By Mary Ellen Ternes
My kids. Perhaps not a complete sentence, but two words representing an overwhelming challenge for me these days when I think about the outdoors and how my kids aren’t in it. I know it’s my fault, for buying them app-attracting “I” things and “P” things (iPod Touch and PS3), having relented in response to tearfully relayed horror stories of their app-less peers. Recently, I found myself on parent probation after imposing a grade-related suspension of electronic privileges and was truly shocked at the response from my usually human offspring. I didn’t grow up this way, so I guess I don’t really get it.
When I was a kid, we spent our summers on our family’s farm, riding horses, running and hiking on the bluffs, pretending we were explorers. We loved the quiet, the ancient cottonwood trees, the wind in the leaves, the Missouri River at all its various stages, the limestone bluffs… and did I already say horses? My parents’ dark basement with its entertainment center – basically a varnished, particle-board box with a radio, record player and eight-track tape player – the single Neil Diamond tape and the kind of sad, beat-up Monkees album were hardly an inducement to miss all that outdoor fun.
My kids don’t have a farm (I wish), and like most parents, I’d want to tag them with electronic chips before I let them roam the city neighborhood by themselves. How do we lure them outdoors? Especially now when the weather isn’t too hot or too cold?
Well, it turns out I am not the only parent struggling with my kids’ “nature deficit disorder.” As Richard Louv, recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal, writes in his book Last Child in the Woods and later, Leave No Child Inside, our kids are really missing something significant, but there is help out there!
Education.com is just one of the great organizations providing ideas and support in getting our kids outside. One helpful article suggests 10 rules for parents. First, we can take our kids outside on the weekends. We can plan field trips on a regular basis, and even organize one with our schools. If we aren’t already, we should probably follow the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations regarding TV and video games, and limit our kids to one or two hours a day (my parents allowed no television at all during the week). Maybe take a walk after dinner together. Send our kids to summer camp, or just go camping ourselves. Plant a garden, use a field guide and maybe join one of the many organizations (see below) hoping to save our children from artificially lit, yet still-dark interiors filled with indoor air.
Without a reprieve from the gadgets, our kids are probably missing an experience as basic as the profound stillness of the outdoors, the wild beauty of nature, and the reassuring perspective we gain when we can see ourselves as part of something infinitely larger: the ocean, a forest, a field of tall grass.
Prepare for moans and gnashing of teeth. My kids are going powerless. It’s time to reboot our habits, and plan some app-free time without the ancillary equipment.
Get Into the Great Outdoors
Mary Ellen Ternes, Esq. is a former chemical engineer from both the EPA and industry. She is currently a shareholder with McAfee & Taft and co-chair of its Renewable and Sustainable Energy Industry Group, and is serving a three-year term as City of Nichols Hills Environment, Health and Sustainability Commissioner.
This article was published in the May 2011 issue of Slice Magazine. It is reproduced with permission from the publisher. © 2011 Southwestern Publishing.