The Taming of the American Child

I had just finished doing some yard work today when I spotted them: berries.  Raspberries or blackberries.  LOTS of them, and many were the almost-black of peak ripeness.  I turned over a leaf--green: blackberries, then.  (Raspberry leaves are white underneath, but their berries are just as sweet.)  As I picked all I could carry, I wondered.

A brief survey

1. When did you last pick and eat a wild berry? 
2. When did you last see the moon?  (Did you know the moon was full on Wednesday?) 
3. When did you last pause to listen to birds sing? 
4. When did you last spend half an hour in your garden?  (Do you even have a garden?) 
5. When did you  relax outdoors with a little something to eat or drink? 
6. When did you last walk a mile or more in a wood or a park or another natural place?

I hope you have good answers!  But your children may answer these questions very differently than you do. Yesterday I listened to a radio interview with author Scott Sampson (How To Raise A Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling In Love With Nature) who cited a statistic that scared me:  
American kids today spend only four to seven minutes a day playing outdoors.

The statistic was new to me, if not the issue--advocating that people get outdoors and experience the natural world was the reason I started this blog.  It also led me to  a few years ago to design and run an after school program designed in part to get city kids outdoors.  Even so, I hadn't imagined the situation was that bad.


Sampson sees two big consequences.  Children grow up impoverished, lacking awareness of the world around them, and are also less healthy (studies have found that spending time in nature reduces stress hormones).  Just as important--perhaps even more so--they will not develop the love of natural environments, the emotional connection, that provides the impetus to save these places.  And of course nature itself is increasingly in danger from human activities ranging from over-fishing to habitat destruction to greenhouse gas emissions.  Our very future might very well depend on the emotional connections we and our children form with the wild outdoors.  

Sampson blames many forces, including the lure of electronics, over-scheduling by busy parents who want kids supervised, and fears of media-soaked parents who see a child outdoors and unsupervised as a target in a dangerous world.  

Their parents largely grew up differently.  It was commonplace in my neighborhood to be told to shut off the TV and GO OUTDOORS.  We would be left to our own devices without supervision for hours at a time--for whole days in summer.  Was this dangerous?  Perhaps.  But not nearly as dangerous as we have come to assume today, after a generation of seeing kidnapped children's faces on milk cartons. 

Of course, some neighborhoods really aren't safe, and these present special challenges.  And the issue is, in general, not on the radar screens of less-affluent, or those from an ethnic minority.  But it needs to be.

Sampson's  solution for those of us who care about this?  Start small and manageable: get your kids outside for half an hour three times a week.  

Go to wild places--they don't need to be wilderness.  Engage.  Notice things--the clouds, the weather, trees, bugs.  Wonder about things: asking questions is much more important than answering questions. 


So much depends on adult attitudes that children absorb.  Are bugs yucky, or cool?  Are grass-stained knees a disaster, or something to accommodate with "play clothes?"  Does a skinned knee call for major first aid, or just some antiseptic and a bandaid?  Do you avoid rain or cold like the plague, or do you simply dress differently? 


Plant yards and cities with native plants.  Native plants attract native insects, birds, and other animals.  And don't manicure everything, for goodness' sake!


In school, space needs to be made for recess, or other outdoor time.  Though time is short in the era of standardized testing, freedom to burn a little energy might pay dividends in greater attention during regular learning.  


It may take a generation or longer to get back to a society in which "free range" parenting isn't a crime, and where boredom can be viewed as a creative force (a bored child might be forced to entertain herself!), but it is vital we do so. 

Doing the Wash

A truism* among nature enthusiasts is that our ancestors** were on average far more intimately familiar with the natural world than we are.  This has become even more true since the electronic revolution made us unable to see farther than our hands.  

I was reminded of that truism this afternoon as I hung out the wash.  

A  month or so ago the clothes dryer stopped getting hot, only endlessly tumbling damp clothes.  Having a certain confidence in my own abilites--not to mention much more time than money--I researched its inner workings with a very helpful appliance repair guru, got my tools out, and quickly found that I needed a new heating coil.  Meanwhile, I lassoed a bathroom vent pipe with a spare anchor line and tied the other end to the garage for a serviceable clothesline.  

We are not new to line drying, having done it for most of a year when we bought the house and hadn't money left over for a dryer.  It came to an end late in spring when a winter moth epidemic sent a rain of frass out of the overhanging tree onto our freshly-washed clothes.  The caterpillars came back in force for several years (spelling doom to two of my favorite oak trees) and confirming us in the machine drying habit.
 
Though it was only 4pm when I hung the wash, I had nearly lost the sun already, the shadow of the house falling on the clothesline so much earlier than even a few weeks ago.  (Likewise, the vegetable garden, which, in July got a full six hours of sun per day, is now down to four; the squash are long dead and the tomatoes won't hang on much longer.  Alas! we only have another week or so of juicy tomato sandwiches.)  Fewer layers of technology necessitate greater attention to the real: time of day, cloud cover, a possible shower, changing seasons.  Clothes dry faster with a bit of breeze, with dryer air, and most of all with direct sunlight--especially if the clothes are not white, reflecting away the warming sunlight.  Towels dry rather slowly, but denim is about the worst.  Even so, with luck I can get a wash load dry in an hour or so--about as long as the next load needs in the washer.  (It helps that our "energy star" washer has a very high spin speed, so the clothes have little water left.)  On the other hand, poor planning, unexpected wet weather, or carelessness might be paid for in mildewed clothing. 

I know only one other household in the neighborhood where wash is hung outdoors.  The home is a few minutes walk away, and the family includes several young children, and a young mother of, I think, Asian extraction.  Hanging out the laundry is an almost daily event, year-round.  The dad is handy, painted the house himself, and did a professional job building a large shed.  The yard is the sort that hints of regular construction projects.  The children play on the porch, or help their parents in the vegetable garden.  The family works and plays together, often outdoors.  I wish I knew them.

When the new heater coil arrived ahead of schedule, I was a little disappointed.  Then I decided that I wanted to see the difference in the electric bill of not using the (electric) dryer.  (Unfortunately, the freezer chose that same time to begin leaking heat, driving the bill through the roof.)  Then I decided I simply liked being outdoors fussing with the wash.  Maybe a Zen thing.  An unexpected bonus was the reduced washing: some of the teenage contingent wash their clothes constantly--until it becomes a little more onerous. 

I dragged my feet on the repair for a good month, and finally got around to it during a rainy spell, as wash--some already wet--waited impatiently for attention.  When I got it all back together, the dryer heated up nicely--and then refused to shut off when it reached operating temperature.  I could stand there and nurse a wash through, judging the temperature and changing settings accordingly, but it was annoying.  I was not too put out, though: back to the clothesline!

I know the languid summer will soon end and time become tighter.  I also know how long it takes to dry wash as the weather cools.  And one good rainy spell will send me back to the basement to install the new thermostat--which I hope fixes it.  And a new spring might bring new caterpillars.  Even so, for now I will enjoy communing with the sun and breeze, basket and clothespins in hand.

*a truism has been defined as something "everybody knows," but which nevertheless is, in fact, generally true!

**Notwithstanding rumors that Thoreau, during the two years he lived in the cabin he built at Walden Pond, used to bring his wash home to his mother.