Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (53 page)

34
. Get involved with scouting or similar programs, such as Camp Fire USA or 4-H. Also consider the many programs that are offered for teens and preteens by good public park systems, including junior ranger and junior naturalist programs. “Most ranger programs have ranger ride-alongs, and other formal and informal programs to engage the interest of teens,” says Rich Dolesh, director of public policy at the National Recreation and Park Association. Also investigate
teen nature programs sponsored by faith-based organizations and environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club’s Building Bridges to the Outdoors (
www.sierraclub.org/youth
).

35
. Encourage your kids to start a neighborhood nature club. A seven-year-old girl in Virginia rounded up her friends and enrolled them in her own Girls Gone Wild in Nature Club. Together they organize backyard campouts and bug hunts. In Mississippi, teenager Josh Morrison founded Geeks in the Woods for his friends and geeks everywhere. He defines “geek” as a “gaming environmentally educated kid,” and says he and his friends—“tired of being labeled” tech addicts—have their PlayStations and their outdoor time too: “We could be the generation that makes a U-turn back to . . . a balance between virtual reality and what sustains all life . . .
nature
.” (
www.geeksinthewoods.org
)

36
. Read outside. People who care about nature often mention nature books as important childhood influences. Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination, especially if it’s done outside, say, in a tree house. Look for nature adventure books, particularly ones with young protagonists.

37
. Purchase natural history field guides for your children. The Peterson, Sibley, and Audubon guides work well for older kids and adults. For young children, remember those pocket-size, Golden Guides, popular in earlier decades? They’re back in print. At your local bookstore or library or online, you can pick up guidebooks to area hiking trails, rivers, lakes, parks, and other natural attractions. Many of these publications offer detailed descriptions, maps, levels of difficulty, and age ratings.

38
. Explore prehistoric nature. In a state with the right geological structures, parents can take kids to roadway cut banks or other eroded terrain and explore long-ago life in sediments and in water-tumbled
rocks. If there’s a natural history museum in your community, ask staff to recommend places to go and field guides to use.

39
. Go fish. For kids five-years-old or younger, expect and encourage them to put the rod down and poke along the water’s edge. For older kids, start with the simplest techniques and gear. Bend down the barbs on the hooks for safety: this also makes it easier to release fish unharmed if you prefer not to keep the fish. A good resource: Junior Anglers and Hunters of America (
www.jraha.org
). For further inspiration, encourage your kids to subscribe to one of the fishing gear dream books available free from such companies as BassPro, Cabela’s, and Orvis. Join a fishing club and take your son or daughter with you.

40
. Learn to track. Explore dirt roads, stream banks, or backyards in search of animal tracks. Tracking can be done by all ages and at multiple skill levels. Some camps and wilderness-training schools teach sophisticated tracking techniques to older kids and teenagers. Added bonus: scat identification. Takeachildoutside.org tells how to make a plaster cast of a track. A list of good tracking guidebooks includes:
Track Pack
by Ed Gray, appropriate for all ages; the
Peterson Field Guide to Animal Tracks
; the
Tracking and the Art of Seeing
by Paul Rezendes.

41
. Collect stones. Even the youngest children love gathering rocks, shells, and fossils. To polish stones, use an inexpensive lapidary machine—a rock tumbler. See
Rock and Fossil Hunter
by Ben Morgan.

42
. Get wetter and wilder. Canoeing, sailing, and swimming are great for kids of every age. As they reach their teens, young people are likely to be attracted to edgier, riskier outdoor adventures, such as snorkeling, kayaking, scuba diving, and river rafting. Mind the basics: teach your children at an early age how to swim, or enroll them in swimming classes. Provide safety gear.

43
. Use nature as a partner to strengthen family bonds. What better way to enhance parent-child attachment than to walk in the woods together, disengaging from distracting electronics, advertising, and peer pressure? When reminiscing about childhood, grown children often mention outdoors adventures as their best memories—even if they complained about such outings at the time! And if you’re a parent who missed out on nature as a child,
now’s your chance
.

44
. Be prepared. While it’s important to learn to maximize the health benefits of nature experiences, it’s also important to minimize health risks. Learn how to prevent tick- and mosquito-borne illnesses and other outdoor dangers. Consult your doctor or online sources, including a good Web site offered by the Centers for Disease Control (
www.cdc.gov/features/outdoorsafety/
). Pick up a first aid kit.

Attracting Birds, Butterflies and Other Backyard Wildlife
, David Mizejewski (Creative Homeowner, 2004)

Backyard Bird Watching for Kids: How to Attract, Feed, and Provide Homes for Birds
, George H. Harrison (Willow Creek Press, 1997)

Best Hikes with Children
series, guides by geographic region (The Mountaineers)

Camp Out!: The Ultimate Kids’ Guide
, Lynn Brunelle (Workman, 2007)

Children’s Special Places
, David Sobel (Wayne State University Press, 2001)

A Child’s Introduction to the Night Sky: The Story of the Stars, Planets, and Constellations—and How You Can Find Them in the Sky
, Michael Driscoll (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2004)

The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds
, Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Perigee, 2007)

Coyote’s Guide to Connecting Kids with Nature
, Jon Young, Ellen Haas, Evan McGown (Wilderness Awareness School, 2008)

Creating a Family Garden: Magical Outdoor Spaces for All Ages
, Bunny Guinness (Abbeville Press, 1996)

Fandex Family Field Guides
series (Workman, 1999)

Father Nature: Fathers as Guides to the Natural World
, ed. Paul S. Piper and Stan Tag (University of Iowa Press, 2003)

Go Outside: Over 130 Activities for Outdoor Adventures
, Nancy Blakey (Tricycle Press, 2002)

Golden Field Guides
series (St. Martins)

How to Build an Igloo: And Other Snow Shelters
, Norbert E. Yankielun (Norton, 2007)

I Love Dirt
!, Jennifer Ward (Trumpeter, 2008)

The Joy of Hiking: Hiking the Trailmaster Way
, John McKinney (Wilderness Press, 2005)

Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You
, Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth (Storey, 2003)

The Kid’s Book of Weather Forecasting: Build a Weather Station, ‘Read the Sky’ and Make Predictions
!, Mark Breen and Kathleen Friestad (Williamson, 2000).

