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Nature Deficit?

My daughters played in the woods behind our house in Saranac Lake, unsupervised, from about the age of 5. They were always within shrieking distance, however. (Little girls can scream as if they are being tortured. This tendency has taken a few years off my life, but generally only signified they were having a good time.)

Pretending they were rabbits out-smarting coyotes or building forts out of  brush, my daughters played outdoors with the same intensity that my friends and I played outdoors when we were young.

But apparently this kind of play is not the norm now. There is a Children and Nature Movement that acknowledges something called Nature Deficit Disorder. A growing number of educators and health professionals attribute childhood obesity, attention deficit disorders and depression to a lack of unstructured playtime in green spaces.

Everyone seems to have less and less time. Family vacations average as little as three days in America. Part of the reason is that children participate in so many structured activities that families can’t find the time to get away.

My oldest daughter (21) recently sent me an e-mail: “Teaching me how to camp was one of the greatest gifts you gave me.”

She never thanked me for piano lessons, art classes or softball league.