Lack of nature is damaging Britain's children.

"As a nation, we need to do everything we can to make it easy and safe for our children to get outdoors," said National Trust director-general Fiona Reynolds. "We want to move the debate on and encourage people and organisations to think about how we take practical steps to reconnect children with the natural world and inspire them to get outdoors."

Nature Deficit Disorder damaging Britians children

I mostly agree with anyone who says, "Kids should spend more time outside."
I miss the days where you could safely play in the street from morning till the evening, walk down to the park with a variety of things to do, and be completely safe in doing so.

"There's undoubtedly a phenomenon that's not good for health, which is about not giving access to outdoors or green space, safe risk-taking and so on," said David Pencheon, a medical doctor who now heads the National Health Service's sustainable development unit.

However, my experiences are already 10-15 years old. I would cross two or three main roads and easily get to a park, or the beach, or even nip over my garden fence to the school field.
Now I'm older and I have a child of my own, times have changed.

Every home I've lived in since he has been born has been a flat. One had a shared garden between 36 other residences which we used as often as possible while he was learning to walk and crawl, and when the landlord wanted to sell, we moved a 5 minute walk from the park, which was a more than sufficient replacement to not having a garden. We've just bought a house, which has a lovely 40 foot garden, and since the previous owner was an elderly man, it's been paved over, which we plan to take up and put swings and grass and stuff in.

I don't think the problem is the spaces available, though there are less than there used to be, I think that the combination of more cars being on the road, and parents either working or not bothered to supervise their children (in the way that they don't want to take their kids out for an hour to the park, or for an afternoon at the beach), is the real thing letting kids down.
Though I don't work at the moment, this gives me a good opportunity to spend time with my son before he gets old enough to realise how uncool he is being This September he'll be going to school for his first year.

If you spend all your time indoors, you begin to find things you hate about being outside. You get too hot, too many bugs, the light gives you a headache, too many other people... these are rubbish reasons for not going out.

It's not the kids who are lazy, though I don't deny there are probably a good number of them learning to be, but the parents too. Stop fobbing kids off with DSi's and PSPs and shouting at them to sit still and be quiet, take them out, do things, knacker them out. Appreciate the time we have with the little people, because before long, they'll stop bugging us for attention, and we'll be bugging them.

FFS...Can we please stop abusing the English language by continuing to make up absurd "disorder," names for everything?

I can't write about this objectively, or even think about it, after having seen that. It makes me RAGE. I just wish I had some way to make cultural Marxism (as in, viewing everyone as a victim of something, whether it is some non-existent, arbitrarily invented pathology or a "hate crime") completely cease to exist.

Tell the BBC that. They even stated it's not an actual medical issue. It's also why I didn't put it in the title.

Originally posted by Lulzaroonie

Tell the BBC that. They even stated it's not an actual medical issue. It's also why I didn't put it in the title.

My apologies. *Ahem.* Minor Orcish moment, there. As you can possibly guess from the avatar, it happens from time to time.

Totaly agree.

Yes i think it's stupid to make a disorder up for it, just call it what it is, too much time stuck on phones and in front of computers and games.

Ok i'm lucky, we live in the forest, so the playground for my kids is literaly 20 yards down the road, thousands of acres of forest. Thats not to say they go out as much on their own than i used to. I just won't let them wander through the woods on their own even at 13 like i did when i was 6.

Kids need nature though for so many reasons. There was a report a few years ago that said modern playgrounds wih their straight lines and equaly space monkey bars, climbing frames etc, were restricting kids from learning how to balance and move in a more varied way. Climb a tree and you learn so much more than just swinging your arms one in front of each other.

My kids are 13 and 14, and after years of forest walks and picnics, they are still eager to get out there to mess about by the rivers and to look out for the wildlife. Not bad for teenagers these days.

Yes i'm sure that won't always be the case, but it needs to be initiated by the parents IMO. You don't need a forest, the local park, find a stream, the beach, get a few parents together and do your own nature walks wit your kids. Get your kids out in the fresh air and especialy in the middle of a forest, and you'll see them stop argueing for the day. (well most of the time anyway).

Lots of reasons why this report makes sense.

CX.

As parent's you are sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't with all the conflicting reports. Nature Deficit disorder one day, warnings to dress yourselves like a bee keeper if going anywhere near long grass and ticks the next. Rickets is on the rise, flesh eating microbes found in soil. It goes on daily and sends heads spinning in fear from anything, ticks, mold, mad dogs to potential human predators - It's unsurprising many folks just give up and plonk their kids in front of games.

