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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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Richard Louv
Age: 76
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
Engage
Complexity
Allowed
Alive
Moral
Understand
Kids
Complexities
Really
Outdoors

More quotes by Richard Louv

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If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There's not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.
Richard Louv
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Natural play strengthens children's self-confidence and arouses their senses-their awareness of the world and all that moves in it, seen and unseen.
Richard Louv
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What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community?
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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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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Natural playgrounds may decrease bullying.
Richard Louv
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Nature introduces children to the idea—to the knowing—that they are not alone in this world, and that realities and dimensions exist alongside their own.
Richard Louv
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There’s no denying the benefits of the Internet. But electronic immersion, without a force to balance it, creates the hole in the boat — draining our ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to be productive and creative.
Richard Louv
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Another British study discovered that average eight-year-olds were better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game Pokemon than native species in the community where they lived: Pikachu, Metapod, and Wigglytuff were names more familiar to them than otter, beetle, and oak tree.
Richard Louv
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From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children nine to twelve who spent time in such outside activities as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland.
Richard Louv
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In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.
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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If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.
Richard Louv
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There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.
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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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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A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that's not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define 'nature.
Richard Louv
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The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories-and I hope theirs.
Richard Louv
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We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.
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