Richard Louv

Other species help children develop empathy.

If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There's not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.

Kids are absolutely starved for positive adult contact.

Now, more than ever, we need nature as a balancing agent.

As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.

No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.

How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?

We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn't count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.

Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.

These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.

We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.

Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it's not wholesale.

Natural playgrounds may decrease bullying.

Green exercise improves psychological health.

By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.

When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.

I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.

Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods.

A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that's not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define 'nature.'

Mothers tend to be more direct. Fathers talk to other fathers about their kids more metaphorically. It's a different way of communication.

It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.

There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.

Time spent in nature is the most cost-effective and powerful way to counteract the burnout and sort of depression that we feel when we sit in front of a computer all day.

Leave part of the yard rough. Don't manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.