Read 'n' Seed 3: Second quarter of "Last Child in the Woods"

I just finished reading the second quarter of Last Child in the Woods. I read up to page 159. This section started out a bit dry, which was one of the biggest warnings when I was looking at reviews before I started reading.

The first chapter I read discussed the "eighth intelligence." This is the idea that people have greater skills in certain areas of intelligence than others. People with this intelligence have great sensory skills and enjoy spending time outside and learning from nature. An idea that was brought up was that people don't only get 'delight' from being outdoors, but also 'enlightenment.' Being outside allows children to explore and learn and it is likely they learn more from failures rather than their successes. Many parents shelter their children so much from failure that they never learn from it.

Chapter 7 discussed the idea of "loose-parts" toys. When children play indoors with technology they play with it the way it is. While outside they are given a bunch of loose-parts. They can take a branch and collect others to make a fort and then take other loose-parts like leaves to make a canopy. These loose-parts encourage discovery.

The rest of this section mainly discussed ADHD. It really pushes that nature can be an added therapy to medication. Playing outside can be considered nature's Ritalin. It calms children. It is pointed out that playing outside is "widely accessible, free of side effects, non-stigmatizing, and inexpensive."

The follow chapters introduced some of the reasons why parents don't allow their children to play outside freely. The fear of abduction is extremely high while the action rate of abduction by strangers in extremely low. Parents are even making their children wear GPS bracelets that if cut off immediately signal emergency response teams to the location.

I strongly agree that being outside can help children calm down and focus. I think it is so important to let children run free in an open field and allow them to explore things for themselves and not be afraid to fail. One of the major issues that we face, I believe, is television shows that spotlight crime. We have such a fear of children being abducted, which is a real fear, but now we have been led to believe that if happens all the time. It is not as prevalent as many parents assume it is.