Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder Hardcover – 15 April 2005
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Richard Louv
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Product details
- Language: : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1565123913
- ISBN-13 : 978-1565123915
- Customer reviews:
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Review
“An honest, well-researched and well-written book, . . . the first to give name to an undeniable problem.” --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From the Inside Flap
"I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are," reports a fourth-grader. Never before in history have children been so plugged in—and so out of touch with the natural world. In this groundbreaking new work, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression.
Some startling facts: By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, aerage eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. The rate at which doctors prescribe antidepressants to children has doubled in the last five years, and recent studies show that too much computer use spells trouble for the developing mind.
Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual. What's more, nature is a potent therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD. Environment-based education dramatically improves standarized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Even creativity is stimulated by childhood experiences in nature.
Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Computers, television, and video games compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fears of traffic, strangers, even virus-carrying mosquitos—fears the media exploit—that keep children indoors. Meanwhile, schools assign more and more homework, and there is less and less access to natural areas.
Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the "last child in the woods," and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion.
Some startling facts: By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, aerage eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. The rate at which doctors prescribe antidepressants to children has doubled in the last five years, and recent studies show that too much computer use spells trouble for the developing mind.
Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual. What's more, nature is a potent therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD. Environment-based education dramatically improves standarized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Even creativity is stimulated by childhood experiences in nature.
Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Computers, television, and video games compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fears of traffic, strangers, even virus-carrying mosquitos—fears the media exploit—that keep children indoors. Meanwhile, schools assign more and more homework, and there is less and less access to natural areas.
Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the "last child in the woods," and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion.
From the Back Cover
In his groundbreaking work about the staggering divide between children and the outdoors, journalist and child advocate Richard Louv directly links the absence of nature in the lives of today's wired generatoin to some of the most disturbing childhood trends: the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. This is the first book to bring together a body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional helath of children and adults. More than just raising an alarm, Louv offers practical solutions to heal the broken bond.
About the Author
Richard Louv, recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal, is the author of seven books, including Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle. The chairman of the Children & Nature Network (www.cnaturenet.org), he is also honorary cochair of the National Forum on Children and Nature. He has written for the San Diego Union-Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and other newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on The Early Show, Good Morning America, Today, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, NPR’s Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, and many other programs. For more information, visit www.lastchildinthewoods.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
One evening when my boys were younger, Matthew, then ten, looked at me from across a restaurant table and said quite seriously, “Dad, how come it was more fun when you were a kid?”
I asked what he meant.
“Well, you’re always talking about your woods and tree houses, and how you used to ride that horse down near the swamp.”
At first, I thought he was irritated with me. I had, in fact, been telling him what it was like to use string and pieces of liver to catch crawdads in a creek, something I’d be hard-pressed to find a child doing these days. Like many parents, I do tend to romanticize my own childhood— and, I fear, too readily discount my children’s experiences of play and adventure. But my son was serious; he felt he had missed out on something important.
He was right. Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact.
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. That’s exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child.
As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests. Nobody in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming. But I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest—but not about 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.
This book explores the increasing divide between the young and the natural world, and the environmental, social, psychological, and spiritual implications of that change. It also describes the accumulating research that reveals the necessity of contact with nature for healthy child—and adult—development.
While I pay particular attention to children, my focus is also on those Americans born during the past two to three decades. The shift in our relationship to the natural world is startling, even in settings that one would assume are devoted to nature. Not that long ago, summer camp was a place where you camped, hiked in the woods, learned about plants and animals, or told firelight stories about ghosts or mountain lions. As likely as not today, “summer camp” is a weight-loss camp, or a computer camp. For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality. Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear —to ignore. A recent television ad depicts a four-wheel-drive SUV racing along a breathtakingly beautiful mountain stream—while in the backseat two children watch a movie on a flip-down video screen, oblivious to the landscape and water beyond the windows.
A century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced that the American frontier had ended. His thesis has been discussed and debated ever since. Today, a similar and more important line is being crossed.
Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature. That lesson is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors, and codified into the legal and regulatory structures of many of our communities. Our institutions, urban/suburban design, and cultural attitudes unconsciously associate nature with doom—while disassociating the outdoors from joy and solitude. Wellmeaning public-school systems, media, and parents are effectively scaring children straight out of the woods and fields. In the patent-or-perish environment of higher education, we see the death of natural history as the more hands-on disciplines, such as zoology, give way to more theoretical and remunerative microbiology and genetic engineering. Rapidly advancing technologies are blurring the lines between humans, other animals, and machines. The postmodern notion that reality is only a construct—that we are what we program—suggests limitless human possibilities; but as the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.
