Need More? Most of the findings below were compiled in Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods.
“Based on previous studies, we can definitely say that the best predictor of preschool children’s physical activity is simply being outdoors, and that an indoor, sedentary childhood is linked to mental health problems.” - James Sallis (program director of the Active Living Research Program for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
“As the nature deficit grows, another emerging body of scientific evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health. For example, new studies suggest that exposure to nature may reduce the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that it can improve all children’s cognitive abilities and resistance to negative stresses and depression.” - Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
“A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level.” - Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
“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, Last Child in the Woods
“…television and junk food are linked to child obesity. The CDC found that the amount of TV that children watch directly correlates with measures of their body fat. In the United States, children ages six to eleven spend about thirty hours a week looking at a TV or computer monitor. Medical researchers in Seattle found that by three months, about 40 percent of children regularly watched TV, DVDs, or other videos.” - Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
“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, Last Child in the Woods
“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, Last Child in the Woods
“Also, children spend less time playing outdoors than their mothers did when they were young, according to Rhonda L. Clements, a professor of education at Manhattanville College in New York State. She and her colleagues surveyed eight hundred mothers, whose responses were compared to the views of mothers interviewed a generation ago: 71 % of today’s mothers said they recalled playing outdoors every day as children, but only 26 % of them said their kids play outdoors daily.” - Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
“Our study finds that life’s stressful events appear not to cause as much psychological distress in children who live in high-nature conditions compared with children who live in low-nature conditions.” - Nancy Wells, assistant professor in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell -quoted in Last Child in the Woods
“Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child’s life. You’ll likely never see a slick commercial for nature therapy, as you do for the latest antidepressant pharmaceuticals. But parents, educators, and health workers need to know what a useful antidote to emotional and physical stress nature can be. Especially now.” - Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
“…a ten-year study of gallbladder surgery patients, comparing those who recovered in rooms facing a grove of trees to those in rooms with a view of a brick wall; the patients with the view of trees went home sooner.” - Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
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