Couple the fears with many parents working their socks off, stuck within urban sprawl or simply not being able to afford to jump in a car at a whim to nip to the seaside and it's all a sorry state of affairs for kids.

I am like a lot of people of a certain age bracket. I was never in. During the holidays and weekends we didn't spare a thought for leptospirosis & Weils disease jumping in the often manky lake down the dirt track. The mattress eating swamp close by was an endless source of amusement as was being up to your knee's in the brook looking for sticklebacks. Good god, we even used to play around the local mine railway track playing chicken with the trains - Deeply exciting it was to us - Hideously dangerous people would gasp today, even though they went at a snails pace and you heard them from miles away. The trains are long gone now, everything else is still there but it's spookily devoid of kids even during the summer holidays.

I still take the little one to walk around and look at the ducks, jump in all the muddy puddles he can find etc but even watching his joy at having a welly sucked off by mud I still feel a certain sadness in how things have changed. Standing in the same places I did as a kid I just find myself looking at the ghosts of childhood past.

reply to post by Lulzaroonie

I miss the days where you could safely play in the street from morning till the evening, walk down to the park with a variety of things to do, and be completely safe in doing so.

Your kids still can.

I know people think its more dangerous, that their kids are somehow at a higher risk than they were. Fact is .. quite the opposite. This generation of parents are just coddled whiners without a clue.

Crime as compared to the past several decades is actually far lower. Drug use among teens is far lower (aside from pot, which is hardly a drug). Abductions and child murder are all lower.

In the 60's 70's 80's 90's and so on the crimes have slowly become more and more publicized. In the 80's a kid could nearly get abducted and it wouldn't make the news. A kid gets asked for direction by a guy in a van and they will break into the broadcast with a "stranger danger alert"

So do your kids a favor.... and back off. Let them be kids.

reply to post by Rockpuck


I understand what you're saying, though I don't necessarily agree.
There are considerably more cars on the road than there were 15 years ago when I was playing in the street (which was in a cul-de-sac), and the drivers can be quite erratic in their behaviour.
With rural areas become urbanised, and urban areas being built higher and on top of each other, you have a high concentration of people in one space.
I'm only 26 years old, with a 3 year old son, living in an urban area, currently in a flat with no garden, surrounded by two main roads. Even if he was older and more road wary, I wouldn't let him play in the street, BUT we are moving to our own house in two months, with a garden, in a cul-de-sac area, and we are still 5 minutes from a park, and 5 minutes from the beach, and he loves both of them, and we regularly take him to both, and his friends and their parents come too.
Thankfully his pre-school is situated with-in a park, and so when his day is done, we usually take him to the play area with his buddies.

As I was saying to my neighbour earlier, it used to only take one family member to work which would bring enough money to sustain a family, but with living costs being so high now, two working parents is now the normal thing. One parent would be able to be home and supervise children playing in the street or wherever they went. It was the done thing only a few years ago.

Originally posted by Suspiria
As parent's you are sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't with all the conflicting reports.

Nature Deficit disorder one day, warnings to dress yourselves like a bee keeper if going anywhere near long grass and ticks the next. Rickets is on the rise, flesh eating microbes found in soil. It goes on daily and sends heads spinning in fear from anything, ticks, mold, mad dogs to potential human predators - It's unsurprising many folks just give up and plonk their kids in front of games.

Well, you know...rather than being influenced by the garbage in the media, and every child psychiatrist out there, you could make your own decisions.

Deeply exciting it was to us - Hideously dangerous people would gasp today, even though they went at a snails pace and you heard them from miles away. The trains are long gone now, everything else is still there but it's spookily devoid of kids even during the summer holidays.

Because you've accepted the fascist rationale that you can't look after yourselves, and you need to be "protected," from everything. As insensitive as it might sound, there are actually worse things than a kid being run over by a train. Such as, for example, said kid never having known any form of freedom, for even five minutes.

A lot of people need to learn that the ability to live dangerously for even a few minutes, is actually worth a lot more than a lifetime of being forced to live safely. You're going to die anyway. The only thing that changes is how and when.

Originally posted by Lulzaroonie
If you spend all your time indoors, you begin to find things you hate about being outside. You get too hot, too many bugs, the light gives you a headache, too many other people... these are rubbish reasons for not going out.

That's for parents to decide, not impersonal nannies.

reply to post by imherejusttoread


I meant that as in those are the reason as a parent might give for not wanting to go out. Coupled with the fact they may have worked a full time week, they probably wouldn't want to hang out in the park for a couple of hours; but the priority isn't themselves, it's the child. When you make excuses for not wanting to go out, the kids will find it a valid excuse to not go out as well.