Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder Read online

  Praise for Last Child in the Woods

  “One of the most thought-provoking, well-written books I’ve read in recent memory. It rivals Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.”

  —The Cincinnati Enquirer

  “Important and original. . . . As Louv so eloquently and urgently shows, our mothers were right when they told us, day after day, ‘Go out and play.’”

  —The Christian Science Monitor

  “Last Child in the Woods is the direct descendant and rightful legatee of Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder. But this is not the only thing Richard Louv has in common with Rachel Carson. There is also this: in my opinion, Last Child in the Woods is the most important book published since Silent Spring.”

  —Robert Michael Pyle, author of Sky Time in Gray’s River

  “This book is an absolute must-read for parents.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “One man who bears a large responsibility for breathing new life into back-to-nature efforts is Richard Louv. . . . [His] book is helping drive a movement quickly flourishing across the nation.”

  —The Nation’s Health

  “A single sentence explains why Louv’s book is so important: ‘Our children,’ he writes, ‘are the first generation to be raised without meaningful contact with the natural world.’ This matters, and Last Child in the Woods makes it patently clear why and lays out a path back.”

  —The Ecologist

  “With this scholarly yet practical book, Louv offers solutions today for a healthier, greener tomorrow.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “The simplest, most profound, and most helpful of any book I have read on the personal and historical situation of our children, and ourselves, as we move into the twenty-first century.”

  —Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth

  “The book is an inch-thick caution against raising the fully automated child.”

  —The New York Times

  “Our society has been de-natured and few seem aware of how seriously television and the Internet have replaced nature in the lives of our children. This book is essential for the effective prescriptions for the recovery. Every parent should read this book, but equally important, every teacher should take it to heart and take every student into nature.”

  —Paul Dayton, Ph.D., winner of the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Award

  “Engrossing. . . . Thrilling to read.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “I found myself seeing the last chapter through suddenly blurry eyes and wondering, as I reached for the Kleenex, how I could sign on to Richard Louv’s team.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Affecting. . . . Has the force of a polemic, but none of the badgering quality; it’s delivered with the casual feel of an afternoon hike.”

  —Austin (TX) American-Statesman

  “Anyone who cares about the future should heed Richard Louv’s prophetic message. Children who don’t experience nature won’t grow up to cherish or protect it. Last Child in the Woods should be on every conservationist’s—and every parent’s—bookshelf.”

  —Will Rogers, President, The Trust for Public Land

  Last Child in the Woods has sparked a formal national campaign to get kids engaged in informal nature play and unstructured out-of-doors activities.—Boat U.S. Magazine

  “Last Child in the Woods coalesced a broad spectrum of interest groups that share a belief that spending time in nature can improve children’s health, stimulate their creativity, sharpen their thinking skills, and help them care about the environment. Richard Louv has energized the national debate on the importance of connecting kids to nature.

  —John Flicker, President, National Audubon Society

  “An honest, well-researched and well-written book, among the first to give name to an undeniable problem.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “[A] wake-up call.”

  —Spirituality and Health

  “Louv’s case for outdoor play is a convincing one, and the possibility of a drug-free ‘nature’ cure for many modern ills is too tantalizing to ignore.”

  —Audubon magazine, Editors’ Choice

  “Rich Louv has written an extraordinarily important book. American democracy is rooted in the landscape, not the skyline. If the next generation is denied this heritage, we are in big trouble—and Louv explains how to begin recovering our nature.”

  —Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club

  “Richard Louv’s provocative new book about kids’ growing ‘nature-deficit disorder’ . . . is raising debate and tough questions nationwide.”

  —Parade magazine

  “Last Child in the Woods isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. Mr. Louv provides plenty of evidence to back up his core contention.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Writing to the heart and intellect with telling anecdotes and pertinent research, Louv gives the reader—parent, educator, scientist—an assessment of the social and ecological consequences of America’s divorce from nature and prescribes new paths for reconnecting children with nature, resulting in healthier, better-adjusted kids who will care for our planet.”

  —Craig Tufts, Chief Naturalist, National Wildlife Federation

  “An eloquent, urgent, and timely book [that] presents important ideas and remedies for parents, schools, and communities.”

