At a gathering of families this summer, I shared a shelter building activity that was open for all ages. Ten children showed up with their parents. One parent stayed with their child. We built a lean-to shelter with a fern and grass mattress, white birch framing, and a fern and grass roof.
"Who wants to sleep here this week?" I asked once the shelter was complete.
Six small hands shot into the air without hesitation. One of them belonged to a 7-year-old girl who had come with her parents from London. Her face was squirming with enthusiasm. She turned to her mother who had been resting, lying on a blanket on the grass just on the edges of our workshop space.
"Can we sleep here tonight? Can we?!" the girl asked.
Without words, her mother looked back at her with a tight, uncomfortable smile, furrowed eyebrows and shook her head — no. During the previous two hours, the girl had found her way through the spiky gorse and mosquitos to collect the ferns. She had walked through her fear of grass cuts to collect the grasses. She sang the songs, imagined the stories, and questioned her concerns of horned viper and scorpion until she was inspired and competent enough to sleep under a roof she and her peers had built themselves with the earth. But her mom said no.
Is this how it is for more children? Are they so easily moved to connect deeply with nature, but blocked by the fears, discomforts, or ignorance of their guardians?
Remember the one parent who joined the activity? His daughter also asked if they could sleep in the shelter. "Sure!" her father said casually, and asked me to reserve a night for them in the shelter.
We must not let our child's nature connection end at the discomfort of the adult. Our children need adults who are connected, involved and engaged. And if we can't be, then we can find another — mentor, friend, uncle, sibling, cousin — who can be. When a call for deep nature connection enters a child in today's modern culture, I take it as a major gift. My wish is that families and guardians have enough deep nature connection experiences within themselves that they can support the child to follow the call to their own connection.
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