Special Report

People: Nurture & Nature

By Katherine Millett

As a society, are we becoming disconnected from nature? Will our children grow up to protect wilderness?

In this special report, Chicago WILDERNESS examines how we and our children connect with nature and how those behavioral patterns may affect the future.

“What do you wanna do?”
“I dunno. What do you wanna do?”
“I dunno.”
“Let’s go to the prairie.”

If you had that conversation, you must be over age 35. You ran with your friend to the neighborhood vacant lot, a green and untamed patch of weeds and trees surrounded by city (called a “prairie” in Chicago). Rain had fallen during the school day, making puddles and streams in the gravel. You threw sticks in the water and pelted them with stones, hauled old boards and branches together to make a fort, hunkered down and spied on other kids. When that got boring you started a game of kick-the-can and let the little kids join only if they begged. You ran and yelled, made rules and broke them, messed up your clothes and skinned your knees. When it got dark, or you got hungry, you went home for dinner.

Childhood has changed. Today, kids come home from school wearing earphones, slump down in front of computers or televisions, and hang out with their friends by cell phone and e-mail. Alone in their separate rooms, they navigate a predetermined world. Invisible adults manage their curiosity. When it gets dark they don’t notice, and when they get hungry they open bags of snacks.

And this, my friends, is a problem—for children and for wild nature. If children are losing their connection with nature—and copious research shows that they are—who will care enough about wildlife and open spaces to advocate for them 10 or 20 years from now? If children don’t have direct, intimate experiences with nature, why will they care if it goes away? They need good times in the outdoors to realize how wonderful it all is, to appreciate bees that live in the ground and caterpillars that drop from tree branches. No wonder the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has recognized play as a right of every child.

Few American cities can equal Chicago’s commitment to planting, beautifying, and greening its urban landscapes, but its metropolitan area is seriously threatened by careless development and sprawl. If we don’t get out and enjoy our parks and forest preserves, and introduce them to our children, we may lose them. That’s what is happening to the very first Boy Scout camp in the United States, owned by the Chicago Area Council of Boy Scouts since 1911. Last year, the council agreed to sell its Owasippe Scout Reservation, nearly 5,000 acres of wild and pristine habitat for 19 rare species near Muskegon, Michigan, to a developer.

Kids need to muck about in nature. This may seem obvious, but people are getting Ph.D.s by proving that time in natural places counters an array of physical, mental, and emotional disorders. The sedentary, electrified life has been linked to 4 million cases of attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder (ADHD) nationwide and an alarming increase in rates of childhood obesity and diabetes. The social costs of “nature-deficit disorder” are high and rising. Obesity puts a huge strain on the Illinois economy, accounting for $3.4 billion a year in health costs, according to a state-by-state report published in 2004 in the journal Obesity Research.

Teachers may be surprised to discover what their students think about the world outdoors. Pam Koenig, a third-grade teacher and an avid hiker, showed her students a picture of herself standing on a sunny mountain trail. “They thought it was very odd that I would choose to be there,” she says. “They couldn’t imagine being outdoors like that, let alone in the mountains. On a cold day, when a voice comes over the intercom to say there will be no outdoor recess, the kids cheer,” Koenig adds. “I just don’t understand it. They come to school in a bus, sit in a classroom, go home in a bus, and spend the rest of the day inside. You’d think they would want to be outside, away from adult control for a while.”

Nature has become old-fashioned. The future looms electronic. Kids come home from school wearing earphones, slump down in front of computers or televisions.

It seems that nature has become old-fashioned. The future looms electronic. Perhaps the shift began in 1969 with the debut of Sesame Street, the first high-quality, educational television show for toddlers. Big Bird and Ernie were so good at playing, it was more fun to watch them than to do it yourself. Cookie Monster talked to cultural luminaries like Yo Yo Ma, Ralph Nader, and Maya Angelou, so television became “good for” children. Parents welcomed it at first. Then their children grew older, programming quality declined, and parents dreaded the nightly ritual of enforcing limits on television time.