  —Samuel Osherson, Ph.D., author of Finding Our Fathers

  “Brilliant, encouraging.”

  —Healthy Beginnings magazine

  “Our children are part of a truly vast experiment—the first generation to be raised without meaningful contact with the natural world. Richard Louv provides insight on what it’s doing to our children, and savvy advice about how to restore the age-old relationship between people and the rest of the planet.”

  —Bill McKibben

  “A magnificent case for unplugging our kids from the Net and letting them roam free again in the woods.”

  —Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear

  “Louv has a wealth of advice for parents, teachers, policy-makers, and urban planners. . . . A must read for those with a keen interest in the subject.”

  —The Raleigh (NC) News and Observer

  “This book is an eye-opener for adults involved with children and for adults themselves. I hope it becomes the turning point it deserves to be.”

  —Bernice Weissbourd, contributing editor to Parents magazine and author of Putting Families First

  “Provides inspiring examples of ways and places where nature is consciously and thoughtfully being brought back into children’s lives all over the country.” —The Madison (WI) Capital Times

  “A wake-up call for parents, educators, and anyone who cares about children and the future of our society. . . . Last Child in the Woods should be required reading for anyone who lives with or works with children—or anyone who plans to in the future.”

  —Martha Farrell Erickson, Ph.D., co-chair of the

  Presidential Initiative on Children and founding director

  of the Children, Youth, and Family Consortium,

  University of Minnesota

  LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

  ALSO BY RICHARD LOUV

  Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An American Journey

  The Web of Life

  FatherLove

  101 Things You Can Do for Our Children’s Future

  Childhood’s Future

  America II

  LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

>   Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

  Updated and Expanded

  RICHARD LOUV

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2005, 2008 by Richard Louv. All rights reserved.

  Revised and updated edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, March 2008.

  First edition published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2005.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

  Design by Anne Winslow.

  The author is grateful to reprint with permission of their authors or publishers excerpts from the following: “New Mexico,” from Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Edward McDonald, copyright 1936 by Frieda Lawrence, copyright renewed 1964 by the estate of the late Frieda Lawrence Ravagli, used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. “Kiss Nature Goodbye,” by John Beardsley. “The Need for Nature: A Childhood Right,” by Robin Moore. “Ecstatic Places,” by Louise Chawla. “Views of Nature and Self-Discipline: Evidence from Inner City Children” and “Coping with ADD: The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings,” by Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances E. Kuo, and William C. Sullivan. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund C. Morris, copyright Putnam, 1979. The author has made every attempt to obtain permission for additional quoted material.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Louv, Richard.

  Last child in the woods : saving our children from nature-deficit disorder /

  Richard Louv.—Updated and Expanded

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-605-3

  1. Nature—Psychological aspects. 2. Children and the environment. I. Title.

  BF353.5.N37L68 2008

  155.4′18—dc22 2007049665

  Last Child in the Woods is available at special discounts when purchased in bulk

  for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fund-raising or educational use.

  Special editions or book excerpts also can be created to specification.

  For details, contact the Special Sales Director at the address below.

  Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Jason and Matthew

  There was a child went forth every day

  And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,

  And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

  Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

  The early lilacs became part of this child,

  And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover,

  and the song of the phoebe-bird,

  And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter,

  and the mare’s foal and the cow’s calf . . .

  —WALT WHITMAN

  I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the

  electrical outlets are.

  —A FOURTH-GRADER IN SAN DIEGO

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  PART I : THE NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN AND NATURE

