Sunday, May 31, 2009

From a Nourished Mother

"I read an article...many months back that really inspired me. It was about some Northern European preschool where the children play outdoors all day long. Yes, all day... every day. Rain or shine. Sometimes they don warm coats and scarves, sometimes they need rain slickers and galoshes... but they are out there in the fresh air, playing not just with 'natural toys' but with nature. I thought about how really marvelous this is, and really anachronistic, too, in a time when most kids find fun in front of screens in carefully climate-controlled (and often sterilized) environments. Around the same time I read Richard Louv's wonderful book Last Child in the Woods, in which he coins the term 'Nature Deficit Disorder' and describes how limited access to the outdoors and lack of unstructured play there has contributed to an alarming rise of childhood depression and attention disorders. I realized reading this book, and especially after reading that article, that I should be getting [Stella] out there to play every day, and that there was no good reason at all that I should be searching for indoor fun because of 'bad' weather... that barring truly freezing temperatures or howling thunderstorms, we should still be able to have lots of fun outside, even in the winter. So that's how we ended up spending many days during these past cold months enjoying the parks around town, more often than not as the only folks climbing and swinging and marching through the trees in our mittens and fleecy hats. I heard a few words of caution from family concerned that I might be dooming the child to a rotten case of pneumonia... but of course, being cooped up inside with all the germies during the cold months is what really contributes to all the winter sickies, and Stella came through the season with flying colors and barely a sniffle.
"And moreover, she really enjoyed herself. Now that the weather is warming up, and everything is turning green and lush, it's marvelous to be able to point out to her (or have pointed out to me!) how everything is changing, and to see all sorts of little creature-friends who weren't there before. It's exciting to think that she will have an authentic understanding about the cycles of the seasons, and be familiar with the plants and animals and wonderous what-nots that many kids might only recognize from their picture books or television screens. She really does seem to prefer being outside, too... even when it's raining or 'yucky' she points out the windows, pulls me to the doors. We've started taking a good long walk to the river and playing at the park every Saturday afternoon while The Papa is at prayer services-- I used to try to keep her amused for those hours indoors, in the playroom, and it was always a hassle. Now we both look forward to enjoying a glorious springtime stroll and some good old running around and climbing all over before we head over to see the other kids and play with the toys inside for a much shorter span of time. She's so much less fussy and stir-crazy. Today we went to a playdate to meet up with a bunch of babies and toddlers we know, but Stella wasn't really into it after she had made her rounds of the house, inspecting all the toys and exploring her options. She wanted out. We ran around on the grassy commons outside our friend's house, chasing butterflies, looking at tiny flowers, touching tree bark, collecting sticks. She even met her first bee.
"I think this has all got to be pretty good for her. I think among all the intriguing points that Louv brings up in his book about why kids need nature, the most striking is that children need to be on the move-- they need to run wild, use all that energy, revel in the joy of being in their bodies. Trying to calm kids down, keep them quiet and still, sit them at desks, focus their attention on 'work'-- is really the biggest part of our crisis with hyperactivity and attention problems... we expect developmentally inappropriate behavior from small children, and put them in 'classroom' situations long before they can be ready (and who ever, at whatever age, really wants to be ready for dreary days at a desk when there are butterflies to chase?!). With less and less time outdoors, and more of that precious little time spent in very structured, competitive recreational pursuits, it's no wonder kids can't focus, can't relax, can't enjoy themselves. Hmmm... and it sounds like a lot of grown-ups you know, too, right?
"In any case, I was thinking again the other day about that school where the kids spend all their time in their natural habitat-- and it is truly their natural haunt, what children have evolved to enjoy, explore, learn from (as with so much of modernity, babies have no natural inclination to adapt to our weird whims when their innate prehistoric biological expectations are thwarted!)"
Nourished Mother

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