Richard Louv Quotes
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We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn't count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.
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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?
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Children who played outside every day, regrdless of weather, had better motor coordination and more ability to concentrate.
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An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.
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Use all of your senses.
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Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods.
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The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories-and I hope theirs.
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Mothers tend to be more direct. Fathers talk to other fathers about their kids more metaphorically. It's a different way of communication.
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The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.
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Research suggests that exposure to the natural world - including nearby nature in cities - helps improve human health, well-being, and intellectual capacity in ways that science is only recently beginning to understand.
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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?
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These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.
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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.
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There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.
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When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children's, and of what our children's future will hold.
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What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?
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An indoor (or backseat) childhood does reduce some dangers to children; but other risks are heightened, including risks to physical and psychological health, risk to children's concept and perception of community, risk to self-confidence and the ability to discern true danger
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Nature has been taken over by thugs who care absolutely nothing about it. We need to take nature back.
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In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children.
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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.
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Leave part of the yard rough. Don't manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.
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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.
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Natural playgrounds may decrease bullying.
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The future will belong to the nature-smart-those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.
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Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation; the first truly multicultural generation; the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television; the first post-sexual revolution generation; the first generation for which nature is more abstraction than reality; the first generation to grow up in new kinds of dispersed, deconcentrated cities, not quite urban, rural, or suburban.
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Reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.
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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.
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By letting our children lead us to their own special places we can rediscover the joy and wonder of nature.
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The children and nature movement is fueled by this fundamental idea: the child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable.
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Kids are absolutely starved for positive adult contact.
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