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No Child Left Inside
by Wenda Reed

We all agree that our children need certain things to survive and to thrive:

Nutrition
Sleep
Exercise
Love
Time in nature.

Time in nature? The last factor has slipped out of our children’s lives in the past few decades, but “it’s as necessary as riboflavin or calcium,” says Frank Hein, program director of the Woodland Park Zoo’s Zoomazium and chairman of the Environmental Education Association of Washington. I couldn’t agree more.

Repeated studies have shown that unstructured time messing around in the natural world helps children’s creativity, attention, ability to notice patterns and categorize, and their general sense of well-being. Children denied interaction with nature experience more problems with obesity, attention deficits, depression, physical and emotional illness, as well as a diminished sense of wonder and peace. Howard Gardner, the Harvard professor who developed the popular theory of Multiple Intelligences, has even added an eighth component to his original list: naturalist intelligence (being “nature smart”).

Richard Louv brought the issue into focus in his seminal book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2005). In the two years since its publication, the book has spawned an emerging movement dubbed “No Child Left Inside,” which is encouraging to Hein and others who work in environmental education. Beginning with an initiative in Connecticut to get children and families into under-used parks and forests, the campaign has spread around the country.

In our state, the informal title, “No Child Left Inside” was applied to a law passed in the last legislative session to increase environmental outreach to children in schools and out-of-school programs. In the next year, you can expect to see more local initiatives to get children into nature and even more networking between zoos, aquariums, museums and environmental education programs. This summer, the National Forest Service will launch its “More Kids in the Woods” campaign.

So if we buy into the notion that time in nature is important for our kids, how do we get them out there?

Our parents used to say, “Go outside and play,” but that’s not always enough today. In our ordered, safety-conscious, clean and tidy world, there may not be a lot of natural play spaces. And there’s always the lure of the screens — my son, for example, used to sit right next to the door in disconsolate stubbornness until I let him back inside.

We can start out small. If we have a private yard, we can devote some of it to habitat for wildlife and wild kids, where our children can channel water through dirt and rocks, or grow things, or climb trees, or make forts. We can take our very young children on walks and let them spend all the time they want making dandelion bouquets or watching a caterpillar crawl. When we go to the park, we can pass on the playground structures and choose to roam the open beaches, meadows or woods. The region abounds in parkland with easy one-to-three-mile trails.

Some of our happiest family times were camping and hiking in the woods, mountains and beach areas. If you’re unsure of how to get your family out exploring, a good starting place is the new edition of Best Hikes with Kids: Western Washington and the Cascades, by Joan Burton (The Mountaineers, 2006). Burton spells out exactly what you need to bring on a hike and how to make it fun for kids, along with clear directions to trailheads and conditions you can expect on each trail.

Even the smallest steps are worth it, not only for your child and your family, but for the planet as a whole. As Louv wisely points out in his book, the environmental movement will collapse if today’s children lose their connection with the natural world.

“You can feel the momentum — parents are getting it,” Hein says enthusiastically. “We’re starting to realize that as we live on this natural planet, we’re all in this together.”

Wenda Reed is a Bothell-based writer, nature lover and former ranger-naturalist.

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company