Parenting in a Nature-Depleted Age

'What is the extinction of the condor to a child who's never known a wren?' - Robert Pyle

I was an outdoorsy, free range child, but as a teen things changed. As I grew older and spent more and more time on my appearance, I also spent more and more time online. I was the girl who wore six inch heels to walk the dog. I wore a full face of make-up to stay indoors on the computer. It just became my new normal. I lost touch with the previous version of me who played amongst the bluebells and always had grass stains on her knees. Eventually I started to avoid doing anything that might smudge my eyeliner, interfere with my hair extensions or damage my lace petticoats. I stopped going swimming or to the beach. It actually got to the point when the breeze on my skin felt irritating - annoying and alien. I preferred to stay indoors, where the temperature was regulated and nothing might muss me. Chatrooms, blogs and forums were my 'real world'.

I realise that in a lot of ways I was an extreme case! Luckily this bizarre phase only lasted a short while. But I'll never forget feeling disturbed by the slightest of breezes! Now I'm more like my mum who, come rain, shine, storms or snow, always went to the back doorstep first thing upon waking, and sat on the step wrapped in her dressing gown, looking into the garden with her cup of tea. That peaceful time and connection with the outdoors is a great way to start the day refreshed and grounded, even if your toddler wants you to join in his persecution of the local woodlouse population rather than drink your coffee in peace. But I digress.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now how lucky I was to be able to have such an outdoorsy childhood. We were able to rent a house in the village, which we might not otherwise have had access to, as my parents worked for the landowners. This provided a brilliant place to grow up - surrounded by woodlands and meadows, I could play unsupervised but safe from traffic, and I was able to range further as I got older. Of course not every child has access to this much unspoilt nature, particularly not nowadays as we try desperately to house our growing population and provide the infrastructure that they need. 

We now live in a digital age. Many well-meaning friends and family have said things to me like, "Not to worry, soon you can get your little one a tablet, and then you won't have to do so much with him." I absolutely could plonk him in front of a screen for several hours a day, but as we've learned when we've fallen back on that easy option before, we all suffer. His mood suffers, his behaviour suffers, and bedtime becomes an all-out battle. So we keep screen time to a minimum - just an episode of one of his favoured shows now and again, usually if Dai's working and I need to cook dinner without small hands trying to investigate all the hots and sharps. 

If it hadn't been for the Spud, I'm not sure whether I would ever have rediscovered my love of the outdoors. He's an extremely active child - I once took him to a class for lively toddlers and he ran rings around all the others before effecting an escape through a door one of the other mums had left open whilst looking at her phone. I had to hurdle chairs, bags, and other people's children to catch him before he could find his way out into the street.

To keep his energy levels under control so we can have relatively calm days, he has a minimum of an hour's walk around the neighbourhood. Every day, rain or shine. In the warmer months, he spends more time in the garden than in the house. Had I not been a parent, I might have spent a good chunk of 2020 under the duvet, or vegetating in front of Netflix. As it was, every day we spent our allotted hour down on the nature reserve, avoiding other people and enjoying the birdsong, and we've kept up the habit. If the weather's bad, we often don't see anyone else around. On rainy days, we put on our wellies and waders and go splashing down the river, just us and the ducks. 

I recently read about 1000 Hours Outside, which encourages kids and parents to match screen time with time in nature, and I've kept this in the back of my mind ever since - on those days when I struggle to feel enthusiastic about rebuilding the leaf pile for him to jump into for the 97th time, or when he's leading me further away from home just as I'm starting to think about checking my email. Every hour we spend wandering woodland paths and back alleys is another hour closer to that epic 1000 hours. 

The Spud with his bag of wildflowers

The fact is that although I no longer live in an idyllic village, I want my son to have the same interest in the outdoors that I have. The sad truth is that we now live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. One in seven of the UK's native species face extinction. Just 13% of the UK's land area has tree cover - compared to a 35% average over the rest of Europe. And if my generation raise our children indoors, staring at screens, things can only get worse.

Nature deficiency is bad for children. Author Richard Louv describes some of the symptoms: 'Diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.' In her book Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild, Lucy Jones writes, 'My grandmothers had an inherent lexicon of the natural world and how it operates. My parents knew their birds, flowers and plants; names, timing and behaviours. I knew a bit, maybe five to ten per cent of what they knew, and I was keener on wildlife than most of my friends. It would follow that my daughter's connection with the natural world would be even more remote than mine. Would she be able to name - by which I mean know - anything at all? Or would she be so desensitized to the point where a connection with nature would have little - or no - value?' 

Not only are we depriving our children of a vast array of joys and wonders if we fail to encourage this connection, but it's bad for the rest of the ecosystem too. Children won't care about what they don't know. In our increasingly industrialized society, facing a deeply uncertain future of extreme weather events, pandemics and climate chaos, further alienation from the world that sustains us will only further contribute to the modern view of nature as hostile and 'other' at best, and at worst a collection of meaningless resources to be plundered.