Marilyn Leimbach says her 13-year-old daughter, Emily, would sit in front of the computer all day if left to her own devices, playing games and downloading music from iTunes.
Leimbach has nothing against technology. She uses a computer at work, so she knows its value, "but there's more to life than computers and technical stuff."
Whenever they can, Leimbach and her husband take Emily and her sister, 8-year-old Celia, camping and hiking. Every summer, they sleep in a lean-to in Baxter State Park for five days. Sometimes, they just go looking for frogs.
The family's outings are an immunization of sorts, against a newly recognized societal ailment known as "nature-deficit disorder." It's a problem that experts say is affecting children raised on an ever-expanding menu of electronic entertainment by parents who are increasingly fearful of letting their children fly beyond the confines of their nests, lest they be abducted or meet some other horrible fate.
Children raised in the 1950s and 1960s learned the sheer joy of throwing down their books after school and running off to explore the local woods. They rode their bikes for blocks, alone, to meet up with friends and build a fort or treehouse. They knew every creepy-crawly insect and green blade of grass in their own backyard.
FEAR AND LOATHING
Today, it appears, that carefree sense of adventure is over for many children. Kids who attend outdoor programs such as the Ferry Beach Ecology School in Saco are often afraid to even sit on the ground, according to the staff there.
They are terrified of mosquitoes because of West Nile virus, and uncomfortable with the idea of catching frogs.
Kara Wooldrik, an environmental educator at Maine Audubon in Falmouth, has noticed it too.
"Definitely, I would say that there's less comfort (with nature), and that comes in the form of more fears," she said. "They're just not familiar with what's out there."
When children of immigrants ask on a field trip "Are there tigers out here?" it is perhaps understandable because they had such creatures in their native country.
"But when a child from Portland or Cumberland asks that, wow, it means they're not familiar with the megafauna that live in Maine," Wooldrik said.
Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder" (Algonquin Books 2005), said the disconnect modern children feel with the natural world is something that began about 30 years ago and has accelerated in recent years with the rise of the Internet and other forms of electronic entertainment.
"In prior generations, breaking a bone climbing a tree was a rite of passage," Louv said. "That's unfortunate, that's a risk. But what pediatricians are telling us now is that they don't see a lot of broken bones among children. What they do see are repetitive stress injuries, which tend to last much longer than the typical broken bones."
Louv argues that instead of worrying about their child breaking something, parents should be thinking about comparative risk.
"There is also great risk in raising much of a generation under virtual protective house arrest - danger to their psychological health, to their sense of efficacy in the world, their sense of place, but also to their future health."
GRASS, ROOTS MOVEMENT
Louv's book, along with other writings and research about this topic, has inspired a national movement to get kids back outdoors.
Studies show that developing a firsthand, emotional connection with nature can help battle issues such as childhood obesity, depression and even attention deficit disorder. Children who spend time outdoors and learn about the environment are more creative, think more critically, and improve their test scores and grade-point averages.
Being in the outdoors also helps children develop into well-grounded human beings, said Drew Dumsch, executive director of the Ferry Beach Ecology School and president of the Maine Environmental Education Association. They get time to reflect, something that's hard to do when absorbing a constant stream of information off a computer screen.
But when it comes to giving students real-life experience outdoors, educators are swimming against the tide, Dumsch said. The emphasis on learning standards and improving test scores means that more children are confined to the classroom and computers.
"What I'm seeing now is definitely this trend toward passive, virtual education," Dumsch said. "Let's take a 'trip' to the tide pools. Log on, and there's a starfish."
There's a big difference between looking at a salt marsh on a two-dimensional screen, Dumsch said, and actually going there to find out that "it smelled funny and it was like walking on a big sponge."
Louv said today's students often have an "intellectualized" relationship with nature, "and that's not quite the same thing as having nature in your heart."
"When I was a boy, I owned my woods," he said. "They were mine, and I pulled out hundreds of survey stakes, I think, to prevent the bulldozers that I knew were taking out other woods. They were mine, and I protected them. But I couldn't have told you anything about the Amazon rainforest. I had no clue that my woods were connected ecologically to other woods.
"Today, kids can tell you just about anything about the Amazon rainforest, and they're learning a lot about the big ecological issues, but they generally cannot tell you about the last time they went out and just watched the leaves move."
