Customer Reviews

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm old enough to remember an unplugged childhood, and although I want my kids to play unfettered in the woods and waters, we're a different society today. We can't just let them wander alone, but we also owe them the natural formative experiences we enjoyed like building forts, treehouses and teepees, catching fish, frogs and critters, and observing nature - in nature, not through the TV. Although we try to limit the exposure to electronica - it's a pervasive force in modern life. Louv shows through dozens of examples where kids today get their lessons and experiences - more often than not through the TV or computer screen. He's concerned that a new generation of children is growing up detatched from the earth, who view it simply as a resource to be mined, drilled, and sold. He sees children losing the wonder of nature, and the earth losing a generation of would-be caretakers.
As parents we don't have to move to Montana, or trap our meals to make a positive impact. It can be many little things, like catching fireflies, wading in a small stream with your kids, following animal tracks in the snow. These are all no cost and high-benefit activities that we can do with our kids to introduce them to the wonder that lies just outside our doors.
This book is a call to action. I'm giving it to the principal at my son's elementary school. If you have kids, are thinking about having kids, or are concerned with the future of childhood - READ THIS BOOK!
We had unplugged the tv for a few months and, frankly, were wavering. (We miss it too). After reading Last Child in the Woods, the TV is staying in the cellar. Maybe for the long haul!

My "wake up call" came when my friend from the city brought her toddler to my home and the little girl cried in terror when her mother tried to get her to put her bare feet on the lawn, a lawn that was free of anything dangerous. We don't have a dog so there weren't even any "droppings" to worry about.
A baby who was scared to touch ground? Her mother admitted that her offspring had never felt grass because her mother feared it might be too full of "germs". I urged her to at least let her daughter smell a handful of freshly picked clover but she looked at me as though I were crazy.
I then told her of summers spent barefoot, of exploring creeks and finding crayfish and even some snakes, of coming across a newborn fawn in the woods, etc.
That's when I realized that there could be a whole generation of children losing touch with the natural world around them and I started paying attention to the kids and teens in our neighborhood. Sure enough, very few of them were climbing trees, exploring creeks, walking through the nearby woods. Very few of them built forts or learned the joy of wading in a cold stream or simply lying on the grass and looking up at the clouds, listening to the birds or trying to identify the different types of trees in the neighborhood. All of these things were common activities for me as a child (admittedly, during a time when tv channels were limited to 3 or 4 and there weren't video games or cellphones).
If there is ONE POINT this book makes, it is that parents need to make an effort to help their children discover nature. Whether it is because parents are too busy or too fearful to let their children discover nature or whether kids have too many electronic devices to distract them and which prevent them from automatically turning to the pleasures of the outside world, the result is that children spend more and more time indoors and less time being active.
Is it any wonder that there is an epidemic of childhood obesity? I'm not naive enough to suggest that spending time outside will cure obesity but I DO believe that it might encourage children to at least contemplate the idea of running through a grassy field, climbing a tree (carefully and respectfully) or simply chasing a butterfly through a meadow, trying to see where it goes.
Most of all, this book might help both parents and children realize that nature can be as mysterious, powerful and awesome as any video game or television show (I'd say even MORE so). If our children, our future generations, are going to learn to care about the environment and preserving the wonders that are out there, it is up to parents, teachers and other role models in their lives to foster that appreciation...and, hopefully, that passion...early on.

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv is a timely book that needed to be written.

The author's point is that kids today are facing a nature deficit and that affects childhood obesity and even the potential for the next generation to appreciate the breadth of nature enough to want to preserve it. After all, if the local mall has an arboretum and that's all you know as nature, that's all you'll expect.

The culprit is not news to anyone, nor to any parent with enough income to plug their kids into all manner of electronic gadgets. Videogames, TV, computers and the like have proved a powerful pull on today's children. The cost is a lack of simple play outdoors, exploring creeks, fields, rocks and trees (the author doesn't count organized sports as nature exploration and rightly so in my book). It is sad, but not surprising to ask any kids under age 16 or so if the know how to play "Kick the Can." Hardly any do, and even fewer have played.

