caution that Louv is a bit heavy on the doom-and-gloom at times, with not enough attention to how to rectify a life too sedentary. The new edition did have some good suggestions on how to build more of the natural world into the family lifestyle, which was helpful. This post has gotten rather long (I seem to have a problem with that, hehe), so I will post some of the suggestions next time, along with a discussion from a most amazing book that I read that directly links the natural world with the divine. 

Until next time!