There is a book that made quite a splash a few years ago titled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. I heard about it at a conference for summer camp directors and staff. The author, Richard Louv, in the introduction to his book, quotes Walt Whitman and a fourth grader in San Diego. Whitman's poem is about how, as a child goes about life, whatever they interact with becomes a part of them - whether it be tree or flower or lamb or bird. I suspect that Whitman did not have in mind the quote from the fourth grader, "I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are".
If Whitman is correct, and a child becomes what he is surrounded by, what does that say about our kids' love of video games (with or without video, in the case of our blind and visually impaired children!), internet, TV, and the like. Do our kids "become" those things - most of which are made up by other people's imaginations? What happens to our own children's imaginations when they are "inside where all the electrical outlets are?" Today, with better and better batteries and wireless capability everywhere, kids are more and more taking their "inside" outside with them, wherever they go.
My daughter, who is sighted, can at least look at strange cloud formations, or notice an oddly shaped tree, or see the llama's at this farm or the Belgian Belted cows at another, or fall in love with the way the trees overhang the road as we drive by. This doesn't help her feel the texture of the llama's coat, or smell the warm life of the cows's breath on her neck, but if does give her an idea of what the natural world is like - even if from a distance. Children who are blind or visually impaired cannot do this. Their world ends at their fingertips. Unless, of course, WE intervene and give them the experiences to fill in the gaps in their understanding of the world we live in.
I may have mentioned this before, but when Greg was in second grade, he thought that a turtle and a giraffe would inhabit the same ecosystem. He clearly had forgotten what each animal looked like. Sighted children see photos and plastic animals (that are almost never made "to scale") and stuffed animals and are reminded in many ways what various parts of the world look like, move like, live like. We need to bring our children into the world outside so that they can "see" it for themselves - with their fingers.
I want every parent to know that touching dog poop will not kill your child! It will NOT even make them sick, unless you are too late to keep them from tasting it and do not get it all washed off properly AND it happens to be infected with something nasty that human children are susceptible to. So introduce them to gross things and make sure they understand that those things are gross! Tell them why! Let them find tomato horn worms - and squish them - from your tomato plant that you are growing on your deck. Show them that June bugs, while big and loud and scary, will NOT hurt them, but wasps on the other hand should be given a wide berth. Show them the tiny leaves of the locust tree and the big leaves of the maple or oak, or even better, a catalpa or tulip tree.
I was actually deeply disappointed to discover that leaf collections are no longer part of the curriculum in most school biology classes. Leaf collections are great ways to get kids totally in touch - quite literally - with one of the greatest living lifeforms on this earth. Maybe this summer you can make a leaf collection with your children - and it won't matter if your children are blind or sighted - they will all learn from the process.
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