Louv offers a lot of data to back up the negative effects of this nature deficiency and some prescriptions to turn it around. While reestablishing phys ed in school will help, the answer is simple: parents, unplug your kids and kick them outside.

Having said this, I felt the author could have made his points and supported them in a long magazine article. There really wasn't enough for a full book and Louv gets repetitive and even inserts lists of ways to address the problem. I found myself scanning some sections later in the book because the points in those pages had been made before or the prescriptions he was offering were simplistic and I didn't feel worthy of the full play he gave to some.

That being said, important argument and point, I just wish I would have read this in about forty pages in a periodical.

An intriguing and thought-provoking work about our failures as parents, educators, and community planners to provide opportunities for unfettered nature play to our children, and the consequences of this oversight. According to Louv, in "Last Child in the Woods," the lack of opportunities for unstructured nature play, the decline of close-to-home open space, and the rise in programmed sporting activities are all contributing to a condition he labels "Nature Deficit Disorder." Although going to great pains to point out that this is not an identified medical disorder, it remains Louv's hypothesis that the modern disconnect between children and nature can and is to be blamed as a contributing factor to ADHD, obesity, lack of creativity, a loss of respect for nature and the living world, and a number of other social ills. Backed by lots of fascinating interviews, anecdotes, and research, Louv lays out a compelling argument for changing some modern social arrangements (educators, lawyers, and over-protective parents take a few lumps here) and letting today's children play the way we played as children: set them free in the outdoors, and let their imaginations do the work that we too often allow computer games and TV to do for them. Although the book drags a little the last 40 pages or so, it's only because Louv has already won you over to his argument. I highly recommend this work for local planners, educators, parents, and all others concerned about the disconnect between today's youth and the natural world.

This book engages one to think about the subject of how to bring a child up in this world without preaching. It presents facts, and it presents the shortcomings of the information it has available, but asks the question what would be wrong with trying to change.

I have never read a book before that made me think as much as this book did. It rekindled old memories of childhood that were almost forgotten, it encourage me to strike up conversations with strangers who asked what I was reading about, and it converted me into an almost preacher for this book.

The book is not a non stop page turner, but it was fun to read; made my eyes well up with emotion several times; and most of all encouraged me to think about a subject that I did not realize had so much meaning to me.

As a parent, grandparent and professional in the field of environmental education, I found Last Child In The Woods an excellent resource that supports what I have discovered first hand as the Director of an environmental center. It is a sad testimony of our times, the disconnection between people, especially children, and the natural world, that this book documents so accurately. Our research indicates that, of the thousands of 10 and 11 year olds that we have worked with (who live in a front range city in Colorado), over 60% have never taken a hike and 80% have never been to the mountains prior to participating in one of our programs. The long term negative implications of such statistics to the future of the environmental movement are clear to me - how will children grow up into adult citizens who advocate for the natural world if they have no direct knowledge of it? What Louv documents so well is how such disconnection from Nature negatively imapcts the health and well-being of individuals. I beleive that all parents and educators, as well as anyone interested in the health of our children and the health of our communities, will find very important information in this book.

As a child, I recall fishing, hiking and riding our horses through the woods. It added so much flavor and richness to our lives that I couldn't imagine not passing it on to our own children. Building memories with our children in the outdoors, and teaching them the beauty of playing outside, has helped shape them into healthier and happier people.
For this and other reasons I was thrilled that Richard Louv wrote this book! His interview on NPR convinced me even more that he is sincere in wanting to help generations of children and their parents to see how nature can serve to enrich our lives. Our youngest child, who complains that he's the only one without a t.v. in his room, was listening to the program as well so we appreciated the 'vindication' for our lifestyle choices. My husband and I both feel that had it not been for the access to woods and outside play when we were young, we both would've either been medicated or getting into serious trouble.
Chrissy K. McVay
author of 'Souls of the North Wind'

I would have never heard of this book if it wasn't for my sister-in-law, who is battling lung cancer. She and I were talking about whether or not I should bring her some books to read while she was undergoing chemo and she happened to mention this book, as her school system was recommending that she read it before school starts in a few weeks. Naturally, I had to pick up a copy of it and was sold.

