Back in the day, a trip to Disneyland would make a child's eyes grow big with wonder. But something happened on the way to The Magic Kingdom. Theme parks cropped up all over the country. High tech thrills came streaming into living rooms and then right into hand-held devices. Toys turned into interactive robots.
Kids now spend so much time indoors in high-tech, tightly scheduled lives that what's old is amazing again.
The natural world - watching a chrysalis, finding pollywogs, seeing plants sprout from seeds, all things that were a common experience for generations of children - is now the new Magic Kingdom for many kids, eliciting wonder and joy.
For a lot of them, outdoor summer nature camps have become their only way to experience the natural world. And for some, it's a rare opportunity just to play outside and get dirty.
Elly Seelye, who does environmental education for the Sonoma Ecology Center, sponsor of several week-long June garden camps at the Sonoma Garden Park, said she frequently gets kids asking the question, &‘Can I bring my Gameboy?' or &‘Can I bring my phone?'
"When I say no at first they get disappointed," she said. "But as soon as we get to the park, they get excited."
Kids learn gardening skills, investigate bugs and soil, gather eggs and prepare food they've harvested themselves, all on a 6-acre farm seven blocks from the Sonoma Plaza.
"Between kids always being inside on the computer or fooling around on their cell phones, they're not getting outside and having fun, and that only lends itself to poor eating habits. It's why I think outdoor camp programs are so important," said Ryan Shepherd, a social studies teacher at Rancho Cotate High School who has coordinated Santa Rosa's Camp Wa-Tam in Howarth Park for many years.
Statistics seem to tell the story. In the '60s, 4 percent of children were obese. Today, 16 percent of "e-Generation" kids are overweight, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The CDC also reports a child is 6 times more likely to play a video game than ride a bike. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that during the school year, kids 8 to 10 spend on average 6 hours a day in front of a screen.
A lot of these changes have happened during the digital boom began in the '90s. A survey by the National Sporting Goods Association found that the proportion of kids 7 to 11 who swim, fish, play touch football or ride bikes has fallen by a third.
Richard Louv's 2008 bestseller, "The Last Child in the Woods," spawned an international movement dubbed "No Child Left Inside" to address what he called "a nature deficit disorder."
While some recent research questions the dire alarm and the reliability of some surveys, Louv, head of the Children & Nature Network, said there are no long-term studies because "no one asked the question 30 years ago." But he said there is notable research suggesting that outdoor experiences can reduce the symptoms of ADHD and improve science test scores. Other research, he said, does link lack of outdoor experiences to childhood obesity.
"We see kids identified as out of control or having behavior problems," said Seelye of Sonoma Ecology. "Get them out in the environment, though, and they're different kids. They end up being our best bird watchers. Their attention span improves and they settle down."
Many parents acknowledge that children today are on a much shorter leash. At the same time, nearby open spaces to explore a creek, climb a big tree or gather critters in a jar are dwindling.
"Certainly as a kid I was just sent out the door and told to be back at a certain time. That just doesn't happen anymore. You can't let them do that in the current world where everything they do is organized," said Nikki Burke, a Santa Rosa mother of two girls who have attended Camp Wa-Tam.
At the camp, kids do archery, get out on boats on the lake, hike and even swim in the lake, itself an increasingly novel experience. One night during their week-long session, they spend the night under the stars and feast on s'mores. They spend the entire day, every day, outdoors.
Burke said her kids rarely get truly dirty. Yet one came home so joyously filthy from camp that she had to strip her clothes off in the garage before she was allowed inside. A group picture taken on one Thursday camp-over shows kids with faces so grimy they're unrecognizable, she added with a laugh.
Lisa Baiter is program director for Earthways at Ocean Song, which puts on week-long Coyote Camps for kids 5 to 12 at their 240-acre nature preserve and farm in Occidental. A naturalist for 22 years, she said today's kids seem to have less direct experience with nature than than they did 20 years ago, or their experience or impressions come from TV.
Sonoma County's Regional Parks department is launching a major drive to get kids outdoors, reorganizing the department to add a new programming division devoted to promoting outdoor play.
They're starting with an after-school Junior Naturalist Program for middle-schoolers this spring at the Environmental Discovery Center at Spring Lake Park, aiming to turn those kids into ambassadors to talk up the county's 46 parks with their peers, said Program Manager Mary Clemens. They hope to get funding to create outdoor camps this summer.
"We see the demographics changing and we want the next group of kids wanting to grow up to be park rangers," she said. "We know it's a solution to health problems but the other part is, we want people being comfortable playing outdoors again."
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or at 521-5204.
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