'Last Child in the Woods' Review
Award Winning Book Tells How to Reconnect Children and Nature
May 27, 2008 Diane Laney Fitzpatrick
An opening quote in Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv’s newly updated bestseller, seems to say it all. A San Diego fourth-grader says, “I like to play indoors better ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”
Inspiring and scary at the same time, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder makes you want to get up from the computer screen you’re looking at right now, walk out your back door and start playing in the dirt. You’ll want to take your kids along with you, since the book convincingly suggests you could not only be saving their precious childhoods, but saving their generation and future generations from a dangerous disconnect with the earth.
Last Child in the Woods is Louv’s seventh book and in writing it he’s found a cause worth fighting for. Louv won the 2008 Audubon Medal and his book has launched a “No Child Left Inside” movement throughout the United States.
Nature-Deficit Disorder
Louv spends the first 12 chapters of Last Child making a solid case for why children are in a nature-deficit crisis. Children who interact with nature grow up to be physically healthier, having a well-rounded intelligence, being calmer and more focused, more creative, and more responsible and independent.
He asserts that it will take an effort by parents, educators, city planners, youth leaders and environmentalists to turn around the trend that has young people spending more time indoors in front of electronic screens than outdoors.
Louv’s book makes it seem possible. The book begins with an assertion that nature deserves a place in all children’s lives, even urban kids who live in Manhattan and who have access to Central Park, and children from the Bronx who can watch hawks circle above them.
He cuts a wide swath in setting perspective, going back to the American pioneer spirit of the 1800s, asserting that part of human nature is to have a relationship with the surroundings.
Who is to Blame for Child-Nature Disconnect?
Parents, albeit with good intentions, are partly to blame for the current nature-deficit disorder, Louv says. Why do children think of meat as already shrink-wrapped, not thinking about the animals that provide this food? Because parents think it’s cruel to expose children to the reality of farm life, where yesterday’s pet cow is today’s roast beef dinner. Why are kids afraid to swim in a lake, plunge their hands into a pile of dirt or walk in the woods? Because parents are afraid of tics, germs, wildlife and all the dangers that a child is exposed to when out in the world.
But exposing children to their natural surroundings actually makes them safer, Louv says. Allow a child to nurture a relationship with his surroundings and you give him a heightened awareness that leads to experience, which leads to his ability to solve problems, avert dangers and become an independent citizen of the earth.
It’s not just parents who are to blame for the current state, Louv’s book says. Unstructured play, another childhood staple that has become a golden oldie, has been all but destroyed by communities who fear lawsuits if a child plays on public or private property without supervision. The book cites a study from the University of Maryland that found “between 1981 and 2003, children during the typical week lost over nine hours of discretionary time (that is, hours not spent in school, child care, and so forth). They spent less time in unstructured indoor and outdoor play; computer use doubled.”
What Parents Can Do
The newly revised Last Child in the Woods includes an appendix of "100 Actions We Can Take", from the family level (“Got dirt? ‘In South Carolina, a truckload of dirt is the same price as a video game!’ reports Norman McGee, a father . . . who bought a load for his daughters, plus plastic buckets and shovels.”) to the larger picture (“Assemble leaders spanning the political, religious, economic and geographic spectrum.”)
Last Child in the Woods leaves you with the notion that it's possible to solve the crisis, one nature walk at a time.
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