Meanwhile, some urban neighborhoods were becoming dangerous. Pictures of missing children appeared on milk cartons, then arrived in the mail, and parental fears, fanned by publicity, fixated on kidnapping and sexual predation. Children stopped playing in the parks and forest preserves. Kept inside, they needed something to do. When home computers arrived in the early 1980s, software followed a curve similar to that of television programming, beginning with education and devolving into entertaining, often violent games. Pow, ugh, rat-a-tat-a-tat, boing, ping, eeeee-owww-puhuuuu. Internet access came later and opened a wider universe, for better and worse. By now, most children have the screen habit. They have stopped wiggling their toes in soft grass and lying on their backs to watch clouds drift across the sky.

Maladies and the Nature Cure

The good news is that researchers are proving nature’s healing power. The natural cure for maladies of the push-button life, such as emotional disorders, ADHD, and childhood obesity, is as natural as can be. And the need for the cure is urgent. Twenty-five percent of US children are overweight, which correlates—not surprisingly—with watching TV for five hours or more each day.

At the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, social psychologist Frances Kuo found that when they had time to play in the green outdoors, children ages 7 to 12 diagnosed with ADHD experienced a 20 percent increase in their ability to concentrate. A father participating in the study said his son, who supposedly couldn’t focus his attention, “fishes for hours at a time, alone.” Spending time outdoors made the boy “very relaxed” and more attentive, which translated into better school performance. “Exposure to ordinary natural settings in the course of common after-school and weekend activities may be widely effective,” Kuo wrote, for kids who don’t respond to medicine.

Something as simple as spending a half-hour in the park before school can help children with ADHD, millions of whom are currently medicated with stimulants like Ritalin. Kuo found not only that children function better after activities in green settings, but that the “greener” the play area, the less severe the attention deficit symptoms. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology showed that the mere presence of a tree outside the window of a child living in the Robert Taylor homes, Chicago’s recently razed, high-density public apartments, could improve self-discipline, behavior, and academic achievement.

Childhood obesity is epidemic nationwide. Illinois ranks near the national average, but in some Chicago neighborhoods, the rates are alarmingly high. A study by Sinai Health Systems found toddlers to be overweight at the rate of 53 percent in Roseland, 48 percent in North Lawndale and West Town, and 47 percent in Humboldt Park. The statistics reveal disturbing racial and ethnic disparities as well. A 2006 national study of low-income families shows 44 percent of Hispanic toddlers are overweight, compared with 32 percent of either white or black toddlers.

Physical exercise, so basic to a child’s well-being, doesn’t figure into the daily routines of many children. Yet when children take up physical activity for their own reasons, to run, climb, and build things, they tend to grow fit. By bringing them to engaging places when they’re young and letting them play freely, parents help build attachment to the outdoors and a natural sense of play. They also encourage the kind of activity that can lower the risk of diabetes, says Rebecca Lipton, an epidemiologist at the University of Chicago. “Chubby kids tend to be insulin-resistant, or pre-diabetic,” she says. “Physical activity does appear to dramatically impact insulin resistance, and that’s a big risk factor for diabetes.”

Asking why children need time in nature may seem like asking, what’s jazz? (If you gotta ask, you ain’t never gonna know.) For many, it’s obvious that young people need to get out and exercise, but a lot of girls, for instance, aren’t doing it. According to a 2005 study by the Girl Scout Research Institute, only a few more than half of 8-to-10-year-old girls are physically active every day. That small number drops dramatically by the time girls reach high school, so that at the age of 16 and 17, only one in five gets daily exercise by walking, biking, dancing, swimming, running, or playing team sports. The girls surveyed said they prefer to spend their after-school hours on the phone or the computer, which seem to be displacing television slightly as primary pastimes.

Asking why children need time in nature may seem like asking, What's Jazz? (If you gotta ask, you ain't never gonna know.)

At least as troubling, many children are lonely and depressed. On average, they spend more than 60 percent of their computer time alone, according to a 2000 study by the Brookings Institution. Their ability to communicate face-to-face with other children and adults, to read body language and facial expressions, to look people in the eye, to carry on an interesting conversation, must be declining as a result.

