The challenges of getting children safely outside in urban environments can be overwhelming. Today I stopped with my children at a city park for a bit of stretching since we had been running an out of town errand. As we started to play I noticed a black cloud of smoke come from a large machine across the street. It took me a few minutes to decide that this area was not a healthy place to be playing. My boys were happily engaged in the new play structures and there were beautiful trees on two sides of us. Nonetheless, the more I thought about it I realized that this pollution had to be unregulated and even though the black cloud was gone the construction zone was continuing to demolish and clear a site right across the street from where we were playing. As a parent you can't help but worry about our environment, but the goal is to keep that fear from your children as you gently guide them to healthy places.
So it was fitting that as my boys napped I wrote my congressional delegates to please to support critical protections for the health of our air and water . See http://environmentalpriorities.org/. I also re-read a book called Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education by David Sobel published by the Orion Society. Sobel states in it that it is important that young people experience nature and learn to love nature before they have to fight to protect it. Two quotes I will ponder from his book:
By John Burroughs, "knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow."
By Thoreau, "the more slowly a tree grows at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings. "
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