Royal Botanical Gardens has the antidote to “nature deficit disorder”, an affliction that figures into conditions like obesity, attention deficit disorder, depression and anxiety disorder. Children are feeling the ill effects of not being connected to nature, contends Barb McKean, head of education at RBG.
“We’re meant to grow up outdoors,” she says, adding that children today aren’t allowed to play outside.
“Families don’t build in time for nature, spending time outside, and it’s really affecting kid’s brains and bodies,” she suggests. While parents invest time to take their kids to lessons and organized activities, “sometimes the best things for our kids are the simplest things”.
According to McKean, research shows, “The more time spent outdoors the healthier, the happier and the smarter (kids) are.”
To encourage the development of what should be a natural connection to nature, RBG offers free nature hikes for families on weekends. Programs that get kids outside are what RBG is all about, notes McKean, and there are many of them.
In addition to what’s happening within RBG, the botanical institution is reaching out to other organizations right across Ontario.
“We’re building a network called “Back to Nature” that’s trying to look at how to get kids outside – what tools do parents and teachers need and what can other community organizations do,” she explains. “Back to Nature grew out of a long time spent doing environmental education and seeing what’s going on with kids and this disconnect with the outdoors.”
McKean also credits the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv for the wake-up call. In fact RBG hosted a “huge public lecture” and question and answer period featuring the author through its interactive video conferencing facility. In the long-term, RGB, along with a network that is spreading across North American and the world, is supporting Louv’s Leave No Child Inside movement.
Beginning with children at age 3, RBG gets them outside in the garden. Tots are introduced to gardening through the Silver Bells and Cockle Shells program and at age five to seven they graduate to Sew and Grow classes. Older children enroll in the Junior Gardener program that has been running at RBG for more than 60 years and is the second longest running kids gardening program in North America. There are also youth leadership programs and many volunteer opportunities.
“Getting kids gardening is a really powerful way of connecting them with nature. It’s a way that they take responsibility for something, they learn to nurture things and take care of them and they learn some self sufficiency skills of how to grow their own food so it’s a life-time skill,” advises the educator, adding that “It’s unbelievable what vegetables they eat whey they grow them themselves “.
To find out more about programs at RBG, visit the website at
www.rbg.ca.
