Five Lousy Unsupervised Minutes

In a special to the Journal Sentinel - psychotherapist, author and trainer, Philip Chard, published a column that I found both fascinating and alarming. 

The human bond with nature is ancient. transformative, deeply spiritual...and eroding.  Consider that children, on average, spend less than five minutes a day outdoors engaged in unstructured play (spontaneous, self-directed, open-ended), but tally over seven hours face-to-screen, leaving an entire generation in jeopardy of losing this vital connection. 

Allow that to sink-in for just a bit.  Five lousy minutes.  This child of the 50s and 60s is scratching his head and wondering what the heck? 

For the entirety of my lifetime free play time for children has been in a steady decline apparently reaching a munificent five minutes a day.  Disturbingly, it is imposing an obstacle to children becoming balanced, well-rounded and confident adults. 

At risk of becoming preachy my recollection of childhood was one of being a free-range child.  Never feral – yet only indoors when there was peril of wind, rain, lightening, extremes of cold or some other outside force.  My buddies and I would spend an entire day traipsing thru the woods, building forts, playing ‘combat’, hide and seek, capture the flag, kick-the-can and other sports for which we made-up the rules along the way. 

Chard makes a good point about a sizeable body of research concluding that interaction with nature is good for us physically, mentally and spiritually.  It is essential to our well-being.  Moreover, in the absence of embracing Ma Nature there is evidence of increased episodes of anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder and hurry sickness - an overwhelming and continual sense of urgency.  Add to this evidence of increased aggression. 

I’m trying really hard to not get down in the dumps over this – yet my Spider Sense is tingling as something deep inside speaks to me that this cannot be allowed to persist.  It simply isn’t good for children and other living things.  Do I have an easy solution or a quick fix for today’s 10 second sound-bite minds?  Hardly.  Nevertheless, we should all be making an attempt to leave no child indoors.  It’s for their own good. 

Read the entire column here and visit Chard’s homepage here. And FB page here.