Richard Louv Quotes & Sayings

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. — Richard Louv

Increasingly the evidence suggests that people benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy. — Richard Louv

All spiritual life begins with a sense of wonder, and nature is a window into that wonder. — Richard Louv

The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories-and I hope theirs. — Richard Louv

The children and nature movement is fueled by this fundamental idea: the child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable. — Richard Louv

Rather than accepting the drifting separation of the generations, we might begin to define a more complex and interesting set of life stages and parenting passages, each emphasizing the connections to the generations ahead and behind. As I grow older, for example, I might first see my role as a parent in need of older, mentoring parents, and then become a mentoring parent myself. When I become a grandparent, I might expect to seek out older mentoring grandparents, and then later become a mentoring grandparent. — Richard Louv

Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child. — Richard Louv

Nature introduces children to the idea - to the knowing - that they are not alone in this world, and that realities and dimensions exist alongside their own. — Richard Louv

Nature is beautiful, but not always pretty. — Richard Louv

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

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

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

Genetically, we are essentially the same creatures as we were at the beginning. We are still hunters and gatherers. — Richard Louv

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

If you can't live in the land you love, love the land you're in. — Richard Louv

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

The more we know, superficially, the less we penetrate, vertically. — Richard Louv

Nature does not steal time, it amplifies it. — Richard Louv

There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see. — Richard Louv

I do not mean to imply that the good old days were perfect. But the institutions and structure
the web
of society needed reform,not demolition. To have cut the institutional and community strands without replacing them with new ones proved to be a form of abuse to one generation and to the next. For so many Americans, the tragedy was not in dreaming that life could be better; the tragedy was that the dreaming ended. — Richard Louv

This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning. — Richard Louv

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

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

Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play, often because of the threat of lawsuits, but also because of a growing obsession with order. Many parents now believe outdoor play is verboten even when it is not; perception is nine-tenths of the law. — Richard Louv

Use all of your senses. — Richard Louv

I have a soft spot in my heart for tree houses, which have always imparted certain magic and practical knowledge. — Richard Louv

What happens when all the parts of childhood are soldered down, when the young no longer have the time or space to play in their family's garden, cycle home in the dark with the stars and moon illuminating their route, walk down through the woods to the river, lie on their backs on hot July days in the long grass, or watch cockleburs, lit by morning sun, like bumblees quivering on harp wires? What then? — Richard Louv

Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees. — Richard Louv

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that the number of overweight adult Americans increased over 60 percent between 1991 and 2000. According to CDC data, the U.S. population of overweight children between ages two and five increased by almost 36 percent from 1989 to 1999. — Richard Louv

Just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature. — Richard Louv

Nature - the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful - offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. — Richard Louv

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

It takes time
loose, unstructured dreamtime
to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because we intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play. — Richard Louv

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. — Richard Louv

We need the tonic of wilderness. - Henry David Thoreau — Richard Louv

There is a canyon within a reasonable distance of nearly every school in the city, [Elaine Brooks] pointed out. What an exciting prospect, she said - a network of natural libraries for teaching children about the region's rare and fragile ecosystems - and about themselves. — Richard Louv

Wilson defines biophilia as the urge to affiliate with other forms of life. — Richard Louv

A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level. — Richard Louv

The real cultural war is between the culture of narcissism and what might be called the culture of renewal. — Richard Louv

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

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. — Richard Louv

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

Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation; the first truly multicultural generation; the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television; the first post-sexual revolution generation; the first generation for which nature is more abstraction than reality; the first generation to grow up in new kinds of dispersed, deconcentrated cities, not quite urban, rural, or suburban. — Richard Louv

Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing ... — Richard Louv

Going out into nature was one outlet that I had, which truly allowed me to calm down and not think or worry. — Richard Louv

In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chaparral, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. — Richard Louv

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

The dugout in the weeds or leaves beneath a backyard willow, the rivulet of a seasonal creek, even the ditch between the front yard and the road-all of these places are entire universes to a young child. — Richard Louv

Each of us-adult or child-must earn nature's gift by knowing nature directly, however difficult it may be to glean that knowledge in an urban environment. — Richard Louv

