TLDR: Jump to prompts for What to Say to Children Instead of “Don’t Touch” Nature. Kids are losing touch with nature, quite literally. Kids spend less time outdoors, less time playing in fields and forests, less time picking flowers, and less time splashing in creeks. We could blame urbanization and the loss of wilderness. We could blame video games and screen time. We could blame a culture that overschedules and overstimulates children. And yes, all these things things definitely have an impact, but they are not the root cause. If we dig deeper, we will discover a far more nefarious reason. Children have become separated from the beauty and goodness of nature because of us. Our culture holds this belief that nature is something other than us. We have divided ourselves from nature. This thinking can result in two extremes. On one end people believe that it is their right to dominate and exploit nature. On the other end people believe that nature should be untouchable. Both extremes are wrong, and both are responsible for the calamity of nature deficient children we see today. Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the … Continue reading Stop Telling Kids “Don’t Touch!” in Nature and What to Say Instead