How Nature Makes Children Happier, Healthier, and Smarter
“We don’t experience natural environments enough to realize how restored they can make us feel, nor are we aware that studies also show they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other.”
This year, Earth Day looks far different than in the years before 2020. On a day when students are typically in school engaging with outdoor activities that celebrate their natural surroundings, this year schools are closed. What’s more, social distancing is keeping many families inside.
Combine these realities with what appears to be an upswing in anxiety among children, and it seems timely to call attention to two truths recently confirmed by science:
#1 - A regular walk in nature is perhaps the very best thing children (and all humans) can do for their mental health.
#2 - Urbanization and digital creep have made most of us unaware of truth #1.
The power of nature
If it feels like a stroll through a park sometimes clears your head, it’s because it does. In her 2017 book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, Florence Williams argues that human well-being is substantially boosted by consistent exposure to nature—and that modern neuroscience proves it. Williams claims that our bodies relax in natural environments because our senses evolved there and thus remain calibrated to them. We feel most comfortable in nature, “even if we don’t always know it,” she writes.
Recent studies in Japan have found that forest bathing—spending at least 15 minutes immersed in the woods—results in decreases in blood pressure. It also causes the parasympathetic nervous system—also referred to as the “rest and digest” system—to activate. In other words, whatever is causing a child's anxiety (current events, college admissions pressures, etc.) may lose some of its power after a walk near trees. Other studies have also concluded that time in nature makes us calmer, with improved cognition and memory. This is of vital importance as students pivot to remote, at-home learning, which is unfamiliar to many K-12 families.
Underestimating nature’s effects
It’s easy to forget that, until recently, millions of children had an outdoor stroll built into their routines as they walked to and from the bus or school each day. Add in recess or an outdoor sports practice, and that’s significant time in what Oscar Wilde considers to be nature: “A place where birds fly around uncooked.”
Now, with commutes sometimes limited to changing rooms in your home, walks in nature aren’t generally built into the daily routine. For many young learners, they may not happen at all. And while COVID-19 quarantines have certainly exacerbated this trend, it turns out that undervaluing nature is part of the modern human condition.
In 2014, researchers in Ontario set out to answer the question, “Why don’t we do more of what makes our brains happy?” The researchers sent volunteers in one of two directions: outside on a path along a canal, or into underground tunnels used to connect buildings on campus. Before they left, volunteers were asked to predict how happy they would feel on the walk. The volunteers consistently overestimated how happy they would be in the tunnels, and consistently underestimated how happy they would be along the canals. These repeated “forecasting errors” led the researchers to conclude that people may be avoiding nature because a chronic disconnection from it causes us to underestimate its benefits.
An urban species
In her book, Florence Williams points out that Homo sapiens became a “majority urban species” in 2008. That’s when the World Health Organization reported that more humans were living in urban areas than rural ones. That same year, author Richard Louv published his bestseller Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.
Nature-deficit disorder, Louv claims, is what happens when people—particularly children—spend minimal time in natural environments, resulting in physical and mental problems like distractedness and general sluggishness.
Defeating nature-deficit disorder
The good news is that overcoming nature-deficit disorder is literally as easy as a walk in the park. The Finnish Forest Research Institute recommends at least five hours in nature per month, which breaks down to about 10 minutes per day. Other studies have shown that just the presence of potted plants in a room makes people more relaxed. Here are some tips for connecting with nature while social distancing:
Take a regular walk with your family. If there’s a park near your home, go there. If that’s not possible or safe, find some trees and walk near them. (It really is that simple.)
Plant a garden—any amount of regular yard work can boost mental clarity and feelings of reward. Gardening is also a fantastic way to explore STEM subjects with your student.
Get plants for inside your home.
Encourage your child to play or learn outside. If you don’t have a yard, make use of a balcony or patio.
The research is clear: time spent outdoors in or near nature improves almost all aspects of well-being for children (and adults) of all ages. To paraphrase Florence Williams, “well-being” may sound like vague psychospeak, but its impact is real. Enhanced well-being increases happiness in the moment and life expectancy down the road. With quarantines removing many of our built-in occasions to be outside, as well as adding stress to the equation, students’ brains are getting less of the nature they need while being inundated with more of what nature is so instrumental in helping them overcome.
Now, more than ever, it’s time to take a walk.
A career educator, Sean Galvin holds a PhD in Education from Eastern Michigan University and a Master's in Education from the University of Michigan. Currently a middle school teacher for Battle Creek Public Schools, he has taught and run student mentorship and enrichment programs at both the high school and middle school levels. His dissertation covers the role of mentorship and student incentives in driving learning outcomes.