Last summer, a study funded by The Nature Conservancy and published in the Journal of Environmental Management found that attendance at Baxter State Park and Acadia National Park has dropped sharply since 2000 - at Acadia, by as much as 20 percent. The study placed the blame squarely on electronic entertainment such as television and the Internet.
Competition from high-tech forms of fun is often what keeps Marilyn Leimbach's children indoors. Leimbach remembers camping with her own parents at Baxter when she was a child. She couldn't wait to finish dinner because there was always a bike ride or a game with friends waiting for her outside.
"We used to stay outside in a snowstorm until the mittens were literally sopping," Leimbach said. "But they go outside 15 minutes and they're ready to come in. They get bored if they don't have something to do."
Louv said technology does make it more fun for kids to stay indoors. But other factors play a role in "nature-deficit disorder" as well. Families also cite a lack of time to do things together outside.
Louv, who has interviewed thousands of parents and children about the subject, said the main culprit is parental fear of "stranger danger" - a fear that he says has been overblown by the 24-hour news cycle that repeats stories about tragedies suffered by children over and over.
"That's the very definition of conditioning," he said. "We're being conditioned to live in a state of fear."
Louv said he realizes that there are "monsters out there." But the numbers show that stranger abductions have been either stable or declining for the last 20 years.
"That's particularly true for the last 10," he said. "It's not nearly as unsafe out there as parents think."
Craig Lentz and his wife Leslie, who live in Saco, wanted their three boys to be active and physical. So they decided to home school their children - 10-year-old Connor, 8-year-old Aidan and 4-year-old Hakon - and make it a point to get them outside every day.
"In winter, they take a science class and we schuss them outside to play," Lentz said.
Lentz grew up working in summer camps, and has always loved activities such as canoeing and hiking. He wants his sons to experience the same passion for nature that he and his wife have found.
"There's a spark of life and of living and of passion that comes from being in nature and, I think, from the mystery and wonder of our natural world," he said. "If you master that, then it becomes a life of wonder and discovery."
Not all parents are as at ease in nature as Lentz. Many younger parents in their 20s and 30s may have grown up disconnected from nature themselves. "Even when young parents learn about this new body of knowledge and they want to get kids outdoors, they often don't know where to start because they didn't have that experience," Louv said. "And what I often say to those parents is, 'You know, you missed out, now's your chance. Think of all the first things you do with your kids. This will be a first thing for you, too.' "
GO AHEAD, GET OUT
It's not necessary to invest in a lot of clothes or equipment, or travel hundreds of miles to a national park, to give your child a positive experience in nature. Louv recommends leaving back yards "somewhat unmanicured" so that children can turn over a rock and find out what lives there. He also suggests taking advantage of "nearby nature" - that's the clump of trees at the end of the cul-de-sac, or the ravine behind the house.
"To adult eyes, those may not look like much, but to a child they can be the whole universe," he said.
Don't make cold weather an excuse to stay indoors, advised Wooldrik. Go outside and look at the stars for 10 minutes, or walk around your neighborhood and observe how much more there is to see with the leaves off the trees.
"In some ways, it's sort of the undiscovered season," Wooldrik said. "It's like nighttime."
Leimbach says parents should start taking their kids hiking when they're very young so they're used to it when they reach the teenage years and will be less likely to complain. She said it's also important to do things as a family because children often don't like to do things by themselves.
Dumsch agrees. He took his own daughter, 2-year-old Nia, to Mackworth Island for a family hike when she was just 3 months old. A little outdoors time on a daily basis can grow into a strong positive emotional connection with the environment, he said.
Set up a birdfeeder and watch the birds, or take a walk in the woods. Students at Ferry Beach Ecology School are instructed to go find their own personal "magic spot," a single place where they can go to spend 10 or 15 minutes sitting quietly. Sitting in their magic spot under a tree or on a rock by the ocean, they pay attention to the sounds they hear, or perhaps draw what they see in a journal.
Don't worry about becoming a walking expert who is able to answer all of your kids' questions, he said. The important thing is to immerse children in nature and let them develop that natural ability to question and explore. Don't know what kind of leaf you're looking at? Google it on the Internet when you go back inside.
"That's a great use of technology," he said.United Press Herald