Nature-Deficit Disorder

If you care about healthy nature and healthy children, then it’s clear that something is very wrong. Parents and teachers sense that it involves a break with the natural world, but they struggle to articulate the problem. That’s why so many have pounced on Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, a 2005 book by Richard Louv that makes an impassioned plea for the rejuvenation of childhood. Louv’s wife, Kathy, came up with the term “nature-deficit disorder,” which is often quoted along with the comment of a fourth-grade boy in a San Diego school. Asked whether he’d rather play indoors or outdoors, the boy replied, “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

The book offers common ground for discussion and action by presenting new research along with ideas that hark back to Rachel Carson (The Sense of Wonder, 1965), Maria Montessori (Discovery of the Child, 1909), and Louise Chawla (Growing Up in an Urbanizing World, 2001).

Last November, Louv spoke to 400 local environmental educators, parents, and friends at Northwestern University. He could not have found a more enthusiastic audience. The meeting inspired participants to launch a new campaign, “Leave No Child Inside,” which freshly welcomes Chicago-area residents to enjoy the region’s 300,000 acres of protected forests, prairies, savannas, wetlands, lakes, and other open spaces.

“The meeting was a who’s who of environmental education,” says Peggy Stewart, manager of outdoor and environmental education for the Chicago Park District. “It was a shot in the arm, reinvigorating our work and validating what we already knew about the importance of letting kids camp, fish, watch birds, and walk in the woods.”

Sean Shaffer, a naturalist at the North Park Village Nature Center in Chicago, says the meeting has also led to some programmatic changes. “Louv pushes the importance of unstructured play, so now we have an area where kids can walk off the trail and climb around on a fallen tree.”

Louv, in turn, was impressed by the commitment he felt from people he met at the Chicago meeting. “The Chicago Wilderness movement began long before my book was published,” he says. “I became convinced that all the regions around the country now attempting to connect the next generation with nature could learn a great deal from Chicago Wilderness’s long history.” Louv’s book now has 145,000 copies in print, and he continues to build a network through his Web site, the Children and Nature Network.

In addition to free play, the most important force in binding children to nature is a caring adult. “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder,” Rachel Carson wrote about exploring the Maine coast with her young nephew, “he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

Often, that adult is a grandparent. “Children love to see the real,” says Clara Parker, who, despite winter storm warnings, took her four grandchildren from their South Side home to one of the Chicago Park District’s Polar Adventure days at Northerly Island (formerly Meigs Field) last February. Cold wind blew past the winter camping exhibit, while inside, families bustled around a spacious meeting room drinking cocoa and taking a close look at iguanas and birds of prey.

“Most kids see too many pictures, spend too much time with electronic babysitters,” says Parker, watching a Siberian husky puppy lick her granddaughter’s cheek. “Parents like McDonald’s and the iPod to keep the kids quiet, but the kids need to get outside.”

Her daughter, Victoria, agrees. “They need to touch and feel,” she says, “and look at the stars. Everyone needs that peace and tranquility. If a certain park doesn’t feel safe at a particular time, you can probably find a different park.”

Snow fell as icy pellets, but the Parkers zipped up their coats and went outside to board a hay wagon. As they rolled along the lakefront behind white horses, they passed a canvas tent where a man with a long beard, dressed as an early settler, stoked a fire and stirred a pot of fragrant beans and rice.

Children whose parents and grandparents are unavailable can participate, too. Bob Long, Jr., a native South-Sider, takes kids fishing every summer. The Chicago Park District lends out rods and sends children to stocked lagoons and lakefront spots with adult guides. It’s catch-and-release for 14,000 children every year, and they can keep trying until they succeed.

“If a child doesn’t fish before age 12, he probably won’t do it as an adult,” says Long, director of the program. “Ask people if they remember their first fish, and they’ll tell you about one they caught when they were 6, 7, or 8. Fishing is some sort of ancient, primordial thing kids just love. They jump and scream, and by the end of the hour, they’re touching the fish, absolutely fascinated.”