Yet, at 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.
Reducing that deficit—healing the broken bond between our young and nature—is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demands it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depends upon it. The health of the earth is at stake as well. How the young respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, homes—our daily lives. The following pages explore an alternative path to the future, including some of the most innovative environment-based school programs; a reimagining and redesign of the urban environment—what one theorist calls the coming “zoopolis”; ways of addressing the challenges besetting environmental groups; and ways that faith-based organizations can help reclaim nature as part of the spiritual development of children. Parents, children, grandparents, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, environmentalists, and researchers from across the nation speak in these pages. They recognize the transformation that is occurring. Some of them paint another future, in which children and nature are reunited— and the natural world is more deeply valued and protected.
During the research for this book, I was encouraged to find that many people now of college age—those who belong to the first generation to grow up in a largely de-natured environment—have tasted just enough nature to intuitively understand what they have missed. This yearning is a source of power. These young people resist the rapid slide from the real to the virtual, from the mountains to the Matrix. They do not intend to be the last children in the woods.
My sons may yet experience what author Bill McKibben has called “the end of nature,” the final sadness of a world where there is no escaping man. But there is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy. Jackson’s obituary for the American frontier was only partly accurate: one frontier did disappear, but a second one followed, in which Americans romanticized, exploited, protected, and destroyed nature. Now that frontier—which existed in the family farm, the woods at the end of the road, the national parks, and in our hearts—is itself disappearing or changing beyond recognition.
But, as before, one relationship with nature can evolve into another. This book is about the end of that earlier time, but it is also about a new frontier—a better way to live with nature.
One evening when my boys were younger, Matthew, then ten, looked at me from across a restaurant table and said quite seriously, “Dad, how come it was more fun when you were a kid?”
I asked what he meant.
“Well, you’re always talking about your woods and tree houses, and how you used to ride that horse down near the swamp.”
At first, I thought he was irritated with me. I had, in fact, been telling him what it was like to use string and pieces of liver to catch crawdads in a creek, something I’d be hard-pressed to find a child doing these days. Like many parents, I do tend to romanticize my own childhood— and, I fear, too readily discount my children’s experiences of play and adventure. But my son was serious; he felt he had missed out on something important.
He was right. Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact.
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. That’s exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child.
As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests. Nobody in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming. But I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest—but not about 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.
This book explores the increasing divide between the young and the natural world, and the environmental, social, psychological, and spiritual implications of that change. It also describes the accumulating research that reveals the necessity of contact with nature for healthy child—and adult—development.
While I pay particular attention to children, my focus is also on those Americans born during the past two to three decades. The shift in our relationship to the natural world is startling, even in settings that one would assume are devoted to nature. Not that long ago, summer camp was a place where you camped, hiked in the woods, learned about plants and animals, or told firelight stories about ghosts or mountain lions. As likely as not today, “summer camp” is a weight-loss camp, or a computer camp. For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality. Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear —to ignore. A recent television ad depicts a four-wheel-drive SUV racing along a breathtakingly beautiful mountain stream—while in the backseat two children watch a movie on a flip-down video screen, oblivious to the landscape and water beyond the windows.
A century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced that the American frontier had ended. His thesis has been discussed and debated ever since. Today, a similar and more important line is being crossed.
Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature. That lesson is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors, and codified into the legal and regulatory structures of many of our communities. Our institutions, urban/suburban design, and cultural attitudes unconsciously associate nature with doom—while disassociating the outdoors from joy and solitude. Wellmeaning public-school systems, media, and parents are effectively scaring children straight out of the woods and fields. In the patent-or-perish environment of higher education, we see the death of natural history as the more hands-on disciplines, such as zoology, give way to more theoretical and remunerative microbiology and genetic engineering. Rapidly advancing technologies are blurring the lines between humans, other animals, and machines. The postmodern notion that reality is only a construct—that we are what we program—suggests limitless human possibilities; but as the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.
Yet, at 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.
Reducing that deficit—healing the broken bond between our young and nature—is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demands it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depends upon it. The health of the earth is at stake as well. How the young respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, homes—our daily lives. The following pages explore an alternative path to the future, including some of the most innovative environment-based school programs; a reimagining and redesign of the urban environment—what one theorist calls the coming “zoopolis”; ways of addressing the challenges besetting environmental groups; and ways that faith-based organizations can help reclaim nature as part of the spiritual development of children. Parents, children, grandparents, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, environmentalists, and researchers from across the nation speak in these pages. They recognize the transformation that is occurring. Some of them paint another future, in which children and nature are reunited— and the natural world is more deeply valued and protected.
