Last Child in the Woods Quotes

“An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Time in nature is not leisure time; it's an essential investment in our chidlren's health (and also, by the way, in our own).”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“She was one of those exceptional children who do still spend time outside, in solitude. In her case nature represented beauty - and refuge. "It's so peaceful out there and the air smells so good. I mean, it's polluted, but not as much as the city air. For me, it's completely different there," she said. "It's like you're free when you go out there. It's your own time. Sometimes I go there when I'm mad - and then, just with the peacefulness, I'm better. I can come back home happy, and my mom doesn't even know why."
     The she described her special part of the woods.
     "I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lie down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes I'd fall asleep back there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day."
     The young poet's face flushed. Her voice thickened.
     "And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing? ”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“In an agricultural society, or during a time of exploration and settlement, or hunting and fathering--which is to say, most of mankind's history--energetic boys were particularly prized for their strength, speed, and agility. [...] As recently as the 1950s, most families still had some kind of agricultural connection. Many of these children, girls as well as boys, would have been directing their energy and physicality in constructive ways: doing farm chores, baling hay, splashing in the swimming hole, climbing trees, racing to the sandlot for a game of baseball. Their unregimented play would have been steeped in nature.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Unlike television, reading does not swallow the senses or dictate thought. Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination. Can you remember the wonder you felt when first reading The Jungle Book or Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn? Kipling’s world within a world; Twain’s slow river, the feel of freedom and sand on the secret island, and in the depths of the cave?”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“quality of life isn’t measured only by what we gain, but also by what we trade for it.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Parents are told to turn off the TV and restrict video game time, but we hear little about what the kids should do physically during their non-electronic time. The usual suggestion is organized sports. But consider this: The obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children's sports in history.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“and old Indian saying: 'It's better to know one mountain than to climb many.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; [the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. —LUTHER STANDING BEAR (C. 1868–1939)”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“A generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces. Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology . . . calls them "containerized kids"--they spend more and more time in car seats, high chairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children go outside, they're often placed in containers--strollers--and pushed by walking or jogging parents. . . Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long term health of these children is compromised. (35)”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“The physical exercise and emotional stretching that children enjoy in unorganized play is more varied and less time-bound than is found in organized sports. Playtime—especially unstructured, imaginative, exploratory play—is increasingly recognized as an essential component of wholesome child development.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child’s life.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“IT TAKES TIME—loose, unstructured dreamtime—to experience nature in a meaningful way.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“An indoor (or backseat) childhood does reduce some dangers to children; but other risks are heightened, including risks to physical and psychological health, risk to children's concept and perception of community, risk to self-confidence and the ability to discern true danger”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“In an effort to value and structure time, some of us unintentionally may be killing dreamtime.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Nature—the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful—offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

“The Environmental Protection Agency now warns us that indoor air pollution is the nation's number one environmental threat to health- and it's from two to ten times worse than outdoor air pollution. A child indoors is more susceptible to spore of toxic molds growing under that plush carpet; or bacteria or allergens carried by household vermin; or carbon monoxide, radon and lead dust. The allergen level of newer, sealed buildings can be as much as two hundred times greater than that of older structures.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder