Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (44 page)

96   
“the question of a speculative, unmarveling adult”
Phyllis Theroux,
California and Other States of Grace: A Memoir
(New York: William Morrow, 1980), 55.

99   
At least her school has recess
National PTA, “Recess Is at Risk, New Campaign Comes to the Rescue,
http://www.pta.org/ne_press_release
_detail_1142028998890.html
.

99   
At least her school has recess
Steve Rushin, “Give the Kids a Break,”
Sports Illustrated
, December 4, 2006.

99   
At least her school has recess
American Heart Association and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, “2006 Shape of the Nation Report: Status of Physical Education in the USA,”
http://www.aahperd.org/naspe/shapeofthenation/
.

99   
At least her school has recess
Paul Muntner, Jiang He, Jeffrey A. Cutler, Rachel P. Wildman, and Paul K. Whelton, “Trends in Blood Pressure among Children and Adolescents,”
JAMA
. 291, no. 17 (May 2004): 2107–2113.

101   
Between 2000 and 2003, spending on ADHD for preschoolers increased 369 percent
Linda A. Johnson, “Behavior Drugs Top Kids’ Prescriptions,”
Associated Press
, May 17, 2004.

101   
Both boys and girls are diagnosed with ADHD
“Methylphenidate (A Background Paper),” October 1995, Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section, Office of Diversion Control, Drug Enforcement Administration.

102   
each hour of TV watched per day by preschoolers increases . . . concentration problems
J. M. Healey, “Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attention Problems in Children,”
Pediatrics
113, no. 4 (April 1, 2004): 917–918.

104   
“an environment where the attention is automatic”
Rebecca A. Clay, “Green Is Good for You,”
Monitor on Psychology
32, no. 4 (April 2001).

104   
Those with a window view of trees . . . experienced significantly less frustration
Rachel Kaplan, Stephen Kaplan, and Robert L. Ryan, “With People in Mind: Design and Management for Everyday Nature” (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998).

104   
Hartig asked participants to complete a forty-minute sequence of tasks
Clay, “Green Is Good for You.”

105   
“By bolstering children’s attention resources”
N. M. Wells and G. W. Evans, “Nearby Nature: A Buffer of Life Stress among Rural Children,”
Environment and Behavior
35, no. 3 (2003): 311–330. This study is not available online without purchase,
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/
details/j0163.html
.

105   
within two daycare settings
Patrik Grahn, Fredrika Martensson, Bodil Lindblad, Paula Nilsson, and Anna Ekman,
Ute pa Dagis
. Stad & Land no. 145 (Outdoor daycare. City and country), Hassleholm, Sweden: Norra Skane Offset, 1997.

105   
Some of the most important work
Frances E. Kuo and Andrea Faber Taylor, “A Potential Natural Treatment for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Evidence from a National Study,”
American Journal of Public Health
94, no. 9 (September 2004). © American Public Health Association. The study and the educational Power Point are available on the Web site of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
http://www.llhl.uiuc.edu/
.

106   
“the aftereffects of play in paved outdoor or indoor areas”
Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances E. Kuo, and William C. Sullivan, “Coping with ADD: The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings,”
Environment and Behavior
33, no. 1 (January 2001): 54–77.

106   
the positive influence of near-home nature on concentration
Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances E. Kuo, and William C. Sullivan, “Views of Nature and Self-Discipline: Evidence from Inner City Children,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(February 2002): 46–63.

107   
“Participants were asked if they had had any experiences”
Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances E. Kuo, and William C. Sullivan, “Coping with ADD: The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings,”
Environment and Behavior
33, no. 1 (January 2001): 54–77.

108   
medications can also have unpleasant side effects
Victoria Stagg Elliott, “Think Beyond Drug Therapy for Treating ADHD,”
AMA News
, April 19, 2004.

110   
“intuition emphatically asserts that nature is good for children”
Andrea Faber Taylor and Frances Kuo. From a paper prior to publication, used with permission from the authors.

116   
When did playing catch in a park become a form of killing time
Richard Louv,
Childhood’s Future
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 109.

116   
Eighty percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas
Paul M. Sherer, “Why America Needs More City Parks and Open Space” (San Francisco: Trust for Public Land, 2003). Available on the Web at
http://tpl.org
.

116   
parks increasingly favor. . . “commercialization of play”
J. Evans, “Where Have All the Players Gone?”
International Play Journal
3, no. 1 (1995): 3–19.

117   
the amount of time children spent in organized sports increased by 27 percent
The U.S. Youth Soccer Association, Richardson, Texas,
http://www.usyouthsoccer.org
.

118   
“I don’t really have much time to play at all”
Richard Louv,
Childhood’s Future
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 109.

119   
So where has all the time gone
Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg, “Changes in American Children’s Time, 1981–1997,” in
Children at the Millennium: Where Have We Come From, Where Are We Going?
, ed. Timothy J. Owens and Sandra L. Hofferth (New York: JAI Press, 2001). Sandra L. Hofferth and Sally Curtin, “Changes in Children’s Time, 1997 to 2002/3: An Update” (2006).

119   
the amount of time American children . . . spent studying increased by 20 percent
David Brooks, “The Organization Kid,”
Atlantic Monthly
, April 2001, 40.

119   
Television remains
Victoria Rideout and Elizabeth Hammel,
The Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Their Parents
(Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006). Donald F. Roberts, Ulla G. Foehr, Victoria Rideout,
Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8–18 Year-Olds
(Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005).

119   
as Internet use grows, adults spend more time working
Norman Nie and Lutz Erbring, “Stanford Online Report,” Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, February 16, 2000.

