Footprints

by Budd Glassberg

Reprinted with permission from the Zionsville Times Sentinel on November 14, 2007

Playing in the Woods

Last Thursday night Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, spoke at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. While not a dynamic speaker, his gentle speech seemed more appropriate for the topic as he described his own childhood of playing in the woods. The audience, made up mostly of people of Baby-Boomer age related to the place in the heart we remember and the place in nature one may go for a sense of peace. The question Louv posed to the audience was, “Will future generations have that place to go to?”

Hearing quotes from studies about how time in nature helps attention deficit disorder and how electronic devices have added a layer of separation between our children and nature added nothing new to what I already supposed. It was not until he brought up the subject of fear that I began to put some of the puzzle pieces together. I had always thought the gradual shift from playing outside to inside could be mostly due to the glowing screen’s hypnotic pull it has on our youth. I had not considered that fear could be a contributing factor. As Lour described it, it is not the child’s fear of the woods, but instead the child’s parents fear.

The Boogeyman is in the woods. He is the faceless stranger who will abduct our child. For this reason, it is much safer keeping Jimmy inside playing XBox than allowing him to venture out to the park. The Boogeyman was also around fifty years ago, but children then played their own creative games outside, made forts in the woods, and had direct contact with nature. So what has changed? Are child abductions more prevalent today? According to the most recent study by the U.S. Department of Justice, of the 797,500 children reported missing in one year, 115 were the victims of a stereotypical kidnapping by a person the child did not know or only knew slightly. The preponderance of the abductions came from family members. In no way do I mean to minimize the impact or danger involved in such instances. Even one kidnapping is too many and is a horrible tragedy. But the rate of stranger abduction has been going down for two decades. According to Louv, violence to children outside the home is down 31% in that time. My reason for pointing out the statistics is to attempt to put in perspective our fears and the reasonable response to them.

Louv pointed out that our media has a detrimental impact on our ability to put these crimes in perspective. Abductions are big news and are often the lead news story. Follow ups are continuous. When abductors are caught, their trials are also over reported. These news stories sell papers, lift news ratings and play to our human interests in the crimes, but the abundance of time spent on them are not in proportion to the other news of the day. Just the continuous harping on such news stories make the crime seem more prevalent than it actually is. When you begin to think in terms of comparative risk, one factor you must consider is what risks the indoor activities are having on our children’s bodies. Are we willing to subject future generations to what is effectively house arrest?

We have countered the threat by structuring play outdoors. Adults supervise sporting events which allow our children to be outside and safe from abduction. Those games give our children the message that adults are needed for them to play outside. Without time outside to pretend and experience nature we have deprived them of an important link between the natural world and themselves.

If we must structure our children’s time outside, scouting, camping, nature walks with adults is preferable to avoiding nature altogether. Our parks are a wonderful place to take our children. Unstructured play is a magnificent outlet for our children’s creativity. They learn cooperation skills as opposed to the competitive skills they acquire in structured sports.

While running in Starkey Park last week, I came across a scene that bodes well for the future of our green spaces. Four young children were pretending to be pirates and the woods became a participant in their play. Their mother was within earshot, but clearly giving the youngsters some space. Those children were experiencing more joy and wonder than anything a glowing screen has to offer. They along with others given the opportunity to experience nature will hopefully be the ones to preserve what we have for future generations.

Budd Glassberg is a 23 year resident of Zionsville who works and volunteers in the community. Visit www.runz.com for reprints of all his columns. You can reach him by email at budd@runz.com.