Future Stewards and Free Play

Unless children have grown up with a love of special places, they are unlikely to become stewards of the land, says Louise Chawla, a pioneer of research on children’s environments. Chawla interviewed 56 environmentalists at length about their careers, asking them what motivated them to spend countless hours of their time working for environmental causes. In public, they said they were motivated by generalized goals like reducing pollution to improve human health, but in private, regardless of age, nationality, or economic status, they revealed more personal feelings. “They invested themselves because of their experiences of special places in the natural world in childhood or adolescence,” Chawla wrote, “and because some special person directed them to look closely at the plants and animals around them."

While adults are busy investing themselves in protecting land through nonprofits, the courts, and the political process, they should leave their children free to play on their own. This is the message of Roger Hart, an environmental psychologist who has done extensive research on children’s direct experience and who works as an advocate for children’s right to play.

“The degree to which play is child-directed is very important,” he says. “Parents should trust their children’s own urges to learn. We need to stop interrupting the building, manipulating, discovering, and inventing that children do on their own. When I watch parents with children,” he adds, “I’m struck by how common it is for parents to interfere just when they shouldn’t. Kids don’t need to be told what is significant in nature. Let them ask the questions. When you discover something for yourself, it means so much more to you.”

Hart is critical of educational methods that prescribe too much, such as assigning monitoring exercises that force children to answer questions they themselves have not posed. Better, he says, to let children explore a new area freely and volunteer their own observations. “It’s all about the sense of wonder,” he says.

The Lure of Camping

Children who are free to take the initiative in nature will come to love it. Those who follow the example of caring adults will learn to protect their environment. Yet the adults, in a literal sense, are losing ground. The Bush administration proposes to sell off national forest land to cover budget shortfalls and fund rural schools. Current mandates require chief rangers to list parcels of public land that could be privatized. In Illinois, 200 acres of the Shawnee National Forest are on the block. The sale of the Owasippe Scout Reservation is not unique. Other scouting organizations have been selling off the very land that has introduced children to the wonder of the natural world for decades. If the Owasippe deal is consummated, 5,000 acres of land perfectly suited to camping, fishing, and canoeing will be carved into 1,200 home sites.

“There was kind of a backlash when we agreed to sell the property,” admits the Boy Scouts’ program director, Chris Townsend, “but we struggle to recruit people to join the Scouts. Kids are invited to join every little club and organization you can imagine. If they have a choice between off-season football or hockey versus the Scouts, a lot of them go with the sport. Besides, scouting is scheduled, and video games you can play any time you want.”

Kirt Manecke, for one, objects to the sale. The founder of LandChoices, a nonprofit that shows landowners ways to protect their land permanently from development, he thinks the land could and should be saved.

“I look at that sale as a cop-out,” he says. “Selling off assets is the easiest way to raise money without making any effort. I agree there’s more competition with computers and sports, but if the Boy Scouts say participation is low, they should be out there with an aggressive PR campaign. If you take kids out camping, they love it!”

Townsend says membership in the Boy Scout council has declined from 15,000 to 3,500 during the last 30 years. Interestingly, membership in the Girl Scouts of Chicago has been consistently higher but also declining, going from 33,700 in 1968 to 11,700 in 2007, according to Julie Somogyi, director of communications and marketing for the Girl Scouts of Chicago.

“All I have to do is say ‘camping’ and I can recruit 40 girls in three days, no problem,” says Coretta Franklin, a lifelong Girl Scout with an infectious smile who now leads a troop of 24 teenagers from Chicago’s South Side. “We go summer, winter, whenever we can.”

Combined, the Girls Scouts’ two camp sites would barely cover one-tenth of the Owasippe property. Thousands of girls camp there each year, including 175 who live in public housing. A grant from Chicago’s Department of Children and Youth Services sends these girls to day camp for a week and then on to total-immersion residential camping for a second week.

“It’s so relaxing to be away from people and to be outside,” says Dominique Mitchell, one of the 24 teenagers in Franklin’s troop, all of whom started scouting in elementary school. Now a tenth grader at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Science, Mitchell works on a farm with chickens, pigs, and sheep during school hours. On weekends she takes younger girls camping and helps them get through the bumpy first night. “I cried the first night, I was so scared and homesick,” she remembers. “I took all the wrong things, like shorts and sandals for camping in October. They told me what to bring, but I didn’t read it. It was bad. Now I see other girls go through the same thing. The little ones think there’s going to be bears and lions in the woods. They want your cell phone to call their mama, but we keep them busy, and they all end up having a good time.”

