LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

Richard Louv has a copy of a book named "Shelters, Shacks and Shanties" written by Daniel C. Beard in 1915. In his book Daniel C. Beard writes how he "epitomizes a time when a young person's experience of nature was inseparable from the romantic view of the American Frontier." But what really defined Beards' books, and the age they represented, is the unquestionable belief that being in nature was about doing something, about the experience -- and about not being a spectator.

"Most housing tracts, condos, and planned communities constructed in the past two to three decades are controlled by strict covenants that discourage or ban the kind of outdoor play many of us enjoyed as children."  

"The Scripps Ranch Community Association chased kids away from a little pond near the public library, where children had fished for bluegills since Scripps Ranch had been a working cattle spread many decades earlier. In response to the tightened regulations, families erected basketball hoops. Young people moved their skateboard ramps to the foot of their driveways. But the community association reminded the residence that such activity violated the covenants they had signed when they bought their houses. Down came the ramps and poles; and indoors went the kids. Game Boy and Sega became their imagination. Parents became alarmed. Their kids were getting fat."
 

LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

"Unlike television, nature can not steal your time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood. It serves as a blank slate upon which a child draws and reinterprets the culture's fantasies. Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses."




"Many members of my generation grew into adulthood taking nature's gifts for granted; we assumed that generations to come would also receive these gifts. But something has changed. Now we see the emergence of what I have come to call nature-deficit disorder. This term is by no means a medical diagnosis, but it does offer a way to think about the problem and the possibilities - for children, and for the rest of us as well."




"I think often of a wonderfully honest comment made by Paul, a fourth-grader in San Diego: " I like to play indoors better, 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are."

-Richard Louv

LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

"Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment - but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading."

"A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest - but not the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching the clouds move."

"Yet, the very moment that the bond is breaking between the young and the natural world, a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature - in positive ways. Several of these studies suggest that thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature."

Quotes from: "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne

"...the condition of being over weight was created through your thought to it  To put it in the most basic terms, if someone is overweight, it came from thinking "fat thoughts", whether that person was aware of it or not. A person can not think "thin thoughts" and be fat. It completely defies the law of attraction."

"Let go of those limiting thoughts. Food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you think it can."