My Nature Journal
, Adrienne Olmstead (Pajaro, 1999)

National Audubon Society Field Guides
series (Knopf)

Peterson Field Guides
and
Peterson First Guides
series (Houghton Mifflin)

Rock and Fossil Hunter
, Ben Morgan (DK Publishing, 2005)

Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Gardening Together with Children
, Sharon Lovejoy (Workman, 1999)

The Sense of Wonder
, Rachel Carson (HarperCollins, 1998)

Sharing Nature with Children
, Joseph Cornell (Dawn Publications, 1998).

Shelters, Shacks & Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters
, (Dover, 2004)

Sibley Field Guides
series (Knopf)

Summer: A User’s Guide
, Suzanne Brown (Artisan, 2007)

Sunflower Houses: Inspiration from the Garden
, Sharon Lovejoy (Workman, 2001)

Take a Backyard Bird Walk
, Jane Kirkland (Stillwater, 2001)

Track Pack: Animal Tracks in Full Life Size
, Ed Gray and DeCourcy L. Taylor, Jr. (Stackpole, 2003)

Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign
, Paul Rezendes (Collins, 1999)

Treehouses and Playhouses You Can Build
, David and Jeanie Stiles (Gibbs Smith, 2006)

Unplugged Play
, Bobbi Conner (Workman, 2007)

Young Birders’ Guide to Birds of Eastern North America
, Bill Thompson III (Houghton Mifflin, 2008)

For additional books, see
Suggested Reading

45
. Discover what your community’s nature-oriented and educational organizations can do to help get your child outside in a safe environment.

46
. Face the fear. In most neighborhoods the perception of stranger-danger exceeds the reality. Teach your child to watch for
behaviors
, not necessarily for strangers. According to family psychologist John Rosemond, “Telling a child to stay away from strangers is relatively ineffective. ‘Stranger’ is not a concept young children understand easily. Instead, children ought to be taught to be on the lookout for specific threatening behaviors and situations.” This view is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice.

47
. Know your neighbors. Invest in the life of the block and the surrounding community. Create a play-watch group and ask fellow parents to sit on front stoops or porches several hours a week, available at a distance as children play. Such parent groups can take children on trips to local or regional parks.

48
. Join or create a “nature gym.” In the United Kingdom, families and individuals are banding together for regular exercise in nature. Another opportunity is offered by the California-based organization Hooked on Nature, which helps families and individuals form “nature circles” to meet and explore their relationship to nature. A nature circle guide is available at
www.hookedonnature.org
.

49
. Support scouting, 4-H, and other traditional programs—and encourage them to deepen their commitment to connecting kids with nature. One example: in 2006, Camp Fire USA, Central Ohio Council, launched Vision 20/10: Reuniting Children and Nature to bring “10,000 kids into the woods by 2010.” Also consider supporting new, nontraditional scouting organizations.

50
. Help green your city. Push for better urban planning in developing and redeveloping areas, including tree-planting guidelines, more natural parks, and walkable neighborhoods. Lobby for affordable public transportation, so that urban children and families can easily reach nature areas. Developers and builders: create green communities, or, better yet, renovate decaying neighborhoods with green oases that connect children and adults to nature.

51
. In your neighborhood challenge conventional covenants and restrictions that discourage or prohibit natural play. Rewrite the rules to allow kids to build forts and tree houses and to plant gardens. Make sure they have access to nearby nature.

52
. Help naturalize old and new urban parks. During the last two decades, designers of natural play areas have become skilled at creating living landscapes for parks with high foot traffic. Such areas can be distributed throughout every city.

53
. Reinvent the vacant lot. Developers often leave set-aside land—slices of property not large enough to be playing fields, not located conveniently to be pocket parks, but that can serve well as islands of wildness. These and other urban and suburban plots can be transformed into adventure playgrounds or “wild zones” (
www.wild-zone.net
).

54
. Nature centers, nature preserves, and wildlife sanctuaries: Review programs and facilities to see how to provide more unstructured play for young children and how to encourage teenagers to volunteer. Pay as much attention to parents as to children, particularly younger adults who are decreasingly likely to have had much experience in nature when they were children.

55
. Conservation organizations: Build a future environmental constituency by supporting programs to get kids outside, not only to learn about conservation but to experience the joy of nature. Become involved in regional campaigns to reconnect children with
nature; measure children’s engagement in nature and include this information in reports about endangered or threatened species.

56
. Protect open space by promoting the health and education benefits of nature, especially for children. Pledge to dedicate a portion of any proposed open space to children and families in the surrounding area, with, ideally, nature centers to provide education for schools, including outdoor-oriented preschools. Download the “Health Benefits of Parks” article by the Trust for Public Land (
www.tpl.org
).

57
. Recruit families to volunteer on the annual National Public Lands Day. In 2006, a hundred thousand people built trails and bridges, planted trees and shrubs, and removed trash and invasive plants. For information see
www.publiclandsday.org
.