Out of the Woods: Today's kids can't see the forest for the MTV

Out of the Woods: Today's kids can't see the forest for the MTV

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052401262.html
http://tinyurl.com/q997m

By Joel Achenbach
Post
Sunday, May 29, 2005; W09

Because we need more to worry about, here comes a new ailment:
Nature-Deficit Disorder. It's the subject of a new book, by Richard
Louv, called Last Child in the Woods, which basically says our children
stay indoors too much, are alienated from nature and are going a little
crazy.

Certainly every parent today has had the experience of begging a child
to go outside. The child always asks, "And do what?" And we always say,
"Climb a tree!" From the way we talk about it, all we did as children
was climb trees, build treehouses and swing on vines. We were arboreal.
But these days, when you ask a kid to climb a tree, there's a pause
while the child tries to figure out a tactful way to point out that
people don't do that anymore. It's like you've asked the kid to churn
butter or boil up a vat of lye.

At some point you'll deliver the entire canned speech about how, as a
child, you were always building forts, exploring forest trails,
roasting squirrels over a fire, and so on, the classic Huck Finn sort
of existence, and the only thing you'll forget to mention is that you
were nearly fatally bored.

Face it, we had no choice but to play in the woods, because
civilization hadn't yet invented Nintendo. Kids today don't know the
crippling intensity of stupefaction that afflicted young people before
the coming of personal computers and MTV. The boredom was like the
ocean, and we were all at the bottom, our entire corpuscular beings
compressed to 1/100th the normal size. Those "lazy summer days" were
lazy for the reason that our blood had stopped circulating altogether.

During summer we had nothing to do all day other than eat Fritos and
watch that zany Richard Dawson host "Family Feud." Or maybe it was Gene
Rayburn over on "Match Game." Our parents' generation survived the
Great Depression and World War II, but we survived "Love, American
Style." Back then you got three channels, and a fourth if you could
pull in that snowy station on the UHF band. The dreadfulness of the
programs was commensurate with the absurd measures taken to improve
their reception -- tinfoil on the rabbit-ear antennae, someone climbing
on the roof to adjust the aerial, turning the broken TV knob with
pliers. (Younger readers: Whaaa??)

Our toys were also dysfunctional, particularly the electric race cars,
which invariably fishtailed out of control and off the track entirely.
We also had Hot Wheels cars that could roll down a plastic track, over
and over, demonstrating for anyone who might doubt it the amazing force
of gravity. We would try to filibuster away the boredom with Risk or
Stratego or Clue, but eventually even that got dull, and we'd soon be
digging up ant beds, trying to get red ants and black ants to fight one
another.

I would use a metal curtain rod to whack a plastic ball around the yard
as though I were Arnold Palmer. Once I decided to dig a swimming pool.
It took me hours of hacking through the roots of pine trees and
excavating the sandy Florida soil. Finally, I had my pool. I added
water from a hose and got into it, and for a moment had a sense of the
good life, of living it up, of being the kind of person who owns a
pool.

And then I was just a boy up to his neck in muddy water.

My own kids are going to know what nature is about. I take them on long
hikes. "Is this going to be a long hike?" they ask with trepidation. "A
death march," I assure them. This may be one reason they associate
nature with torture. Sometimes I ask them to help me work in the yard,
and they always say, "Doing what?" and I say, "Maybe a little weeding,"
and they react as though I said we were going to skin and gut a rabbit.
Children don't weed, which is just as well, because when you do
persuade them to weed, they do it slower than the weeds actually grow.

They love the outdoors when it's sunny and the temperature is between
67 and 73 degrees and there are no bugs other than butterflies. They
would prefer that there be less dirt, less earth, maybe AstroTurf
instead of a lawn.

Ultimately it's our fault, as parents, that we've let our kids get so
soft and indoorsy. We overprotect. We hint, constantly, that the
outside world is dangerous, that it's the land of speeding cars,
heatstroke, lightning and creepy strangers. We've got to stop sending a
message that says, in essence, "Go play outside, and watch out for
serial killers."

Children need to get in touch with their inner animals. They need to go
wild. As soon as I'm done typing this column, I'm ordering my critters
outside to climb a tree. But, you know, not too high up.

