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River Valley Blog
Are Our Children Missing Something with the Lack of Being Outdoors?
I recently wrote an article based on some research I came across about the positive effects being in the Outdoors can have on your health. You can read the article here
Where I grew up as a child - about 40 - 45 years ago - was on a small farm, right on the town limits. The first farm out of town in fact. On many days after school, my school friends would come to play. Most afternoons we would head down to the "bush". An area that seemed huge to us, but in fact on reflection, was probably no bigger than 5 acres.
Part of that area was the "Swamp". In actuality, a shallow pond filled with willow trees and frogs.
The hours and hours we spent building bridges and trying to catch frogs - as far as I can remember, the frogs did not have a lot to worry about.
Contrast this to Children's Play Now
Four Decades of so called Risk Management. I find it hard to imagine that young children would be allowed to do what we did unsupervised in this day and age. Playing in the Swamp would have to be part of an organised and supervised activity.
Mix that in with the explosian in digital entertainment, Play Station, X Box and so on, is it any wonder that we have an obesity epidemic. However it is more than that, what is missing in so many young lives is the element of adventuring that you only get in the outdoors.
