Instilling a love for nature in children from a young age is one of the best gifts you can give them. But it’s a gift that’s becoming rarer and rarer. A 2015 report from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research unearthed a troubling statistic: The average American child spends just seven minutes per day in unstructured outdoor play. That marks a 50 percent decrease in just 20 years.
This is concerning for many reasons. “At the very moment that the bond is breaking between the young and the natural world, a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature—in positive ways,” wrote Richard Louv in his book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.”
