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A mother shields her daughter at the seashore while still allowing exploration.

(Courtesy of Thomas Doherty)

Thomas Doherty, director of the Ecopsychology Certificate program at Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, will give a presentation on "Parenting with Nature in Mind" from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, in the South Chapel at Lewis & Clark College, 0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road. (Cost is $10 for an individual or a couple, free for Lewis & Clark employees.)

Doherty’s goal for the presentation, he said, is to help parents clarify what their own environmental or “green” values are and focus on why they want to connect their kids to nature. “Then they can go into the action stage,” he said.

Here are some of his tips for taking action:

Build "green time" into the family schedule. When it's not on the calendar, Doherty said, "the press of work and routines and much of our technology will keep us away from that."

Once there’s a place for green time on the calendar, “the actual activities themselves can be less structured or completely unstructured,” Doherty said. For younger children, green time can be as simple as playing in a sandbox or a treehouse in the backyard or taking a walk to the neighborhood park. The point, Doherty said, is to go outside and get away from screens.

Understand your personal "environmental identity." Just as people have cultural or ethnic identities, Doherty said, we all have environmental identities. For some people, that's well defined – think of a nature writer. Others may have to dig deeper to figure out how they define themselves in relation to nature.

Once parents accomplish that, Doherty said, the trick is to help children develop their own environmental identities without imposing the parents’. He used a sports analogy – a parent who was a high school baseball star, for example, needs to be careful not to force his child to play baseball for years if that’s not where his interests lie. Similarly, a parent who avoids swimming and boating can make a point of not passing down her anxiety about water to her children. Introduce children to outdoor and environmental pursuits, but “give them the opportunity to find their own way,” Doherty said.

Adopt a developmental perspective about nature and the environment. Doherty said this means giving kids developmentally appropriate education and training.

For example, Doherty said, younger children who still engage in play-acting and magical thinking would learn best about bird species by making paper wings and pretending to be a bird. Reading a guidebook and going birding would be more appropriate for older children. When it comes to hiking, parents need to realize that for a toddler, getting 100 yards down the trail might be all that’s achievable at first.

Treat outdoor and environmental skills as life skills. Doherty said some outdoor skills truly are basic life skills, such as knowing how to dress properly for the outdoors. Children also should learn basic hiking and camping skills, including how to plan, how to use a map, how to do low-impact hiking and camping, and how to behave in a tent.

From there, parents can build in more specialized skills, such as fly fishing, surfing or rock climbing. These can teach children an understanding of limits, boundaries and risk management “in the sense of what’s safe to do, doing research, also being able to push your limits,” Doherty said.

Finally, parents can bring in environmental awareness: conservation, sustainability, climate change and ecosystems. “It’s easier to understand protecting a natural place when you’ve had firsthand experiences of wonder,” Doherty said. “Those early developmental experiences set the stage.”

Here are some local resources to help act on some of Doherty’s tips:

Audubon Society of Portland: Summer nature camps, training program for youth interested in conservation-related careers.

Friends of Tryon Creek: Guided nature walks, summer nature camp, and more.

Hoyt Arboretum: Children's nature walks, nature school, summer nature camp.

Metro: Explore nature at the Metro regional government's parks, nature trails, boating facilities and other properties throughout the Portland area.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife: ODFW Outdoors offers education and training for kids in fishing, hunting and outdoor skills.



Oregon State Parks: Here's a calendar of state park events this year.



Portland Parks & Recreation Environmental Education: Early childhood nature programs, nature camps, teen environmental education programs. (Also check with other local parks districts for family-oriented nature events, programs and camps.)

SOLVE: K-12 Green Team; Global Youth Service Day April 11-13.

Tillamook Forest Center: Story times and other family-friendly events.



Trackers Earth Portland: Wilderness survival and nature classes and camps.

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge: Occasional family-friendly events.

More reading:

Four out of five UK children 'not connected to nature' (The Guardian, 2013)

Kids and nature: Tips for helping make the connection (OregonLive.com, 2012)



“

: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv

--Amy Wang