119   
They also take fewer vacation days
Linda Dong, Gladys Block, and Shelly Mandel, “Activities Contributing to Total Energy Expenditure in the United States: Results from the NHAPS Study,”
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
1, no. 4 (2004).

120   
both parents cut back on sleep
Nancy Zukewich, “Work, Parenthood and the Experience of Time Scarcity,” Statistics Canada—Housing, Family and Social Statistics Division, no. 1, 1998.

120   
Our seeming inability
Kenneth R. Ginsburg, and the Committee on Communications and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds,”
Pediatrics
119 (2007):182–191.

123   
The boundaries of children’s lives
John Fetto, “Separation Anxiety,”
American Demographics
24, no. 11 (December 1, 2002).

123   
The trend is documented abroad
L. Karsten, “It All Used to Be Better? Different Generations on Continuity and Change in Urban Children’s Daily Use of Space,”
Children’s Geographies
3, no. 3 (2005): 275–290.

124   
in Great Britain, researchers have
Mayer Hillman and John G. U. Adams, “Children’s Freedom and Safety,”
Children’s Environments
9, no. 2 (1992). Also see: Mayer Hillman, John Adams, and J. Whitelegg,
One False Move: A Study of Children’s Independent Mobility
(London: Policy Studies Institute, 1990).

124   
In terms of child development
Stephen R. Kellert,
Building for Life
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005), 69.

125   
“When I was a little kid”
Three quotes: Richard Louv,
Childhood’s Future
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 26.

127   
By 2005, the rates of violent crimes
Kenneth C. Land, “2007 Report: Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI), 1975–2005, with Projections for 2006” (Durham, NC: Foundation for Child Development, Duke University, 2007).

127   
In 2006, New York state’s Division
New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, “Missing and Exploited Children Clearinghouse Annual Report 2006” (Albany, NY: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2006), 5.

131   
Worried about lions, tigers, and bears
Sandra G. Davis, Amy M. Corbitt, Virginia M. Everton, Catherine A. Grano, Pamela A. Kiefner, Angela S. Wilson, and Mark Gray, “Are Ball Pits the Playground for Potentially Harmful Bacteria?”
Pediatric Nursing
25, no. 2 (March 1, 1999): 151.

132   
the word “accident”
Ronald Davis and Barry Pless, “BMJ Bans ‘Accidents’: Accidents Are Not Unpredictable,”
British Medical Journal
322 (2001): 1320–1321.

134   
“Just as ethnobotanists are descending on tropical forests”
David Sobel,
Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education
, Orion Society Nature Literacy Series, vol. 1 (Great Barrington, MA: Orion Society, 1996).

137   
In 2001, the Alliance for Childhood
Colleen Cordes and Edward Miller, eds., “Fools Gold: A Critical Look at Children and Computers” (a Web-published report by Alliance for Childhood, 2001). For more information, see
http://www.allianceforchildhood.net/projects/
computers/computers_reports_fools_gold
_download.htm
.

138   
public school districts continue to shortchange the arts
William Symond, “Wired Schools,”
BusinessWeek
, September 25, 2000.

139   
“Ten Years of before-and-after photos”
Richard Louv,
The Web of Life: Weaving the Values That Sustain Us
(Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1996), 137.

143   
“The last century has seen enormous environmental degradation”
Paul K. Drayton, “The Importance of the Natural Sciences to Conservation,” an American Society of Naturalists Symposium Paper,
The American Naturalist
(June 27, 2003): 1–13.

147   
“Environmentalists, by and large, are deeply invested”
Theodore Roszak, as interviewed in
Adbusters
. Roszak is the author of
The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).

148   
The most important reason
Oliver R. W. Pergams and Patricia A. Zaradic, “Is Love of Nature in the US Becoming Love of Electronic Media?”
Journal of Environmental Management
80, no. 4 (September 2006): 387–393.

149   
The idea of working at a national park
Christopher Reynolds, “Without Foreign Workers, U.S. Parks Struggle,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 27, 2007, 1.

150   
In 1978, Thomas Tanner
Thomas Tanner, ed., Special issue on significant life experiences research,
Environmental Education Research
4, no. 4 (November 1998). Also see: Thomas Tanner, ed., Special section on significant life experiences research,
Environmental Education Research
5, no. 4 (November 1999).

150   
Since then, studies
Nancy M. Wells and Kristi S. Lekies, “Nature and the Life Course: Pathways from Childhood Nature Experiences to Adult Environmentalism,”
Children, Youth and Environments
16, no. 1 (2006): 1–24.

151   
Children do need mentors
Louise Chawla, “Learning to Love the Natural World Enough to Protect It,”
Barn
, no. 2 (2006): 57–78.
Barn
is a quarterly published by the Norwegian Centre for Child Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

151   
“Most children have a bug period”
E. O. Wilson,
Naturalist
(New York: Warner Books, 1994), 56.

152   
“the bookish ‘Teedie’”
Edmund Morris,
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
(New York: Putnam, 1979), 19.

152   
Wallace Stegner filled his childhood with collected critters
Wallace Stegner, “Personality, Play, and a Sense of Place,”
Amicus Journal
(renamed
OnEarth
), 1997.

167   
“They were on an island in a sea of trees”
Kathryn Kramer, “Writers on Writing,”
New York Times
, December 30, 2002.

168   
the word wasn’t in anybody’s vocabulary until the nineteenth century
Patricia Meyer Spacks,
Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

172   
“Your job isn’t to hit them with another Fine Educational Opportunity”
Deborah Churchman, “How to Turn Kids Green; Reinstilling the Love for Nature Among Children,”
American Forests
98, no. 9–10 (September 1992): 28.