Last Child in the Woods

Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
 Spotlight on a Landmark Publication

Richard Louv's national bestseller, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, is a must-read for nature enthusiasts and anyone concerned about our children's health or the environment.  Mr. Louv states, "A growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature--in positive ways.  Several of these studies suggest that thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies.  As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature."  He cites research that has shown that exposure to nature may reduce symptoms of ADHD, improve children's cognitive abilities, creativity, and productivity, while also increasing resistance to negative stresses and depression.

Mr. Louv has coined his own phrase, Nature-Deficit Disorder, to not act as a formal medical diagnosis, but instead to reflect the "human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.  The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.  Nature deficit can even change human behavior in cities, which could ultimately affect their design, since long-standing studies show a relationship between the absence, or inaccessibility, of parks and open space with high crime rates, depression, and other urban maladies."

Several chapters in the Last Child in the Woods account for how this decreased connection with nature has occurred over time, citing many areas including children and adults' increased dependence on electronics, less accessibility to natural areas due to less space and more restrictions placed by government and private agencies to use space, fears related to safety concerns regarding allowing children outside to explore independently, and the busy over-scheduled lives of families.  Mr. Louv describes how visits to national parks have decreased dramatically despite the long history of parks being safe for families.  He notes how these changes are leading are younger generations to not be as connected to nature and less concerned with protecting our environment.

In the expanded version of Last Child in the Woods, Mr. Louv also provides a list of many steps that children, families, community members, and government officials can take to preserve nature and positively impact the lives of children and adults.  He cites the No Child Left Inside Act as a positive step being taken on a national level to address the negative impact of losing our connection with nature.  Mr. Louv also provides a clear list of several actions we can take to celebrate nature including: viewing nature as an antidote to stress, encouraging kids to camp in the backyard, engage in cloud watching, have a "green hour" as a family tradition as a time for unstructured play and interaction with the natural world, institute a "sunny day rule" where children's inside time is highly limited when the weather is nice, hike, plant a garden, send your child to camp, spend family vacations in state or national parks, read outside, work to transform communities to be places with lots of green space, and to be an advocate for the environment.  Mr. Louv's message is clear--nature matters and we need to do our part to protect it for ourselves and future generations.