During the research for this book, I was encouraged to find that many people now of college age—those who belong to the first generation to grow up in a largely de-natured environment—have tasted just enough nature to intuitively understand what they have missed. This yearning is a source of power. These young people resist the rapid slide from the real to the virtual, from the mountains to the Matrix. They do not intend to be the last children in the woods.
My sons may yet experience what author Bill McKibben has called “the end of nature,” the final sadness of a world where there is no escaping man. But there is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy. Jackson’s obituary for the American frontier was only partly accurate: one frontier did disappear, but a second one followed, in which Americans romanticized, exploited, protected, and destroyed nature. Now that frontier—which existed in the family farm, the woods at the end of the road, the national parks, and in our hearts—is itself disappearing or changing beyond recognition.
But, as before, one relationship with nature can evolve into another. This book is about the end of that earlier time, but it is also about a new frontier—a better way to live with nature.
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Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon.com
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars
105 reviews

Glenda York
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Timely Book
9 December 2007 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
This is an interesting and timely book. I happen to be the parent of a 17 year old who is lucky enough to live on a large tract of land, but might as well be living in a New York high-rise for all the good it does him. When he seeks entertainment, it's usually electronic in nature--TV, computer, video games. When I was growing up, the outdoors was our entertainment and we didn't have all those modern distractions. Louv states his case eloquently and passionately: "Not only can nature teach kids science and nurture their creativity, but nature needs its children: where else will its future stewards come from?" One of the fourth graders he interviewed said "I like to play indoors better, 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are." That's scary.
One person found this helpful

Daniel W. Best
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for nature lovers!
22 December 2013 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
Today's children are stuck to cell phones and computers and don't even know, or care about the natural world around us. Those few children that love nature find themselves with limited ability to really enjoy (play) in it as more and more areas are controlled by home owner organizations and insurance liabilities. Remember when we could make treehouses in our backyards without needing an engineer or building permit? This book covers how children need nature and what we can do to help them. I would highly recommend this book to parents, teachers and park rangers!

BusyMom
4.0 out of 5 stars
Taking Back Nature ....
5 August 2007 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
I would have never heard of this book if it wasn't for my sister-in-law, who is battling lung cancer. She and I were talking about whether or not I should bring her some books to read while she was undergoing chemo and she happened to mention this book, as her school system was recommending that she read it before school starts in a few weeks. Naturally, I had to pick up a copy of it and was sold.
This book (with a wonderful front cover, by the way ~~ my boys kept saying, "Mom! That kid's going frogging too!" ~~ they love frogs) is chock full of information and data and statistics. It is a book full of common sense and while Louv was very very careful to say that studies have not been done yet to proven that kids with ADHD disorders can be weaned from their medicine if they were outside in nature more, he offers that as a possible solution to solve a lot of mental disorders in today's society among kids and adults. He also offers a lot of other solutions as well ~~ different types of studies or programs that other people are trying to start up to recruit people back into living in a greener world.
As a kid, I was not very interested in playing outside. I lived in a neighborhood in a small town. BUT my parents signed me up for junior naturalist programs, they took my siblings and me camping, they took us to the parks, they encouraged all kinds of outdoor activities. I did not get a chance to go into the woods by myself in the morning like my dad did while he was growing up (he lived in a very rural area), but when we were camping, I took advantage of playing in the woods. We were not encouraged to watch a lot of tv. That is a trend that a lot of my friends look down on me at ~~ I only have one tv in this house. My boys probably do watch a lot more tv than they should but whenever we get a chance, we are outside, working in the yard, playing or going camping someplace now that they are older and we can start introducing canoeing, hiking ... things that take you back to nature.
Louv writes very compelling though throughout this book about today's generation and how they are drifting away from nature. He writes about the irony of people driving ATVs into the desert with their children to look at wild life and basically destroying the terrain with the automobiles and kids are "being exposed" to wildlife but from the safety of the vehicles. Or encountering kids who show no interest whatsoever in the wild life that the author had just spotted. There are a lot of stories that he shared ~~ personal and from other people. He also writes of the connection between kids being locked up in their houses all day and the rising concidences of obesity among today's children ... and so on.
This is definitely a book for parents to read. I cannot write an accurate review of this book because there are too much information in here and one cannot honestly know where to begin. Yes, it can be dry reading in spots, but keep on reading because it gets better and more interesting. However, I do have a question for all those global warming experts out there ~~ how come none of you have read this book and tried to implement some of the theories into practice? I'd like to see this book touted more in the media.