  1. Gifts of Nature

  2. The Third Frontier

  3. The Criminalization of Natural Play

  PART II: WHY THE YOUNG (AND THE REST OF US) NEED NATURE

  4. Climbing the Tree of Health

  5. A Life of the Senses: Nature vs. the Know-It-All State of Mind

  6. The “Eighth Intelligence”

  7. The Genius of Childhood: How Nature Nurtures Creativity

  8. Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Restorative Environment

  PART III: THE BEST OF INTENTIONS: WHY JOHNNIE AND JEANNIE DON’T PLAY OUTSIDE ANYMORE

  9. Time and Fear

  10. The Bogeyman Syndrome Redux

  11. Don’t Know Much About Natural History: Education as a Barrier to Nature

  12. Where Will Future Stewards of Nature Come From?

  PART IV: THE NATURE-CHILD REUNION

  13. Bringing Nature Home

  14. Scared Smart: Facing the Bogeyman

  15. Telling Turtle Tales: Using Nature as a Moral Teacher

  PART V: THE JUNGLE BLACKBOARD

  16. Natural School Reform

  17. Camp Revival

  PART VI: WONDER LAND: OPENING THE FOURTH FRONTIER

  18. The Education of Judge Thatcher: Decriminalizing Natural Play

  19. Cities Gone Wild

  20. Where the Wild Things Will Be: A New Back-to-the-Land Movement

  PART VII: TO BE AMAZED

  21. The Spiritual Necessity of Nature for the Young

  22. Fire and Fermentation: Building a Movement

  23. While It Lasts

  NOTES

  SUGGESTED READING

  INDEX

  A FIELD GUIDE TO LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK, LIKE MOST, was a collective effort. My wife, Kathy Frederick Louv, and sons, Jason and Matthew, provided logistical, emotional, and intellectual support; they lived the research, too.

  Publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt and literary agent James Levine made the book possible. Elisabeth’s gentle, clear-eyed perspective offered depth for roots and careful pruning of overgrowth. She is a joy to work with. Algonquin’s Amy Gash also offered wise and timely support, as did Craig Popelars, Ina Stern, Brunson Hoole, Michael Taeckens, Aimee Bollenbach, Katherine Ward, and the rest of the Algonquin team. Heavy editorial lifting was shared by my talented friend and virtual brother, Dean Stahl. Invaluable editorial support came from John Shore, Lisa Polikov, and Cheryl Nicchitta, and my editors at the San Diego Union-Tribune, including Bill Osborne, Bernie Jones, Lora Cicalo, Jane Clifford, Karin Winner, and Peter Kaye. For providing timely reality checks: John Johns, David Boe, Larry Hinman, Karen Kerchelich, Rosemary Erickson, R. Larry Schmitt, Melissa Baldwin, Jackie Green, Jon Funabiki, Bill Stothers, Michael Stepner, Susan Bales, Michael Goldstein, Susan White, Bob Laurence, Jeannette De Wyze, Gary Shiebler, Anne Pearse Hocker, Peter Sebring, Janet Fout, Neal Peirce, LaVonne Misner, Melissa Moriarty, and, especially by example, Michael Louv.

  While an author traditionally does not thank people quoted in his or her book, accuracy and respect require special thanks to two groups: the teachers, especially John Rick, Brady Kelso, Tina Kafka, David Ward, and Candy Vanderhoff, who encouraged their students to share their thoughts; the students themselves (some of their names have been changed herein); and the hardy band of researchers who have plowed this field in recent years. I am particularly grateful to Louise Chawla, who not only shared her own findings but pointed me to the work of others. My apologies to those researchers not quoted here, but whose work is invaluable nonetheless.

  For the updated and expanded edition of this book, I am indebted to Cheryl Charles and Alicia Senauer for research updates. And I am grateful to Martin LeBlanc, Amy Pertschuk, Marti Erickson, John Parr, Stephen Kellert, Yusuf Burgess, Chris Krueger, Mike Pertschuk, Kathy Baughman McLeod, Nancy Herron, Bob Peart, and, again, Cheryl Charles, for establishing the Children & Nature Network, which carries on the work of this book.

  Finally, I wish to thank Elaine Brooks, who did not live to read the book she helped inspire, but who speaks from these pages.

  A word about this edition

  This edition of Last Child in the Woods contains reporting on, and citations for, research that has emerged since the book was first published in 2005. It also reflects the growing international concern about nature deficit in children and the correspondi
ng social movement that has emerged in the United States, Canada, and other countries. Included is the Field Guide, created especially for this edition, with a progress report by the author, Discussion Questions, an expanded Suggested Reading section, and 100 Practical Actions that can help foster changes in our schools, families, and communities that are essential to healthy childhood development.

  LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

  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, you’re 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 I’d 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 children’s 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. That’s 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 forest—but 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.