Think back, for a moment, to one of your favourite childhood memories. When were you happiest? There's a good chance that your best times were spent outdoors, perhaps making a den in the woods, collecting crabs in rock pools or climbing a tree outside your house.
Yet ask today's children the same question and you might get a very different answer. When the author Richard Louv asked schoolchildren whether they preferred to play outdoors or indoors, one nine-year-old replied, 'I like to play indoors better because that's where all the electrical outlets are.'
Mr Louv is the author of Last Child in the Woods, a book that has provoked a great deal of public discussion since it was published in the United States earlier this year. It argues that modern children are being deprived of the contact with nature that was taken for granted by previous generations. Children rarely play outside, but when they do it is under adult supervision. The time when children could go out and run around a field, build a treehouse or collect insects on their own has more or less disappeared.
The result of this is something Mr Louv calls 'nature-deficit disorder'.
The term describes 'the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses,' he says.
In short, spending too much time indoors is bad for you. 'For tens of thousands of years, children went outside in nature to play. That has been reversed in western countries within the space of a few decades. That's an enormous change that I don't think has been recognised,' says Mr Louv.
Stuck indoors
What is the evidence? Mr Louv admits that nature-deficit disorder is not yet a recognised clinical condition. But he argues that the huge rise in mental health problems among American children may be partly down to the amount of time they spend indoors. Nearly eight million children in the US have been diagnosed with mental disorders, including depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. People with ADHD, Mr Louv explains, tend to be 'restless, have trouble paying attention, listening, following directions, and focusing on tasks.'
Children diagnosed with the condition are routinely prescribed the drug Ritalin. Even extremely young children do not escape the diagnosis: Mr Louv notes that between 2000 and 2003, spending in the US on ADHD for pre-schoolers increased 369 per cent.
The modern environment - littered with televisions, computers and electronic gadgets - is over-stimulating, according to Mr Louv. At the same time, children lack physical outlets for their energies. Only 50 years ago, he says, many would still have been engaged in physical work outside school hours, such as doing farm chores. Or they'd be swimming in rivers, climbing trees or playing baseball. Today, they are much more likely to be slumped in front of a television.
Although one of the problems with spending too much time indoors is a lack of exercise (and its association with childhood obesity), Mr Louv argues that this is not the only problem. He points out that when children do play outside it is often under adult supervision.
Although there is nothing wrong in principle with organised sport, he says, it is not the whole solution: children should be encouraged to play outdoors on their own. The advantage of unsupervised outdoor play is that it enables children to use their imaginations, be independent and experience the pure pleasure of being in nature.
In the book, Mr Louv cites a variety of anecdotal sources to illustrate that being out in the natural world has a soothing effect on hyperactive children. He quotes the mother of one hyperactive child who says, 'My son... is so much calmer in the outdoors that we're seriously considering moving to the mountains.'
This view has some backing from research. One Swedish study compared children in two daycare settings. At one, the play area was surrounded by tall buildings. At the other, the play area was set in an orchard surrounded by pasture and woods, and next to an overgrown garden. The children in the latter daycare setting played outside every day and had better motor co-ordination and greater powers of concentration.
There are a variety of reasons for the status quo, according to Mr Louv.
These include an exaggerated fear of what might happen to children if we allow them outside; increased dependence on a car to get around; the competing attractions of electronic games; and the rise in petty restrictions on children's play. In the US, for example, many schools are restricting playtimes or abolishing them altogether because of an increased emphasis on academic results. There has also been an increase in housing communities run by associations that deliberately restrict children's play, forbidding them to play next to ponds, for example, or to build treehouses.
Close to home
But to what extent do Mr Louv's observations apply in the UK? Most people would agree that modern children spend far more time indoors than previous generations. Similarly, academic pressure on very young children is on the increase, with both the Government and parents expecting even three- and four-year-olds to be learning literacy and numeracy skills.
A recent report from the Economic and Social Research Council found that reception children were not given enough time for imaginative play, either outdoors or indoors, and stressed the importance of allowing children to play for sustained periods without adult intervention.
As in the US, there has also been a huge increase in the number of children being diagnosed with depression or ADHD. Figures from the Prescriptions Pricing Authority show that 359,100 prescriptions were issued for Ritalin in England in 2004, compared with 2,000 in 1991.
Two years ago Priscilla Alderson, professor of childhood studies at the Institute of Education, caused controversy by arguing that many children are diagnosed with ADHD when they simply don't have anywhere to let off steam. 'There are growing constrictions on space and freedom to play, run, swim and climb. Children are trapped at home because of traffic and stranger-danger fears,' she said.
However, Dr Pat Spungin, a child psychologist and chief executive of raisingkids.co.uk, is cautious about accepting a link between nature deficit and ADHD, because the definition of ADHD is problematic.
Nonetheless, she agrees that in terms of exposure to the natural world, the UK is following the American pattern. 'Children have very little time now where they're not in the presence of adults, either at school, or at home or in organised classes,' she says.
Dr Spungin agrees that it is important for children to spend more time outdoors. 'Because they spend time alone when they're out of doors, and they spend time in an unstructured environment, they have to put into that environment their own imagination and their own resources. If they're outdoors with their mates then they look around and they bring themselves to the environment that they find themselves in, and they start picking things and digging things, and hiding around things. I think that develops their own resources, their own organisational skills and their social skills,' she says.
Our role
Schools, pre-schools and nurseries all have a role to play in improving children's relationship with the natural world. One problem, says Mr Louv, is that when schools talk to children about nature they too often talk about things like global warming and the threat to the ozone layer. His advice is that, while children need to know about these things, there should also being an emphasis on the pleasures of nature.
'If all the emphasis in pre-school is placed on ecological Armageddon, to the exclusion of the joy of nature, then kids are being taught to treat nature with fear,' he says. Taking children on field trips, having a natural play area in the nursery or having a garden are all important ways in which children can learn to enjoy nature, he explains.
Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, agrees. She says, 'Outdoor play is a vital part of a child's development, not just physically and emotionally, but the fun side of it.'
She suggests that the best-designed nurseries will have a 'free-flow'
environment, where children can wander in and out as they feel like it, rather than restricting outdoor play to certain times.
Most childcare professionals know that young children love nothing better than the opportunity to go outside, run around and make a mess. Although there is often pressure from parents and the Government to focus on academic skills at the expense of play, there is good reason to believe that, in the long run, professional instinct will turn out to be right.
Further information
* Last Child in the Woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder by Richard Louv (Algonquin Books, $24.95) is available from www.amazon.com
