I post this picture for this reason.....this is totally what kids need to be doing...exploring, getting dirty, learning their way in the outdoors, laughing and getting into "trouble." On the first and last day of our recent camping trip these 8 kids did nothing but play in the woods for hours....they loved every minute of it, got so stinkin dirty, and laughed the whole time! The author of the above book would be proud of the parents of these kids :) Yes, we let them run wild in a campground, somehow get stuck on the hillside, they had to send for help, they slid down the side of a mountain, had to stand on each other to get out of the branches, use all of their muscles to hold on tight, and fell in the mud but they had a ball doing it! Emily and John Daniel talked NONSTOP about their adventures all the way home and told my parents and my brother that night all about their crazy "dangerous" experience. I really wish I had them telling about it on video!
Here is an exerpt from the above mentioned book:
"Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact. Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment--but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading. That's exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child. As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests. Nobody in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming. But I knew my woods and my fields. I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest--but not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude or lay in a field listening to the wind watching the clouds move. Not that long ago, summer camp was a place where you camped and hiked in the woods, learned about plants and nature, told firelight stories about mountain lions. As likely as not today, Summer camp is a weight loss camp or a computer camp. For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality. Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear---to ignore! Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature. Although, several studies suggest that thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can be a powerful tool too and form of therapy to kids with disorders like ADD. One scientist put it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature!"
For the most part, I say well "DUH" to a lot of these concepts but many don't really understand and I need to be reminded of this especially since my children did just get a video gaming system for Christmas! It is also nice to read that camping, hiking, and playing outside which we so dearly love is something that will truly benefit my kids on so many diferent levels...oh and Backyard chickens may actually be beneficial to them physiologically and phychologically.....woo hoo!!!
