Are We Teaching Our Kids to Fear Nature?

Over a generation ago, children walked a mile to school--unsupervised. Nowadays, children are transported by bus or cars. We would think twice about letting a child walk to school--alone.

My mother in law told us that she grew up in the 1930's without fear of the woods that surrounded her home in Auburn, Massachusetts.

" At eleven, I thought nothing of playing alone in the forest behind us or of packing a lunch, walking to the pond and rowing a boat across the water to the fields on the other side. When the sky started to darken or when I got hungry, I would hop onto the boat, row myself across the pond and head back home. My mother never showed shock or surprise at what I did. It seemed to be a very natural thing to do.I never felt fear. My parents would have been surprised if I ever said I was scared."

There is no doubt we would be shocked nowadays by the wisdom of parents who allow an eleven year old to row a boat across a pond all by herself, without a life jacket, without adult supervision, alone in a wooded area where all kinds of dangers are possible-- getting lost, drowned, being kidnapped and murdered. These are the fears of our modern culture,magnified tenfold by our instant electronic media. What looms over our parental conscience nowadays is the threat of nature - and the sense that nature is not meant for childhood exploration, but something children should be taught to fear.

Some where along the way, there must be a middle ground - nature loved and respected for what it gives and takes.