“Kids don’t need to be told what is significant in nature.
Let them ask the questions. When you discover something for yourself, it means so much more to you.”

Beyond the social richness of the experience, says Theresa Salus, program director for the Chicago Girl Scouts, the girls list their favorite activities as playing outside, roasting marshmallows, canoeing, swimming, fishing, scavenger hunts, and night hikes. “It’s interesting to watch them realize what they need and don’t need,” says Salus. “They don’t need radios and hair straightener. They do need the experience of camping, which helps them grow confident and learn how to get along with each other. When we ask them what they learned,” she says, “we get answers like, ‘how to control my cool,’ ‘not to be two-faced,’ and ‘tie hair back while lighting campfire.’ Most of the girls who try it come back again.”

Families that have never camped before can start with the Chicago Park District, which provides tents, sleeping bags, and cooked meals for an overnight at one of several Chicago parks. This “catered camping” experience, with a fee of $40 that includes take-home sleeping bags, is intended to break the ice for first-time campers, give them an enjoyable experience, and encourage them to try their own adventures, says program director Marija Maric.

Parental Fear

To stay in daily contact with the natural world, children need to find places to be outdoors but close to home. By foot, bicycle, or public transportation, most can, in theory, reach a park or forest. The problem is, many caregivers are afraid to let their children go. Parental fear is the biggest obstacle between children and the outdoors, according to Louv, and local educators agree.

“It’s discouraging when I hear about kids not wanting to go outside,” says Linda Davis, head of the adolescent program of the Montessori School of Lake Forest. “Some of it comes from them, but I also think parents give a lot of strong, subliminal messages about the world not being a safe place. They’re worried about kidnapping and that kind of thing.”

Abductions by strangers are extremely rare, and fears of human predation in forests and parks far exceed their actual occurrence. Still, if the one in a million turns out to be one’s own child, statistics don’t matter.

John Elliott, director of education for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, advises new visitors to take it easy. Families can begin by visiting one of the county’s six nature centers and taking a walk guided by a staff member. Explore on your own around the center, he advises, and then move on to the area around a paved bike path. Staying within shouting distance of the path, you’ll get the benefits of solitude and be close to a friendly human presence. On “workdays,” volunteers spread out in a preserve to plant or collect seeds, clear brush, and learn how to tell native plants from invaders. Spend time in the woods or prairies nearby, Elliott suggests. Better yet, grab a shovel and help.

Generalized fears sometimes focus on specific aspects of the outdoors, such as wild animals or germs. At the Prairie Crossing Charter School in Grayslake, which has an environmentally based curriculum, parents express those fears even though they have chosen to send their children to a school with a hands-on farming program.

“What lurks in the manure?” says Myron Dagley, the school’s director. “Parents worry about that. I think that aspect of the farm school becomes the focus of more generalized fears. We’ve become a fearful generation, worried about crazy people kidnapping our children.” Like most fears, they attach to the unknown. Parents learn to relax as they help make and serve lunch at school using eggs collected by the kindergartners and vegetables grown by the seventh graders. “The word is out,” says Dagley, “and now parents who don’t have students enrolled here still want their children to be part of the farm program.”

Not every school can have a working farm, but other schools may find it valuable to use another of Prairie Crossing’s nature-connecting traditions. Each student chooses a magic spot at school and visits it as a quiet place to sit and look, draw pictures, and write in a journal. As students grow older they find magic spots closer to home, which they use for similar purposes. The idea is to cultivate a habit that will last a lifetime.

And while not every child attends a school with an environmentally based curriculum, any school group in metropolitan Chicago or northwest Indiana can sign up for a two- or three-day trip to the sand dunes, wetlands, savannas, and beaches at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center operates year-round to teach school groups of up to 70 students and 10 adult chaperones about ecology, and to put them up in cabins overnight. Supported by the National Park Service and modest tuition fees, the center also relies on private donations through its Adopt-a-School program.

