Tell Your Kids to Get Out

By Sarah Wilson

For many years, summer meant days outdoors for American children. Parents turned their kids loose after breakfast and had a hard time calling them in again at night fall. Children roved the streets and parks of our nation by day and came home sweaty and dirty, with skinned knees and bug bites, looking forward to the next day’s outdoor adventures.

While youngsters can still be seen peddling their training wheeled bikes along the streets and playing catch in the front lawn, many children are leading increasingly sedentary lifestyles, spending more of their free time indoors watching TV and playing video games. Meanwhile, health ailments like childhood obesity, asthma, and Attention Deficit Disorder seem to be on the rise. Even more disturbing is the fact that the current generation of children may be the first generation at risk of having a shorter lifespan than their parents.

What if there was a simple, cost effective, and sustainable way of treating children suffering from these conditions? Well there may be, and the solution might even be fun for kids: playing outside. A growing body of evidence suggests that outdoor recreation may be a viable treatment for a variety of ailments plaguing our nation’s children. Physical activity reduces blood pressure in young children, helps treat type-2 diabetes in the young, and may help combat the prevalence of childhood obesity. There is also evidence to suggest contact with nature helps lower levels of stress in children and can mitigate attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Exposure to areas with trees may even improve childhood asthma symptoms. In May, the journal Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care featured the article “Using Nature and Outdoor Activity to Improve Children’s Health,” which summarized the latest research about the effects of nature on children’s health and shared information about the Children and Nature Initiative of the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF).

NEEF is determined to get our kids back outdoors and they’re partnering with pediatricians for The Children and Nature Initiative to make that happen. The idea behind the Initiative is to educate pediatric health care providers about prescribing outdoor activities to children. Connecting these health care professionals to local nature sites so they can refer families to safe and easily accessible outdoor areas is also an important part of the program. It hasn’t always been easy for minority and low income children who are more likely to grow up in urban settings with fewer open spaces to play outside, so the program hopes to provide parents with ideas of places to take their kids. NEEF is also partnering with Fish and Wildlife Service and The Audubon Society to provide accessible Nature Programs. In addition to improving children’s health, the Initiative hopes to help reconnect children with the natural world, providing them with youthful experiences that will make them more likely to become long term environmental stewards.