![]() Anyone with an internet connection can read reams of material demonstrating why too much screen time is unhealthy for kids.įor many of their generation, the specter of being disconnected poses a significant psychological obstacle to getting out in nature. In the early 2000s, author Richard Louv coined a phrase for this phenomenon: nature-deficit disorder.Ĭhildren ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven hours a day on electronic screens - and, by using multiple devices simultaneously, they actually cram nearly 11 hours of media consumption into those seven hours, according to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study. If I tell my teenagers to go outside, they look at me as if I’ve suggested they go live in a hollowed-out log and subsist on grubs. For most, the games that kept my peers and me outside and physically active have been replaced by electronic entertainment that keeps them inside and inactive. ![]() By the time children today reach junior high school, many phase out of almost all outdoor activity. The landscape of childhood has seen tectonic changes since my generation navigated it. They text and play with friends who are on computers or smartphones in their own homes. Despite all their wilderness creds, our kids spend much of their time indoors. Like my own children, now 16 and 14, young people today live in two worlds: nature and the walled-in, plugged-in, touchscreen modern world. Scout leaders face the challenge of competing with technology during every outing, meeting or service project. Not until our son and daughter started getting a little older did I grasp the enormity of our goal: We were trying to raise outdoors-loving kids from the most electronically connected generation in history. We assumed we’d raise children who loved the outdoors as much as we do. I was a decade into a career as an outdoor writer when I became a father at 39, and my wife and I had built a lifestyle around outdoor adventures. I’ve seen that firsthand in my own children.īest of all: They love it. I do this because getting young people outdoors - whether it’s a high-adventure backpacking trip or a low-key campout - helps boost kids’ development and confidence and strengthen family bonds. Like any parent, I worry about my kids’ safety - but my anxieties are compounded by my personal responsibility for placing them in circumstances where bad things occasionally happen. I’ve seen the worst that can happen out there. I don’t delude myself about the risks of my kids climbing, whitewater kayaking, backcountry skiing or even “just” backpacking. Moments like these motivate me to frequently take our kids into the wild. “Yea, I got it!” he says, with an ear-to-ear grin. In his kayak, Nate paddles hard, his face focused, nailing the line and throwing his arms overhead in celebration at the bottom. But every boat in our flotilla of rafts and kayaks follows flawlessly. ![]() Matt runs Marble first - the four kids in his raft, including my 12-year-old daughter, Alex, screeching with delight as waves crash over its bow - and waits below in case anyone swims involuntarily. The line through the rapid looks like a maneuver Nate and I can both manage. It’s one of those many moments in parenting - like letting your child ride his bike around town unsupervised or take a car out at night - when we ask ourselves, “Is he (or she) ready for this?” But unlike those civilization-based hazards, Marble Creek Rapid represents yet another wilderness danger into which I’ve willingly led my children, buoyed by the ardent, if sometimes stressful, belief that this is somehow good for them. He’s 14, after all - an age when many of us possess too much confidence and not enough experience, judgment or fear. But I’m most concerned, of course, for the safety of my son, who has been kayaking a mere two years. I recall the times I’ve bounced a kayak off boulders and canyon walls because I didn’t hit the right line through a rapid. “I’ve seen that hole keep kayaks,” he warns us. Matt, one of our guides, points to the first hole in the rapid, a recirculating wave where the river takes a sharp right turn. It’s the first big whitewater of our six-day float down one of the world’s premier wild rivers. Standing on the bank of the Middle Fork Salmon River, deep in the second-largest wilderness area in the Lower 48, Idaho’s Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness, my 14-year-old son, Nate, and I look down at the foaming roar of Marble Creek Rapid.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |