Richard Louv’s article: Nature-deficit Disorder and the Restorative
Environment quite honestly threw me for a loop at first. It first starts
talking about lack of recess and PE, and how those programs are being cut, and
then it violently shifts to ADHD. At least from there it brought me back to
ground when it merged the two. Nature as a treatment for ADHD? Sounds fishy at
first, but I had to look at it logically. I never had a problem with paying
attention, nor did I have issues with sitting still; my cousins however did.
The only real difference between us is that from the time I could walk I was
out the door; be it climbing trees, playing in the dirt, or just all around
being outside. My cousins, and some kids in my neighborhood for that matter, had
really strict overprotective parents, and weren’t allowed to go outside with
the rest of us children. These were also the ones who had difficulty in school
for one reason or another. So perhaps there is something to this whole nature versus
ADHD supposition.
Being a Psychology Major, I would
really like to test this with a group of ADHD children; unfortunately I
currently haven’t come up with a solution to get past the ethical implications
of denying a child access to nature. Though the article itself talks about
attempting this theory in a research environment, and though I would like to
attempt to measure the benefits of nature on a child, the data probably wouldn’t
capture the full benefits of unadulterated nature on a subject.
[No image credit - Public Domain Tree from Word, so Credit Microsoft I assume.]
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