8-5-07
This book (with a wonderful front cover, by the way ~~ my boys kept saying, "Mom! That kid's going frogging too!" ~~ they love frogs) is chock full of information and data and statistics. It is a book full of common sense and while Louv was very very careful to say that studies have not been done yet to proven that kids with ADHD disorders can be weaned from their medicine if they were outside in nature more, he offers that as a possible solution to solve a lot of mental disorders in today's society among kids and adults. He also offers a lot of other solutions as well ~~ different types of studies or programs that other people are trying to start up to recruit people back into living in a greener world.
As a kid, I was not very interested in playing outside. I lived in a neighborhood in a small town. BUT my parents signed me up for junior naturalist programs, they took my siblings and me camping, they took us to the parks, they encouraged all kinds of outdoor activities. I did not get a chance to go into the woods by myself in the morning like my dad did while he was growing up (he lived in a very rural area), but when we were camping, I took advantage of playing in the woods. We were not encouraged to watch a lot of tv. That is a trend that a lot of my friends look down on me at ~~ I only have one tv in this house. My boys probably do watch a lot more tv than they should but whenever we get a chance, we are outside, working in the yard, playing or going camping someplace now that they are older and we can start introducing canoeing, hiking ... things that take you back to nature.
Louv writes very compelling though throughout this book about today's generation and how they are drifting away from nature. He writes about the irony of people driving ATVs into the desert with their children to look at wild life and basically destroying the terrain with the automobiles and kids are "being exposed" to wildlife but from the safety of the vehicles. Or encountering kids who show no interest whatsoever in the wild life that the author had just spotted. There are a lot of stories that he shared ~~ personal and from other people. He also writes of the connection between kids being locked up in their houses all day and the rising concidences of obesity among today's children ... and so on.
This is definitely a book for parents to read. I cannot write an accurate review of this book because there are too much information in here and one cannot honestly know where to begin. Yes, it can be dry reading in spots, but keep on reading because it gets better and more interesting. However, I do have a question for all those global warming experts out there ~~ how come none of you have read this book and tried to implement some of the theories into practice? I'd like to see this book touted more in the media.
8-5-07
12 people found this helpful

S. Hibdon
4.0 out of 5 stars
very important reading for parents but a bit dry
31 July 2007 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
Although I personally believe this book covers a very important subject, I found the book to be a bit academic & dry. Does contain many sources of further readings, ideas to improve upon city & suburbian planning for increased green spaces & resources for additional information.
This book highlights the very important fact that kids are spending more time indoors and experiencing minimal outdoor life. Because of this, there is little connection to the natural world. The author proposes that eventually this nature-deficit will lead to a lessened concern for the environment. This in turn will "disconnect" them from nature and effect future political & societal envirnonmental movements, as the majority of people will have spent minimal or almost no time outdoors in their youth.
The book also cites very compelling evidence through numerous studies that strongly suggests that many kids' physical and mental illnesses are connected to lack of exposure to nature. Additionally, the author discusses reasons parents are reluctant to allow their children to play outdoors.
I can't quite imagine parents that do not enjoy the outdoors purchasing this book-for they probably don't acknowledge that they & their children need to spend time outdoors- but there are suggestions on activities to introduce one's kids to outdoor activities.
This book highlights the very important fact that kids are spending more time indoors and experiencing minimal outdoor life. Because of this, there is little connection to the natural world. The author proposes that eventually this nature-deficit will lead to a lessened concern for the environment. This in turn will "disconnect" them from nature and effect future political & societal envirnonmental movements, as the majority of people will have spent minimal or almost no time outdoors in their youth.
The book also cites very compelling evidence through numerous studies that strongly suggests that many kids' physical and mental illnesses are connected to lack of exposure to nature. Additionally, the author discusses reasons parents are reluctant to allow their children to play outdoors.
I can't quite imagine parents that do not enjoy the outdoors purchasing this book-for they probably don't acknowledge that they & their children need to spend time outdoors- but there are suggestions on activities to introduce one's kids to outdoor activities.
3 people found this helpful

rmdatc1
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Call to Arms
27 August 2011 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
Richard Louv has managed to put into words what is wrong with todays children. I have to agree with many points provided in his book about how we can change our children's habits and place them on the path to a healthier and happier life. If you like this book, you should read his other work called The Nature Principle. The Nature Principle is for adults as Last Child in the Woods is for kids. The theroies in both these books should be adopted by parents, schools, cities/towns, governments, and this country as a whole.
3 people found this helpful
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