Last Child in the Woods

"This is a seminal book and a bestseller in the US. Louv coined the term ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ because he was so concerned about the alienation of young people from nature. They are becoming more sedentary – sitting indoors with technology or being over-scheduled and not having a lot of opportunities to connect with nature. Louv’s book discusses the social, psychological, and spiritual implications of this disconnection. And it also echoes what many parents that I work with tell me: they remember their own childhoods climbing trees or riding their bikes round the park and the feel sad at the contrast with their own children’s much more indoor lives. There’s a lot of research that being in nature helps children develop problem-solving and decision-making skills, and helps kids that have got ADHD let off steam. It can also help with depression, obesity, and aid concentration in the classroom. What I’m seeing in the schools I go into is that recreation time seems to be increasingly squeezed out of a lot of timetables because, again, there is more emphasis on exams and testing. And I feel that wellbeing is falling down the political agenda, really. I think that parents are very concerned about ‘factory farm’ schooling, and how do we get children back to nature? Because it will be essential for our survival as a species that they have that relationship with nature. How can they want to save it unless they’ve been given a relationship with it in the first place? Absolutely. Richard Louv has done a very valuable service by creating this book and this debate and making it impossible to ignore this problem. And there’s a lot of efforts out there, but we’ve got to do more. It’s tragic that certainly a lot of the kids I work with are not connected with nature. It’s heart-breaking. We have to make it a priority and provide these opportunities. How are they going to be healthy adults? It is about the whole of our survival as a species. If we haven’t got this as children then they’re not going to have that as adults. “I feel that wellbeing is falling down the political agenda.” There are some nice green spaces in London and other cities but it’s not enough. We need to be getting them out into the countryside. And, also for kids to have free play and free time. I remember as a child being outside for hours, in my own world, and it’s so good for the development of other parts of our brain. But children don’t often get that, with quite a lot of the busy schedules that I see. They seem to have a lot of things going on, don’t they? Some children do have opportunities to get outside but I am concerned for those children who don’t, who are stuck on their technology and their computers, and we are seeing so many more cases of ADHD. One of the things I see a lot of are young people who tell me they can’t concentrate, that they can’t focus at school. Well if they had more free time to run off the energy and get out there in a natural environment, away from technology, maybe they wouldn’t have so many of these issues around concentration and difficulties focussing. Yes, you need to absorb it. And kids have a lot of energy. They need to burn it off. They need to run around for hours, don’t they? Yes, I remember that too. And I think that’s good for the brain. It’s good to learn to be bored: young people have to be able to tolerate that. Otherwise, how will they learn to self-soothe and regulate themselves emotionally? That’s also something that can be done in nature. And it’s also about learning to take risks as well, because nature offers so many of those opportunities like tree-climbing or getting out on a bike… Yes, it is very timely. Obviously it’s not a formal diagnosis but I just like ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’: I think it’s a really apt term. We need to be aware of all of this because we have got huge planetary problems. They are the next generation: they are the generation that can actually turn it around. Me too. And it’s a skill. I explain to young people kindness, self-care and the way you speak to yourself are skills that you can learn like maths or science. We were taught when we were young that we need to push ourselves and beat ourselves up to get to the top, because we’re a ‘strivey’ generation generally. We’ve been set up to compete with each other. That’s the voice going on in all our heads that takes over. It’s very powerful. Once we can treat ourselves with a bit of gentleness and care, then the ripple effect of that will mean that we’ve got more to give; we’ve got more to give other people and we’ve got more to give to the planet as well. Small acts of kindness for ourselves and small acts of kindness for each other has to be one of the most important things that young people can learn. It doesn’t come so naturally to parents. It actually comes more easily to young people. “We’re a ‘strivey’ generation generally. We’ve been set up to compete with each other.” They’ve got fewer layers of conditioning that have built up. So, when I explain these ideas to young people they tend to get them more quickly than when I work with adults. They get it and they can put it into action much more quickly, whereas adults struggle because we fight these ideas. It’s catching yourself. It’s awareness: that’s what mindfulness is about. It’s about noticing the times when you are being really harsh on yourself and thinking: “ Wow, is that fair to talk to myself like that? Can I turn down the volume on that voice and actually just give myself a bit of a break? I’m doing my best and I’ve had a lot going on today. No one is perfect here.” Every parent that I know is struggling at some level, with some aspect of parenting. It is comforting. Everyone seems to be struggling right now. I think self-compassion and kindness is a good place to start. I put little quotes on my phone or reminders around the flat, because I wasn’t used to speaking to myself in that way. “Small acts of kindness for ourselves and small acts of kindness for each other has to be one of the most important things that young people can learn. ” It’s also about the high expectations that we hold ourselves to, isn’t it? It’s what we expect we should be able to achieve in any given day, but maybe our goals just aren’t realistic sometimes? Yes. Children are a lot slower, really. They amble a lot more. They are not in that ‘do it now’ mode, they haven’t learnt it yet; they are not so conditioned. Because they’re so in the moment and they don’t see the hurry, do they? They don’t get it. They’re in the own worlds. Obviously they have to get to school but sometimes parent should tap into that amazing ability that kids actually do have which, for all of us, should be our natural way of being – to be so present, which children are. But also they don’t have the responsibilities as well. They don’t have much to think about, do they? Yes, well, that’s the thing to remember: they have their own responsibilities. Very distracting, yes, and that’s going to just take time."