Children and Nature v Parental Rules

Originally published 3/03/2011 at explorealongtheway.com


I was never an outdoor sort of kid while growing up. Yes, I spent time outdoors but my mother never wanted my brother or me to stray far from the house. We could ride our bikes up and down a stretch of our street but no further unless our father was with us. If we didn’t ride past the house at regular intervals, mom would call for us. If we wanted to play with the neighbor a few houses up the street, we had to let her know.

I’m 45 years old. I grew up in a safe suburb. When I read Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods a few years ago or I listen to people who teach in the environmental field talk about the wonderful times they had in nature, I don’t entirely understand their experiences. However, when people talk about children’s disconnection from nature, I better understand – my parents didn’t want me wandering through the woods or getting dirty.

I remember one day a girl from the neighborhood raking the leaves in the front yard into a pile. My family got home from errands and we were baffled by the pile of leaves. When the girl showed up and announced that her efforts were so the kids in the neighborhood could jump in the leaf pile, my father discarded the idea. Yes, if we played in the leaves, they would have scattered everywhere and dad would have had to rake, but if the neighborhood girl hadn’t made a pile of leaves we would have been raking them anyway. I don’t really recall ever jumping in a pile of leaves.

Another neighbor had a quarter acre of land, most which was field. We could see the line where a fire had burnt much of the land years ago. I didn’t know about field succession, how plants grow back after a patch of disturbed land is left alone; but the place was magically different than any other yard in the neighborhood. We had a “house” formed by staghorn sumac that grew over our heads. (I only learned the name of the shrub in my 30s when I started working in the environmental field.) This connection to nature fell within my parents’ parameters, although I was forever getting in trouble for not returning home when the expected me.

I entered the environmental field by accident. My parents weren’t happy with the choice – why didn’t I work in medical billing or as an accountant or for the post office? I’ve come to believe that even without a childhood filled with jumping in leaf piles and catching fireflies that it is possible to learn to truly see and appreciate nature. These are my steps along a forest path ….