Curing Nature Deficit Disorder in Children

“Nature deficit disorder” describes the mental, behavioral, emotional, and physical health problems that result from today’s children not getting enough “outside time”.

As compared to my generation, children today are much more prone to suffer from anxiety, stress, attention problems, and depression. They also tend to be more obese and less physically active.

Far too many kids today are literally “impoverished” by their lack of outside time, particularly during the summer.

So each summer I strive to help remedy all that.

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We can each do our best to bring today’s children out of this type of poverty, and into the vast wealth to be found by playing and exploring in the outside world.

I estimate I have taken nearly ten thousand children hiking over the last thirty-five years. Invariably, these children (most of whom are now adults) have told me they remember these hikes more vividly than most anything that was ever taught them in a classroom.

Following are a few pics and descriptions from some of those hikes.

In this pic I am teaching history while hiking. I am gathered with children beneath the Resting Tree at Sugar Hollow Park in Bristol. Slaves are buried beneath this great old tree’s branches, on the site of what was once the old Preston Plantation. A former student of mine who became a botanist estimates the tree to be over 500 years old.

Here are some of those students posing proudly here, near their creation of a natural shelter.

I have found that the first hike many children take is the first hike they take with me. Please help me change that, my friends. Every child deserves the chance to be outside in nature.

How many children get to run wild across a meadow these days? The joy is impossible to describe. But with a pic you can almost feel it.

I will hand out these shirts to each of the nearly 500 children who will hike with me this summer.

Dear reader, if you’d like to help me get today’s children off inside electronics and outside into the wild, please read the following flyer. Thank you, friends!