This book (with a wonderful front cover, by the way ~~ my boys kept saying, "Mom! That kid's going frogging too!" ~~ they love frogs) is chock full of information and data and statistics. It is a book full of common sense and while Louv was very very careful to say that studies have not been done yet to proven that kids with ADHD disorders can be weaned from their medicine if they were outside in nature more, he offers that as a possible solution to solve a lot of mental disorders in today's society among kids and adults. He also offers a lot of other solutions as well ~~ different types of studies or programs that other people are trying to start up to recruit people back into living in a greener world.

As a kid, I was not very interested in playing outside. I lived in a neighborhood in a small town. BUT my parents signed me up for junior naturalist programs, they took my siblings and me camping, they took us to the parks, they encouraged all kinds of outdoor activities. I did not get a chance to go into the woods by myself in the morning like my dad did while he was growing up (he lived in a very rural area), but when we were camping, I took advantage of playing in the woods. We were not encouraged to watch a lot of tv. That is a trend that a lot of my friends look down on me at ~~ I only have one tv in this house. My boys probably do watch a lot more tv than they should but whenever we get a chance, we are outside, working in the yard, playing or going camping someplace now that they are older and we can start introducing canoeing, hiking ... things that take you back to nature.

Louv writes very compelling though throughout this book about today's generation and how they are drifting away from nature. He writes about the irony of people driving ATVs into the desert with their children to look at wild life and basically destroying the terrain with the automobiles and kids are "being exposed" to wildlife but from the safety of the vehicles. Or encountering kids who show no interest whatsoever in the wild life that the author had just spotted. There are a lot of stories that he shared ~~ personal and from other people. He also writes of the connection between kids being locked up in their houses all day and the rising concidences of obesity among today's children ... and so on.

This is definitely a book for parents to read. I cannot write an accurate review of this book because there are too much information in here and one cannot honestly know where to begin. Yes, it can be dry reading in spots, but keep on reading because it gets better and more interesting. However, I do have a question for all those global warming experts out there ~~ how come none of you have read this book and tried to implement some of the theories into practice? I'd like to see this book touted more in the media.

8-5-07

This book is a well-researched, clearly organized and thought-provoking personal exploration of a timely subject: Children and their new relationship with nature. If you are looking for escape reading for the beach, or an academic, chart-filled textbook, this book isn't for you. Louv lays out the facts, includes numerous interviews, personal anecdotes and relevent stories, and proposes big-picture solutions. Politicians, parents, teachers, parks personnel, summer-camp directors, landscape architects and others interested in or concerned about current children's issues will find pertinent information. "Last Child" is rich with ideas.

I liked the author's ideas, and his arguments, and agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment. I think he's a great person, and I'm glad this book brought this very important issue into the public discussion. However, he totally missed the root cause of the problem he is addressing, and thereby missed the answer to the dilemma. Children don't spend enough time in Nature because adults don't. If we want our children to value Nature and experience it, we must. They are just modeling our behavior. As a Nature educator, I have grown to be disgusted by the very prevalent attitude of middle class parents: "Can somebody please take my kids outside so they can appreciate Nature while I go do important things?" This book is an elaboration on that misguided and futile idea. The author seems to be trying to see beyond it, but he can't quite do it.

Nature deficit disorder is MORE prevalent in adults than in children, and we are passing the disease on to them by rearing them in a way that reflects our chosen values. It is something like parents who smoke and drink while telling their kids not to do the same. Not only is it an ineffective strategy, it is also a disingenuous one.