Parental fear is the biggest obstacle between children and the outdoors, according to Louv, and local educators agree.

If the fourth graders who enjoyed the place at the end of March are typical, it’s a memorable time. The kids listened to trilling frogs, peeked inside skunk cabbage pods, hiked through oak savannas, played frisbee, roasted marshmallows, sang funny songs, and watched colors brighten at dusk where the lake meets the sky. These African-American kids came from Claremont Academy, located near Marquette Park in Chicago. Not one of them had ever been to the dunes before, camped before, or run on the beach before. One had visited a state or federal park—once. At home, none of them is allowed to walk around the block alone.

After school, they say, they play video games, do homework, watch television, and rearrange their rooms. When their guide for the day, Erica Schneider, asked whether they would come back to the dunes again, they exploded with a jubilant “Yes!”

“I won’t be offended if you say no,” she told them, but they insisted that they meant it. If they could come back, she asked, what would they do?

“I’d bring my little sister,” said one boy, “and show her the deer we saw the first day.”

“I’d take my grandma to the woods,” said a girl.

“I’d tell my mom to do the night hike,” said another boy. “She’d be scared at first, but then she’d like it.”

On the first night, the children were called out of their cabins to get ready for the night hike. It was too dark to see much except shadows and the crescent moon. They clustered together, and flashlight beams streaked the cool air.

“No flashlights,” said their instructor. “We’re going to do a solo walk. Who wants to walk 50 yards alone in the dark?” Silence. There was no pressure to take the walk, and it would have been okay to do it with a buddy. Yet slowly, one by one, each child took the walk alone. No one fell in a hole or got bitten by a rattlesnake. No hungry lions or bears came out of the woods. All the bad people in the world were busy doing something else, far from the peace of the dunes. The night belonged to these fourth graders and their growing friendships, the chirping tree frogs, and the two deer that ran just ahead of the children, enticing them onward.

No one felt the beauty of the place more than Tony Fields, an adult chaperone. On the brisk morning after the night hike, he was walking behind the group, watching for stragglers and soaking up the peace and quiet of a day in the woods. “This is my kind of place,” he said, shaking his head. “I have a tremendous appreciation for nature, anyplace that doesn’t have people in it. I used to ride my bike all over Grant and Lincoln Parks,” he recalls, “but these kids are video game junkies. Walking in a place like this and being quiet is totally foreign to them. In the branch library where I work, kids never check out nature books unless they have to read them for an assignment.

But look at them,” Fields said, noticing a group of kids at the edge of the trail. “They’re getting into this.”

The kids clustered around Schneider, who crouched over a hillside dotted with sandy little mounds like anthills. Using a long piece of grass, she was fishing for ant lions, wasps, or whatever else might live inside one of the mounds. The kids’ heads bent lower and lower, closer to the hole. “Aaaaaaah!” In unison, they jumped back as a wasp charged from its burrow.

The neighborhood “prairies” of our youth may be gone, but the human need to spend time outdoors, in special places touched by wildness, persists. Only together can we protect our private havens, and if we ignore them, they will go away. It isn’t just that kids need nature. Nature needs kids.

About the author

Katherine Millett writes about wild places from Chicago to East Greenland to the bottom of the ocean. Born in Colorado, she plays the cello and takes her two sons hiking whenever she can get them away from video games. She practiced law for 10 years after graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, then turned full-time to freelance writing. Favorite topics include discovering the outdoors, making a life in chamber music, and crossing cultural borders. She has written for Chicago Wilderness Magazine, Yankee, Climbing, Rock & Ice, Chicago Magazine, The Strad, Chamber Music Magazine, Strings, the Chica/go Tribune Magazine, Dance, and many others. Past articles appear on her web site.

This special report was made possible by a grant from the Grand Victoria Foundation.

To download a PDF of this report, and to learn more about other reports in this Special Reports series published by Chicago Wilderness Magazine, please visit Chicago Wilderness Reports.