Category: Take It to the Garden: Getting Kids to Step Outside

Take It to the Garden:  Getting Your Kids to Step Outside.

Garden encounters are the best way to get a child out of doors and away from the black screens that dominate their modern lives.  Take “It” to the garden:  getting your kids to step outside is much easier than you think.

You can take anything to the garden, whether it be the weight of the day or the joys.  And once you step outside and take a closer look the world just changes.  Perspectives lift to a higher level.   Life just becomes lighter.

It’s a known fact that if you get a kid to step outside and take a closer look, whether it be in a garden or any natural space, stress hormones decrease, and they find clarity with themselves and the world.  As a parent or caregiver, chances are yours might too.

Gardens As Tools for Compassion.

Children are more likely to show empathy for those around them if they are able to take a closer look, whether it be in recognizing the inherent abilities of a specific type of bee, or the structure of a leaf or flower.  Perhaps they can better recognize gifts unique to each human being.

A tree, plant, flower, bug does not have anything negative to say, no opinions.   It just is in all its glory. And they are all something to marvel at – parallel to that miracle which is a child.  To step outdoors into the garden is to experience the wonder of existence.

When you place a child in a garden they breathe, grow, and express curiosity right alongside that which is miraculous – side by side developing the way nature intended.  They learn to live amongst diversity and adversity as witness and through experience.

Kids Need Guidance.

With all of the electronic distractions and types of black screens at our fingertips these days, making a garden readily available to children is something adults have to initiate.

When given the option of a square of green turf or the dopamine hits that come from an i-Pad, you know which one will win.  But if you plant that same space with natural diversity: native flowers, herbs, vegetables, allow the real world to come (and oh, it will come!  birds, insects, etc.), then point out all those new variables to the child, joining them in their experience, eventually that black screen will become less interesting.  Less engaging.

The lights from a black screen will fade as they become less refreshing than discovering a “baby ladybug.” Or seeing a daddy cardinal offer seed to its scrappy fledgling at the bird feeder.  Or watching a song sparrow splash about as it bathes itself in a small pool offered, feathers all a-poof.  Learning how to identify butterfly eggs on your host plants.  Then witnessing those caterpillars grow.  And their metamorphosis!

And then you can have conversations about what you see and do.  Incorporate STEM topics into it, like the capillary action of a plant, or how a bird flaps its wings.   The structure of a bird feather.  With the natural world, the possibilities are endless, and you can only make more connections with your child that will last a lifetime.

So get those kids into the garden.  Get them to take those first steps outside and take that closer look.