Read Last Child in the Woods Saving Our Children from NatureDeficit Disorder Richard Louv 0019628725226 Books

Product details Paperback 335 pages Publisher Algonquin Books (March 17, 2006) Language English ISBN-10 1565125223

Last Child in the Woods Saving Our Children from NatureDeficit Disorder Richard Louv 0019628725226 Books Reviews

• I liked the author's ideas, and his arguments, and agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment. I think he's a great person, and I'm glad this book brought this very important issue into the public discussion. However, he totally missed the root cause of the problem he is addressing, and thereby missed the answer to the dilemma. Children don't spend enough time in Nature because adults don't. If we want our children to value Nature and experience it, we must. They are just modeling our behavior. As a Nature educator, I have grown to be disgusted by the very prevalent attitude of middle class parents "Can somebody please take my kids outside so they can appreciate Nature while I go do important things?" This book is an elaboration on that misguided and futile idea. The author seems to be trying to see beyond it, but he can't quite do it.
  
  Nature deficit disorder is MORE prevalent in adults than in children, and we are passing the disease on to them by rearing them in a way that reflects our chosen values. It is something like parents who smoke and drink while telling their kids not to do the same. Not only is it an ineffective strategy, it is also a disingenuous one.
• A great read--maybe because it matches so much with my view that for a full and complete life we need to learn how to connect with the natural world we live in ---not only is it important to learn how to be together with nature -but to enjoy and be amazed -and to be alarmed at the point Louv is making that as our young are less connected with nature they are losing how to be creative and are losing the sense of imagination. My love of nature and its importance to our lives has me at work with our local land trust and I have quoted from Louv's book over and over as we connect with our community to support our projects.
• I teach at a middle school in a depressed urban area and live in the mountains. A few times I've been able to bring groups of kids up to where I live for a day of woods-bumming, fishing, and fresh-air breathing. Many of these kids had never been out of their neighborhoods...had never experienced quiet or played with a dog or sat on a horse. I can't imagine such a closed-in, prison-like existence...it harkens back to those poor Romanian babies that the monster Ceausescu destroyed with his sadistic deprivation experiments. I wish I could convey the exhilaration I felt when I turned my young charges loose in the woods behind my house. At first they were timid...waiting for permission to cut loose...then they ran and laughed and climbed trees and used sticks and pine cones and anything else at hand to become knights errant and tough detectives and mountain climbers...and heroes.
  Please read this book if you care about your children...if you care about grace and beauty. My poor words are not adequate to express how profoundly revelatory an experience this book has been for me. This is an easy book to read, easy and quick...but you will probably find (as I have) the need to keep it handy as a touchstone as you try to sort out what's amiss in this modern disconnected world. This book explains my awkward first paragraph.
  Please read this book, you won't regret it.
• Raised in a rural small town in the north eastern US, but now living in midst of southern CA suberbia, this book helped me realize I was raising children who not only had never seen snow, or autumn, but who had never climbed a tree, dug a hole (all lawns manicured in my neighborhood), or just played outside apart from scheduled sporting practices, or "play dates" at our local parks which really only meant playing on the play structures (slides, etc.).
  
  As a result we now schedule vacation time to include unstructured time spent in our national parks, local walks and hikes, and --for the first time--fishing (catch and release) at a stocked pond. It was worth it to see the ick-factor when the boys had to put a worm on the hook "Seriously, Mom?! Shouldn't we be washing our hands?!"
  
  Also, we dedicated most of our tiny backyard for digging areas for them to plant veggies and flowers, to make messes, and to bury "treasure". Looks horrid, but well worth it!
• I am a nature enthusiast who lives in the rural mountains of N.C. and considers raising my children to love, enjoy, and respect the outdoors a huge priority. I also love reading books full of evidence based research and work with data daily in my public health job. However, this book bores me to tears. I can’t finish it because it’s so boring to me. I found myself skimming most pages searching for where it would get interesting but it never happened.