What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology? — Richard Louv

To me, still being considered a kid, it can't be too much to ask. We should have the same rights as adults did when they were young. — Richard Louv

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. — Richard Louv

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. — Richard Louv

Numerous studies document the benefits to students from school grounds that are ecologically diverse and include free play areas, habitats for wildlife, walking trails, and gardens. — Richard Louv

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

Roszak argued that modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our "ecological unconscious" that provides "our connection to our evolution on earth. — Richard Louv

This principle holds that a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival. — Richard Louv

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

It was frightening and wonderful to surrender to the wind's power. — Richard Louv

When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface ... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children's, and of what our children's future will hold. — Richard Louv

This tree house became our galleon, our spaceship, our Fort Apache ... Ours was a learning tree. Through it we learned to trust ourselves and our abilities. — Richard Louv

Most people are either awakened to or are strengthened in their spiritual journey by experiences in the natural world. — Richard Louv

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

We do not raise our children alone ... Our children are also raised by every peer, institution, and family with which they come in contact. Yet parents today expect to be blamed for whatever results occur with their children, and they expect to do their parenting alone. — Richard Louv

Until recently, most environmental organizations offered only token attention to children. Perhaps their lack of zeal stems from an unconscious ambivalence about children, who symbolize or represent overpopulation. So goes the unspoken mantra: We have met the enemy and it is our progeny. — Richard Louv

Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered. — Richard Louv

Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination. — Richard Louv

Being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child's attention span. — Richard Louv

By letting our children lead us to their own special places we can rediscover the joy and wonder of nature. — Richard Louv

What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community? — Richard Louv

Most scientists who study human perception no longer assume that we have five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. The current number ranges from a conservative ten senses to as many as thirty, including blood-sugar levels, empty stomach, thirst, joint position, and more. The list is growing. — Richard Louv

In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children. — Richard Louv

By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility. — Richard Louv

There is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy. — Richard Louv

To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen. — Richard Louv

Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I'm not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors. As far as physical fitness goes, today's kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren't outside. — Richard Louv

We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past
the portrayals of family life on such television programs as "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" and all the rest. — Richard Louv

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

You can solve any large or complex problem by breaking it down into smaller, simpler problems. — Richard Louv

In medieval times, if someone displayed the symptoms we now identify as boredom, that person was thought to be committing something called acedia, a 'dangerous form of spiritual alienation'
a devaluing of the world and its creator. — Richard Louv

Kids are absolutely starved for positive adult contact. — Richard Louv

These ecstatic moments of delight or fear, or both, "radioactive jewels buried within us, emitting energy across the years of our lives," as Chawla eloquently puts it, are most often experienced in nature during formative years. — Richard Louv

In the 1940s and 1950s, the study of natural history
an intimate science predicated on the time-consuming collection and naming of life-forms
gave way to microbiology, theoretical and commercial. Much the same thing happened to the conservation movement, which shifted from local preservationists with soil on their shoes to environmental lawyers in Washington, D.C. — Richard Louv

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? The highway's edges may not be postcard perfect. But for a century, children's early understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the backseat: the empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision; the variety of architecture, here and there; the woods and fields and water beyond the seamy edges
all that was and still is available to the eye. This was the landscape that we watched as children. It was our drive-by movie. — Richard Louv

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. — Richard Louv

Nature is one of the best antidotes to fear. — Richard Louv

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

Some kids don't want to be organized all the time. They want to let their imaginations run; they want to see where a stream of water takes them. — Richard Louv

Spare time in the garden, either digging, setting out, or weeding; there is no better way to preserve your health. — Richard Louv

Quite simply, when we deny our children nature, we deny them beauty. — Richard Louv

Natural play strengthens children's self-confidence and arouses their senses-their awareness of the world and all that moves in it, seen and unseen. — Richard Louv

For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality. — Richard Louv

American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents ... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce. — Richard Louv

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

Thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. — Richard Louv

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. — Richard Louv

From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children nine to twelve who spent time in such outside activities as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland. — Richard Louv

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

In the meantime, relax. Take a break. Look at the clouds. Listen to the wind. Let the birds do the heavy lifting. A — Richard Louv

Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. — Richard Louv