Read Joel Achenbach weekdays at washingtonpost.com/achenblog

Fred Goodwin, CMA wrote:

Out of the Woods: Today's kids can't see the forest for the MTV

Because we need more to worry about, here comes a new ailment:
Nature-Deficit Disorder. It's the subject of a new book, by Richard
Louv, called Last Child in the Woods, which basically says our children
stay indoors too much, are alienated from nature and are going a little
crazy.

Certainly every parent today has had the experience of begging a child
to go outside. The child always asks, "And do what?" And we always say,
"Climb a tree!" From the way we talk about it, all we did as children
was climb trees, build treehouses and swing on vines. We were arboreal.
But these days, when you ask a kid to climb a tree, there's a pause
while the child tries to figure out a tactful way to point out that
people don't do that anymore. It's like you've asked the kid to churn
butter or boil up a vat of lye.

At some point you'll deliver the entire canned speech about how, as a
child, you were always building forts, exploring forest trails,
roasting squirrels over a fire, and so on, the classic Huck Finn sort
of existence, and the only thing you'll forget to mention is that you
were nearly fatally bored.

Face it, we had no choice but to play in the woods, because
civilization hadn't yet invented Nintendo. Kids today don't know the
crippling intensity of stupefaction that afflicted young people before
the coming of personal computers and MTV. The boredom was like the
ocean, and we were all at the bottom, our entire corpuscular beings
compressed to 1/100th the normal size. Those "lazy summer days" were
lazy for the reason that our blood had stopped circulating altogether.
------------------------------
I don't know about YOU, but we weren't bored much. Of course our
reasons will become more clear shortly, at least regarding the sexually
aware among our forest playgroup, which was everyone
above about eight.


[]
They love the outdoors when it's sunny and the temperature is between
67 and 73 degrees and there are no bugs other than butterflies. They
would prefer that there be less dirt, less earth, maybe AstroTurf
instead of a lawn.

Ultimately it's our fault, as parents, that we've let our kids get so
soft and indoorsy. We overprotect. We hint, constantly, that the
outside world is dangerous, that it's the land of speeding cars,
heatstroke, lightning and creepy strangers. We've got to stop sending a
message that says, in essence, "Go play outside, and watch out for
serial killers."

Children need to get in touch with their inner animals. They need to go
wild. As soon as I'm done typing this column, I'm ordering my critters
outside to climb a tree. But, you know, not too high up.
--------------------------
The reason WE wanted to go off in the woods a lot was to pursue our
mixed group oral sex club out of the sight of adults in forts built
inside big hedgerows. More adults back then felt that kids could take
care of each other in playgroups off on their own than now. In winter
the meeting place because whichever rec-room of our parents' homes
was not being supervised because one parent or another had to go
shopping or elsewhere. We had four girls and two boys.

Of course when we couldn't do that there was always building rockets
with potassium nitrate and powdered sugar. Of course now that would
be regarded as !!**DANGEROUS**!!. Back then it was felt to be patriotic
and civic-minded to study the building of weapons for the defense of
the nation and the space program. Hell, I built a two-foot long rocket
and fired it and managed to miss every cow in about 2000 acres, and
so was given my 8th grade science fair grand blue ribbon prize!! We
also built a telegraph across our block through the trees, which
was regarded as science education. Little did the adults know that
this was how we transmitted instructions for our group oral sex club
to meet and where, in Morse code. Kids KNEW Morse code back then,
adults did not. Now neither of them do.

The rest of the time was taken up with making bows and arrows and
spears with which to skewer frogs for their legs down in the string
of drainage ponds at the bottom of the ravine. A spice bottle filled
with garlic salt and pepper and flour could always be found in my
pocket most summers in case some of the tasty little croakers were
to be seen and captured, and a pocket knife with which to remove
their legs and peel off the skins. Great eating on a sharpened stick
over a small fire, for which I carried a 3" magnifying glass. For
growing kids, protein was in shoret supply among our lower middle
class families, you never got enough at the table. I must have eaten
a thousand of them. My Dad once got ****ed at us for it, because it
meant he would have to oil those ponds to kill the mosquitos since
the supply of hungry frogs had fallen to our bloodthirsty diligence.
Steve