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To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.

Richard Louv

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Richard Louv
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
Oxygen
Natural
Away
Nature
May
Play
Take
Tantamount
Children
Withholding

More quotes by Richard Louv

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As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.
Richard Louv
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Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.
Richard Louv
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Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life-these are the rewards that await a family then it invites more nature into children's lives.
Richard Louv
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Time spent in nature is the most cost-effective and powerful way to counteract the burnout and sort of depression that we feel when we sit in front of a computer all day.
Richard Louv
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Now, my tree-climbing days long behind me, I often think about the lasting value of those early, deliciously idle days. I have come to appreciate the long view afforded by those treetops. The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.
Richard Louv
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As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.
Richard Louv
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As the young spend less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically and this reduces the richness of human experience we need contact with nature.
Richard Louv
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Studies of children in playgrounds with both green areas and manufactured play areas found that children engaged in more creative forms of play in the green areas.
Richard Louv
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Some kids don't want to be organized all the time. They want to let their imaginations run they want to see where a stream of water takes them.
Richard Louv
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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that the number of overweight adult Americans increased over 60 percent between 1991 and 2000. According to CDC data, the U.S. population of overweight children between ages two and five increased by almost 36 percent from 1989 to 1999.
Richard Louv
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How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?
Richard Louv
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What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?
Richard Louv
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Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child.
Richard Louv
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If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other species, never experiences the richness of nature, what happens to that child?
Richard Louv
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In medieval times, if someone displayed the symptoms we now identify as boredom, that person was thought to be committing something called acedia, a 'dangerous form of spiritual alienation' -- a devaluing of the world and its creator.
Richard Louv
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American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents.... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce.
Richard Louv
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All spiritual life begins with a sense of wonder, and nature is a window into that wonder.
Richard Louv
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Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience.
Richard Louv
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This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning.
Richard Louv
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I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.
Richard Louv