Childhood - or - back to the trees!
Posted by Wohnreich on
How often do you think about your upbringing? Well, for me, this happens more than often. It is in our nature to want only the best for our children. But what is the best? What do we base our decisions on? Personally, I come up against many limits. Limits that society itself sets. We create fears and thus narrowness and dependency.
Andreas Weber’s article from the current GEO No. 8 brings pretty much everything essential to the point. Here are some extracts: "There are ticks in the forest. And mosquitoes. Parents' fears reduce the radius of action of their children. But without adventure in the living world, the brightest moments of childhood are also lost. Deprivation of nature is harmful to body and soul. The answer? Pills for fidgety children. When playing in nature, children become "primitive people" again: they feel with all their senses what it means to be in the world. Even the most beautiful children's room is no substitute for this. Nature is a mirror in which a child recognizes itself. As part of the whole. - Nature conservation is preached at school. It remains theory if teachers forget their most important accomplices at the school door: trees and birds, beetles and flowers, water, mud and earth. Children's departure from nature is not without consequences. Because with the dwindling of unbridled outdoor play, something irreplaceable is in danger of being lost: the opportunity to develop mental, physical and intellectual potential in such a way that children become fulfilled people. Without proximity to plants and animals, their ability to form emotional bonds atrophies, empathy, imagination, creativity and joy of life disappear. We parents are like sheepdogs: constantly on duty, always alert, endlessly worried."
But how can we repair children's lost relationship with nature? Listen to the children! Almost all of them wish they could play outside more. What excites them is always an activity that they are the focus of, that they drive forward independently and that in turn captivates them. What excites children is play."
"The children's right to wilderness, freedom and nature.
Back to the trees" - GEO, August 2010.
The new book by Andreas Weber "More Mud: Children Need Nature" will be published in spring 2011, Ullstein.