Free Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

possible links between child obesity and various genetic complexities, a common virus, and even sleep deprivation, the current debate circles two obvious contributors: First, television and junk food are linked to child obesity. The CDC found that the amount of TV that children watch directly correlates with measures of their body fat. In the United States, children ages six to eleven spend about thirty hours a week looking at a TV or computer monitor. Medical researchers in Seattle found that by three months, about 40 percent of children regularly watched TV, DVDs, or other videos. The second factor: More exercise would help.
    But what kind of exercise, and where? Parents are told to turn off theTV and restrict video game time, but we hear little about what the kids should do physically during their non-electronic time. The usual suggestion is organized sports. But consider this: The obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children’s sports in history. Experts on child obesity now concede that current approaches don’t seem to be working. What are kids missing that organized sports, including soccer and Little League, cannot provide?
    Oddly, the word “nature” has seldom shown up in the literature of child obesity, though that may be changing. Generalized, hour-to-hour physical activity is the absent ingredient in this discussion. The physical exercise and emotional stretching that children enjoy in unorganized play is more varied and less time-bound than is found in organized sports. Playtime—especially unstructured, imaginative, exploratory play—is increasingly recognized as an essential component of wholesome child development. Research findings on outdoor play often mingle types of activities, such as bicycle riding in the neighborhood, with findings more specific to the nature experience. Additional rigorous, controlled studies are needed to sort out correlation, cause and effect. However, when recent studies are considered together, they do lead to strong hypotheses.
    “Play in natural settings seems to offer special benefits. For one, children are more physically active when they are outside—a boon at a time of sedentary lifestyles and epidemic overweight,” according to Howard Frumkin, M.D., now director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.
    Recent studies describe tantalizing evidence that links time spent outdoors to other health benefits, beyond weight control, that may be specific to the actual experience of nature. In Norway and Sweden, studies of preschool children show specific gains from playing in natural settings. The studies compared preschool children who played every day on typically flat playgrounds to children who played for the same amount of time among the trees, rocks, and uneven ground of naturalplay areas. Over a year’s time, the children who played in natural areas tested better for motor fitness, especially in balance and agility.
    Adults, too, seem to benefit from “recess” in natural settings. Researchers in England and Sweden have found that joggers who exercise in a natural green setting with trees, foliage, and landscape views feel more restored, and less anxious, angry, and depressed than people who burn the same amount of calories in gyms or other built settings. Research is continuing into what is called “green exercise.” These studies are focused mainly on adults.
    But what about children’s emotional health? Although heart disease and other negative effects of their physical inactivity usually take decades to develop, another result of the sedentary life is more readily documented: kids get depressed.
Biophilia and Emotional Health
    Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child’s life. You’ll likely never see a slick commercial for nature therapy, as you do for the latest antidepressant pharmaceuticals. But parents, educators, and health workers need to know what a useful