A generation ago, raising kids seemed easier. No mass school shootings, airplanes flying into skyscrapers, global pandemics, or cyberbullying. Even so, my three daughters each experienced teen angst about peer, parent, and school pressure. Today, internal fear and external pressures are causing 79% of our teens to “feel like they are going to explode!” *
Teens and pre-teens face a culture swirling with increased angst, now amplified and manipulated on social media and often accompanied by cyberbullying. Recent studies show that 73% of teen boys and 82% of teen girls use social media several hours a day. In a circular entrapment, our children are literally under assault from social media, to which, ironically, they often are addicted (as are many adults!)
This vicious cycle sends cortisol, the stress hormone, rushing through teenagers’ bodies and brains. Anxiety skyrockets as sleep – so critical to brain development – decreases. Any number of negative behaviors can result, many of them turned inward on oneself. Self-harm, depression, anxiety, low confidence, poor self-esteem, and teen suicide are all, sadly, on the rise.
According to the YPulse 2023 study, 52% to 57% of teens don’t believe they are smart enough to attain their dream job. 35% to 41% of 5th- 12th-grade boys and girls say they are sad or depressed at least four days a week. Depression for 5th graders has tripled in recent years.*
In his bestselling book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic in Mental Illness, Jonathan Haight offers ways to break this cycle. He suggests four new cultural norms to guide parents in their urgent desire to protect their children from the effects of cell phones and social media:
- No smartphones before high school.
- No social media before 16.
- Phone-free schools.
- More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world.
The last of these norms points directly to what I call the “nature fix”**. Empowerment through nature can transform children’s lives! With appropriate challenges, information, teamwork, freedom, and individual space, children blossom as they explore the physical world on their own evolving terms.
Richard Louv’s seminal book, Last Child in the Woods, revealed that kids who played outside were more creative, better at problem-solving, better at spatial awareness, and more in touch with a sense of wonder about the world around them. Time in nature nurtures positive brain development, pouring positive endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin into the brain, and bringing humans joy!
Over two decades, Women’s Empowerment Workshop has developed unique nature empowerment camps for kids 7 – 17 that tap the healing power of Nature. Our camps and programs offer kids personal challenges and outdoor experiences that grow their self-confidence, courage, resilience, and strength and foster a positive lifetime relationship with all life on Earth.
Younger children in Caterpillars and Earth Keeper Explorers programs thrive when guided to explore themselves as a part of nature. Earth, Air, Water, Fire relates directly to their own body: Bones, Breath, Fluids, Energy. Learning that we ARE nature and not separate from it is a revelation and deep understanding they take forward throughout their lives.
Teens in Chrysalis Circle and Earth Keeper Way thrive when solving outdoor challenges like rock climbing, building a shelter, navigating the trail, and negotiating a river in their own boat. Building confidence and resilience through nature play and challenges raises teens’ self-esteem at a critical time – when they are most susceptible to self-doubt.
Beyond the physical and emotional benefits, connecting to nature enlivens children’s innate understanding of the reciprocity with Earth that humans must have to survive. This deepens their awareness of the responsibility each of us has in our Human-Earth relationship.
Click on the link to view more details about our Kids Nature Camps.
*Source: ROX Study, 2023
**The Nature Fix is also an excellent book by Florence Williams, 2017
