Connecting with Nature

With more and more children being put behind screens to entertain or distract them, I’ve increasingly been thinking about the impact it has on their development. But this seems to be a very delicate subject to dive into, and I’ll tackle it another day.

Lately, however, I’ve also been thinking more on the lack of opportunities or encouragement that many children get to go outside. In this post I’ll share some of the things I’ve been thinking about. It’s a bit of a reflection, a bit of a reminder… Hopefully it inspires us all to spend a little more time in nature no matter the season we find ourselves in.

More and more studies have been showing the positive impact of the outdoors on our health and well-being. As the impact is so visible on our mental, physical and spiritual health as adults, it naturally has a similar impact on that of babies, children and teenagers.

Have you noticed how going for a walk in the park, or along the beach, you just feel like time goes by differently? It somehow doesn’t seem to matter so much. Letting children play outside is a bit like that: it allows them to escape to a different rhythm of life from the non-stop go-go-go rhythm that dictates our typical day-to-day life. It also seems to ground them and help them regulate their emotions more easily (much the same as adults, actually).

When children spend time in nature, they learn to appreciate and take care of it and its inhabitants. They learn to connect to it, to its rhythms, in a way that many children of the past generation have lost. I believe that it’s by spending time within nature that children will grow up to appreciate, value and respect everything it has to offer.

What’s fantastic is that one doesn’t have to wait until out little ones are grown to begin exposing them to nature. Allowing our little ones to just appreciate the movement of tree branches and leaves in the wind while they’re in the pram, listening to the sound of the birds and rustling leaves, smelling the damp ground as you go for an autumn walk, touching the grass or dipping their toes in the wet sand just where the sea meets the beach… All these are sensory experiences that are priceless from a young age.

And from then on, exposure to nature doesn’t have to look one way. For some it will look like playing in the garden or feeding the ducks at the local park, for others it will be playing in the woods, or going on a hike in the mountains with their family. For others yet, it will be time spent on the farm and taking care of animals. Perhaps it’s playing by the beach or enjoying water sports at the lake… It can really be anything, because nature is so vast and has so much to offer us.

As they grow, and become more familiar with the outdoors, our little ones will be able to experience and explore nature in new ways. And despite what some might think: children won’t get bored. There are endless opportunities in it, and spending time in nature stimulates creativity and curiosity! What more could we possibly want for our little ones?

Nature has so much to offer us and teach us that, to this day, humanity hasn’t discovered all of its secrets, so how can a young child ever get bored of the outdoors?

How about we consciously look at the amount of time they (and we!) spend outdoors and see if we can increase it? How would that impact us all in a positive manner?

Have you made a more conscious decision to spend time in nature with your child(ren)? What impact has it had on you and your family? If you haven’t yet, how do you think you can integrate more nature in your life?