[Quaganoca]

Not such a problem for most Australian children I guess. But still on the way, I would suggest. We expect our entertainment delivered, rather than finding it.

STEPHEN MOSS: In many countries in the western world, and Britain and America in particular, children really aren't connected with nature in the way that they were perhaps 20 or 30 years ago.

RACHAEL BROWN: Author Stephen Moss says nature doesn't come with an instruction leaflet, so it teaches children how to use their imagination.

STEPHEN MOSS: The first thing they often find is they get bored quite quickly, so they'll start climbing trees or perhaps building a den, or they'll pick flowers or collect things. Now, obviously in Britain that's quite a tame thing to do because there's nothing very dangerous here - it might be potentially more dangerous in Australia - but what it does is it teaches them to start using nature to play games and just to have fun in a way that is, I think truly, interactive, whereas in some cases computer games claim to be interactive but really they're not.

RACHAEL BROWN: I was quite surprised to read recently statistics from England's emergency departments that children these days are more than twice as likely to be injured falling out of bed, as they are tumbling out of a tree?

STEPHEN MOSS: Yeah. It shows that mainly now - you know when I was a child, if you were told to go to your room to go to your bedroom that was a punishment; you didn't want to go to you bedroom, it was boring. Bedroom's for children now aren't boring, they're full of amazing gadgets and TVs and computers. And I don't blame computers and TVs for this situation, but I do think what happens is that children - mainly because their parents are often so scared to let them out on their own or with their friends - they end up retreating to the bedroom because it's a place of entertainment.

RACHAEL BROWN: How dangerous is this cotton wool culture? I mean having the odd accident is how we learn growing up isn't it?

STEPHEN MOSS: We cannot have a no risk culture. And one of the things nature teaches us - you reach your own limits fairly quickly. It's very easy, for example, to climb up a tree and you get to a certain point when you're six or seven or eight-years-old and then you realise that actually now I've got to get down and that's often harder than getting up. And that child has learnt an incredibly important lesson.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-0...sorder/3938178

[pipojambo]

I don't think kids are allowed to get out and explore, see the number of kids delivered to and picked up from school.
Walking or riding home from school with a bunch of your mates was the best part of the day, then get home, get out of your school clobber into some old stuff then off exploring, we had to be home before the street lights came on was the only restriction.
I really feel sorry for the kids that don't get a chance to do "dangerous things" and investigate nature up close and personal.

[Peertantyb]

I have often pondered why some very intelligent people believe so strongly in religion, with (IMO) all its contradictions and unrealistic attachments. Yet why cannot these people, some much smarter than myself, also see these inconsistencies?

Basically, I suspect it relates to our upbringing and the stimuli we have been subjected. In my case nature, with its wealth of interest and knowledge drew me in, until later in life I looked at religious alternatives as preposterous. Whereas, children who had little of nature’s influence would instead, have been introduced to other stimuli different from my own, which directed, or at least did not conflict with their religious beliefs.

There are of course indigenous people who live off the land and who are also religious, but these religions are interwoven into their environments, so are reinforced by their experiences. Then you have those who are neither religious or interested in nature, who I would think were not introduced to either when young.

To me the above are the only plausible explanations that might direct a person’s belief in such life influencing passions.

[Effopsytupt]

I bought a copy of this book a couple of years ago and found it really interesting ... as did daughter-in-law who still has it and I see her reading it again, periodically.

Unfortunately many of the children who have been raised with the essentially "passive" (but so-called interactive) games of computers and Tv etc don't seem to have the staying power when introduced to the bush later ... it is as if something has to move in response to their every movement, already.

I'd add that they seem to need constant reinforcement from almost anything ... hence hurried kids / harried parents of children who have been raised to be bored.
:/

[antipenq]

In my mind the great benefit of contact with nature is the link between actions and consequences. Children who learn a link with nature learn about life and death, growth and decay, sex and procreation, eating and excreting, etc etc. City children tend to view their actions in isolation, but country kids can see how they fit into the whole of nature.