Nature Deficit Disorder?

April 2012 Channelling

The National Trust are concerned that children are suffering from a lack of nature. Witness, they say, the levels of childhood obesity and increasing incidents of depression. There is no doubt the downside of a fearful world and our technology-obsessed era is a more sedentary, less healthy, and arguably less imaginative life for today’s kids. Children in the 50s and possibly the 60s were the last to enjoy the real freedom to roam. Children as young as five were set free all day to adventure in woods, meadows and parks: playing, exploring, imagining. Finding a wonderful world.

Guidelines

“What children need most is the freedom to imagine. It is the basic necessity for all human beings, but if it is not set up in children the strangest thing happens. A child deprived of imaginative incentives will demand the attention of everyone they meet in manipulative ways that begin to reduce their positive image of themselves.

The way the imagination begins to develop is through play.  Imaginative play, not the set pieces demanded of modern TV programmes for children, but self-reliant, imaginative play with building blocks and trains, and pulling cars around on imaginary circuits.

What interferes with this imaginative self-deployment, is the experience of technological gadgets too soon.

When children are given ‘tech toys’ at too early an age – before the age of twelve – it stunts the imaginative processes. This then makes the child dependent on maintaining the attention of ‘other’ rather than relying on himself. In other words, by causing the child to give over authority to ‘other’ he begins to lose sight of himself as an independent, autonomous being, and becomes dependent.

What happens is that the child seeks attention from ‘other’. As though ‘other’ has all the answers to his sense of identity, and must therefore be sought and manipulated. This is why the ‘games generation’ is so caught. They are so good at manipulation that they are held in thrall to the manipulation in gaming.

But what happens, too, is the child who depends on ‘other’ is also able to manipulate the attention of other people: his parents, his siblings, his friends. There is a manipulation for attention, a vying for attention , because the child is unable to stand alone, independently, sure in the sense of his own autonomy.

So there is then a natural inclination for dependence on everything. At worst on gangs, or drugs or sex… on following the herd.

What the earlier generations had, through their freedom to roam, was a vast experience for the imagination. They could learn how to be self-motivating, self-reliant, ‘self’-conscious, and distinguish between self and other. They could see the world of nature as ‘other’ and experience the self within that.

There is such limitation today, despite the vastness of global communication and connectedness. In fact, people’s dependence is worse for that. There is dependence on social networking and much manipulation on social networks, which provide easy access for dependence on ‘other’ rather than self.

What can be done? The clock cannot be put back.

The National Trust is keen to establish special forest areas where children can imagine or adventure again, which is great. But what can also be encouraged is reading! In the face of rampant technology and nature deficit, children can be lured back into the adventure of reading. It is here the imagination can flourish (including a child’s own creative exploration of nature). Read to your children. Get them into books. The sooner the better.”

Read More: March 2012 Channelling BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF