Go Outside and play: SouthFlorida.com

Two local moms run side by side, discussing "the witching hour" that is dinner time: "It's so tough at dinner time. My kids get so antsy!" says one runner to another.

"Oh, totally. Remember when we would go out after school and ride bikes in the neighborhood and not come home until dark?" replies the second runner. "Definitely! We swam all day or climbed trees -- I don't remember harassing my mom before dinner."

Sound familiar? It seems many parents these days are mourning a time in the not-too-distant past when kids roamed free. The whole neighborhood was their playground and every kid on the block was a playdate. Pick-up games of soccer or basketball worked themselves out without adult intervention at the corner park. Trees were for climbing or even better, for building tree houses. Frogs, worms, snakes, lizards and butterflies were collected from streams, lakes and bushes. At the end of the day, a sign of a truly successful Saturday was a grubby black ring around the bathtub.

"Of course we didn't have 15 different kids' television channels, a computer, a cell phone or an Xbox," says one of the running moms to the other. The two laugh to themselves as they slow to a walk, and then switch off the treadmills they've been running on inside the local gym.

Parents don't even let themselves outside to play these days.

Most moms wouldn't dare let their kids out of their sight outdoors and certainly don't let children play outside for hours unattended.

The list of reasons for our lack of outdoor time is long: Parents work late hours, sometimes until well after dark. The pile of homework grows higher as children get older. Television, video games, Internet surfing and music/dance/sports practice consumes whatever time is left.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, believes that the No. 1 reason we are keeping our kids from heading out on their own to experience nature and independence is fear. "Fear is the most potent force that prevents parents from allowing their children the freedom they themselves enjoyed when they were young," Louv says. "Fear of traffic, of crime, of stranger-danger -- of nature itself."

He's right, most parents say. It's not the same world we grew up in. The indelible memory of the violently tragic end of Adam Walsh in 1981 and many other horrendous kidnap-murders of children tighten the perimeter of our children's world. Parents are fully aware that the media has overblown the danger and thereby intensified our fear, but we are unwilling to relinquish the belief that the world is an unsafe place for children.

Clare Anthony, mother of three, is one of the fortunate ones. She lives in a Parkland neighborhood where the streets after school are so thick with kids outside one can barely manage to drive. Kids of all ages dart between houses, ride bikes and scooters with abandon, and there are chalk drawings on the sidewalk. To be sure, the soccer fields are packed every weekend with organized games but the general sense of "natural play" still exists there.

"We have a sense of community here. We've lived here a long time as have our neighbors," she says. "You don't find that so much in South Florida -- people don't take the time to get to know their neighbors. They don't want to be bothered. But you have to take the initiative."

Children need nature

Most parents do not question the need for children to connect with the outdoors.

From a very young age, children are aware of the value of being outside: Just take a cranky baby for a walk in the sunshine.

"Most children are inherently sensitive to the natural world," says Janet Nadolna, head of Flagler Montessori Preschool in West Palm Beach. "They welcome exposure to it. But I do find that the overscheduling of children -- and adults -- edges that out. You really have to make the effort."

Time in nature, whether it is a trip to the beach, a nature center, or a walk around the block is relegated to leisure activity, to be bumped by whatever "enrichment" parents believe their child needs for success.

Louv believes that a child's natural education is an integral part of growth and development. "We know that children's experience in nature is directly connected to their attention span, to their stress level, to their creativity. The research that is emerging is quite impressive. This is not an exercise in nostalgia," Louv said during a speech at the Palm Beach Zoo in March as a guest of the zoo and the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation.

In his book, Louv also explores findings that support the claim that exposure to nature can relieve symptoms of ADHD. "Some researchers now recommend that parents and educators make available more natural experiences -- especially green places -- to children with ADHD."

As our time with nature becomes less frequent and children learn about the environment in books or on The Discovery Channel, will their disconnection from the natural world lead to ambivalence? If so, who will be the future caregivers of our planet?

Go outside

Louv is at the fore of a movement encouraging kids to get back out into nature. "I'm not saying it's going to return to how it was in the '50s in terms of a free-range childhood - because fear is real, though some of the reasons for that fear may not be real," Louv says.

"The first solution is that parents are going to have to take children into nature with them. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors that parents trust, will have to take them out into nature. Secondly, institutions and organizations like the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation, like the Palm Beach Zoo, are going to have to get a lot more of our support so that they can be there to help parents feel safe about getting kids out into nature."

Where do we go from here? Happily, the answer is simple: Get out there.

Like eating their vegetables, doing their homework, or writing thank-you notes, sometimes kids have to be coerced into doing what's best for them. Dominique Arrieux, a West Palm Beach mom of two children ages 9 and 11 puts it this way: "My mom said get out of the house and go play. I may not let my kids go out and play on their own but I still make them go out and I go with them. It's good for us all."

That's right, put down the BlackBerry, turn off the tube, skip the gym and head out to nature. We live in Florida, for heaven's sake! Our area is blessed with some of the most magnificent places to reintroduce your children (and their parents) to the natural world.

Jennifer Anthony is a freelance writer and mother of two. She lives in Lake Worth. This report was supplemented by Teenlink interns Sarah Marshak and Lauren Zelaya of North Broward Preparatory School.