Your child's grandfather might have overturned rocks looking for grass snakes and built secret forts out of tree branches, but its not so common for today's children to be on intimate terms with nature. In fact, these days kids may have an easier time defending a fort in a video game than building one in real life.
A growing number of studies are finding a link between this divorce from nature and increases in attention-deficit disorder, childhood obesity and lower test scores. In his book Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, author Richard Louv gave the issue a name: nature-deficit disorder.
Closing the gap
"What I wanted to do, in writing this book, was to create a conversation about the separation between children and nature," he says. "When you name it, you make it real."
So far, he has definitely managed to accomplish his goal, with press coverage of the book's release guaranteeing more and more people become aware of the newly coined disorder.
But what, exactly, is nature-deficit disorder?
"It's the price we pay, that our children pay, when we're disconnected from nature, the physical, mental and spiritual loss we suffer," explains Louv. It's not a medical diagnosis, Louv says, but using the term brings about the seriousness of "what children lose when they lose direct contact with the outdoors."
Louv, a child advocate and author, says the blame for the disconnect with nature lays with busier schedules for children, along with technological lures, such as television and computers, and also from fear - "fear of traffic, of crime, of stranger-danger, of nature itself" - that prompts parents to keep their children indoors, or in structured play areas, away from possible danger.
