Richard Louv

No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.

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.

These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.

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.

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

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

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

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.

It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.

Green exercise improves psychological health.

Kids are absolutely starved for positive adult contact.

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.