9781565125223

In this influential work about the staggering divide between children and the outdoors, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of todays wired generationhe calls it nature-deficitto some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. Last Child in the Woods is the first book to bring together a new and growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. More than just raising an alarm, Louv offers practical solutions and simple ways to heal the broken bondand they are right in our own backyard.

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The New Relationship Between Children and Nature
Gifts of Nature	p. 7
The Third Frontier	p. 15
The Criminalization of Natural Play	p. 27
Why the Young (and the Rest of Us) Need Nature
Climbing the Tree of Health	p. 39
A Life of the Senses: Nature vs. the Know-It-All State of Mind	p. 54
The "Eighth Intelligence"	p. 70
The Genius of Childhood: How Nature Nurtures Creativity	p. 85
Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Restorative Environment	p. 98
The Best of Intentions: Why Johnnie and Jeannie Don't Play Outside Anymore
Time and Fear	p. 115
The Bogeyman Syndrome Redux	p. 123
Don't Know Much About Natural History: Education as a Barrier to Nature	p. 132
Where Will Future Stewards of Nature Come From?	p. 145
The Nature-Child Reunion
Bringing Nature Home	p. 161
Scared Smart: Facing the Bogeyman	p. 176
Telling Turtle Tales: Using Nature as a Moral Teacher	p. 187
The Jungle Blackboard
Natural School Reform	p. 201
Camp Revival	p. 223
Wonder Land: Opening the Fourth Frontier
The Education of Judge Thatcher: Decriminalizing Natural Play	p. 233
Cities Gone Wild	p. 239
Where the Wild Things Will Be: A New Back-to-the-Land Movement	p. 265
To Be Amazed
The Spiritual Necessity of Nature for the Young	p. 285
Fire and Fermentation: Building a Movement	p. 301
While It Lasts	p. 309
Notes	p. 311
Suggested Reading	p. 321
Index	p. 325
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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INTRODUCTION One evening when my boys were younger, Matthew, then ten, looked at me from across a restaurant table and said quite seriously, Dad, how come it was more fun when you were a kid? I asked what he meant. Well, youre always talking about your woods and tree houses, and how you used to ride that horse down near the swamp. At first, I thought he was irritated with me. I had, in fact, been telling him what it was like to use string and pieces of liver to catch crawdads in a creek, something Id be hard-pressed to find a child doing these days. Like many parents, I do tend to romanticize my own childhood and, I fear, too readily discount my childrens experiences of play and adventure. But my son was serious; he felt he had missed out on something important. He was right. Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact. Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading. Thats exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child. As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests. Nobody in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming. But I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forestbut not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching the clouds move. This book explores the increasing divide between the young and the natural world, and the environmental, social, psychological, and spiritual implications of that change. It also describes the accumulating research that reveals the necessity of contact with nature for healthy childand adultdevelopment. While I pay particular attention to children, my focus is also on those Americans born during the past two to three decades. The shift in our relationship to the natural world is startling, even in settings that one would assume are devoted to nature. Not that long ago, summer camp was a place where you camped, hiked in the woods, learned about plants and animals, or told firelight stories about ghosts or mountain lions. As likely as not today, summer camp is a weight-loss camp, or a computer camp. For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality. Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear to ignore. A recent television ad depicts a four-wheel-drive SUV racing along a breathtakingly beautiful mountain streamwhile in the backseat two children watch a

Excerpted from Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
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Last Child in the Woods

Last Child in the Woods

1565125223

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