My husband and I just spent a wonderful week-end with our youngest daughter and her family at a mountain cabin in Chimney Rock, NC. Not only was it fun but the time spent in nature with the grandchildren was very refreshing and amazing. Upon returning I noticed in the Healthy Child Healthy World Blog an article that really focuses on this very thing ~spending more time in the natural world with our children.
Mentioned in this article was the fact that so many children have been removed from direct contact with animals, farms, forests, and wild places causing a kind of “nature deficit disorder,” an incalculable loss of both spirit and competence.
Immersing children in the artificial world of television, entertainment, and virtual reality (I think we as adults even spend too much time here!) without too much thought to the toll that counterfeit reality would exact on their humanity is the thread of what is discussed in The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture and Human Intention, by Dr. David Orr, professor of environmental studies, Oberlin College, a book discussed in this article.
Healthy Child Healthy World suggests protecting children and childhood by changing priorities which includes fewer shopping malls and more parks; less television and more family time; fewer roads and more trails. The article included the following tips to parents who want to incorporate the durable standards of decency and compassion…..
- Love our children thoughtfully and consistently
- Slow the velocity of life by eating together, playing together, reading together, working together
- Eat well, which means mostly local, organic, and unprocessed foods.
- Engage the natural world – more accurately – to enjoy a love affair with it. The natural world is not an abstraction – yet.
If I were to add anything to this list it would be to create a non-toxic home, using chemical free household products. And as a very engaged grandparent, I would definitely recommend story-telling. The grandchildren love it!
What about you? How would you create a better world for our kids?
