Opening doors to fields of fun

To kickstart Heritage Week, Wild Child Day is set to draw the children into bogs and forests of Ireland, in their masses, writes SHEILA WAYMAN

IT IS AN effort to keep my mouth shut. Showing all the symptoms of a 21st century, risk-averse mother, I have to suppress the urge to shout, “Be careful, the seaweed is slippery”, or “Don’t go so high”, as the boys clamber over rocks on the seashore.

They need to be able to play and explore uninterrupted, but it is hard to resist “mumsying” them, as they like to call it.

In fact, it is a very tame coastal walk but one they love on warm summer evenings – and I relish the enjoyment they get from being out by the sea, playing games with stones. Like many of my generation, I am very aware that my children don’t get the chance to roam in the natural world the way I did.

At my eldest’s age, 11, I could disappear into fields by our house for hours, to build a den, collect blackberries or paddle in the River Tolka.

And thanks to my inspiring if rather fearsome sixth class teacher, there was hardly a wild flower out there that I could not name.

These days, even when parents go out of their way to ensure their children get “fresh air and exercise”, the added dimension of connecting with nature can be forgotten.

In large, recreational parks, "how often are children driven to the car-parks, brought into the all-weather rubber surfaced playground to climb and swing, and ushered back to the car when they have finished without much thought to the additional wonders and possibilities of nature around them", asks Carol Duffy of the Irish Preschool Play Association (IPPA) in an essay for the Heritage Council, entitled Nurture Through Nature.

The physical and mental benefits for children who are allowed to wallow in nature are well documented. They are also much more likely to value it when they grow up.

That is where the Heritage Council comes in with next Saturday’s Wild Child Day, which kicks off this year’s Heritage Week, running until August 29th. With more than 1,000 events all over the country, many of them free, the week is a godsend to parents running out of money and ideas at the tail end of the school holidays.

The opening day’s events are particularly aimed at generating a greater interest in wildlife among children. If the future generations are disconnected from nature, they are not going to see the need to preserve it, says Isabell Smyth, head of communications and education with the Heritage Council.

There has been a huge shift from rural to urban in Ireland within the last 20 years, which means the majority of children are now growing up in a concrete environment and playing with increasing amounts of plastic, more often indoors than out.

“It is more of an issue than perhaps we are realising,” suggests Smyth. “While there are still quite a lot of spaces for children to roam, are we allowing them to take the risk?”

In 2005, US journalist Richard Louv attracted much public attention with the term “nature deficit disorder” in his book Last Child in the Woods. It was a way to describe the psychological, physical and cognitive costs of human alienation from nature, particularly for children in their vulnerable developing years.

Trends which might sound to us a bit extreme when first identified in the US, have a habit of crossing the Atlantic within a matter of years.

Smyth cites recent UK research which found that 40 per cent of children spend less than an hour outdoors each day – that includes the time spent getting to and from school. “Not only are children spending less and less time outdoors, they have less freedom when they are outdoors. They are very much a watched species,” she says.

To see if Ireland is going down the same path, the Heritage Council commissioned market researchers Behaviour and Attitudes to survey parents and grandparents about the time they spent outdoors as children and to ask them what time they think their children are spending. The results are expected back this week.

“It will give us some indication as to whether people are recognising the shift,” says Smyth. “In the last decade there seems to have been a focus on children learning technology and it might not be considered as important for children to get out.”

The council saw Heritage Week as an opportunity to encourage and promote the setting up of events that would support an interest in outdoors and learning about nature. Children have a choice of habitat to experience in Wild Child Day events, from bog and parkland to marine and woodland.

Just one of those events will be a “bio blitz” in the grounds of Belvedere House in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, led by Australian wildlife expert Dale Treadwell. Perhaps best known for his slots on RTÉ’s Kazoo programme, his mission in life is to encourage children to “touch, feel and be involved” with nature which is all around them.

“Part of what I try to do even when I am in the most urban of areas is to show them that they really don’t have to go very far – especially if you look at the micro world which is just there, just a matter of rolling a log or lifting a few stones and you will find things. It is having the interest to go looking.”

He works with the Heritage in Schools scheme, run by the Heritage Council and the INTO. Up to 90 per cent of his time is spent on children’s activities, the remainder in consultation with teachers.

“What I try to bring to the kids is a feeling of adventure and exploration, even in the confines of their own school gardens.”

Growing up on the outskirts of Melbourne, his school was surrounded by bush land. He and his friends spent break times catching lizards and bugs, climbing trees and falling out of them. “If we hadn’t broken a few bones by the end of primary school we hadn’t really lived!”

Romance brought him to Ireland in 1999 and initially he worked with the Conservation Volunteers of Ireland, as an urban forestry officer. Now running his own consultancy, Naturally Wild, he lives in Ballinabrackey, near Kinnegad in Co Meath, with his wife Jennifer and their children, Leah (nine) and Nathan (two).

There is no danger of those two growing up without experiencing a love of nature, which Irene Gunning, chief executive of the IPPA, believes is so vital in the early, formative years. “It is very important as an eco measure as well, to get children interested.”

First it is about having an experience, she stresses. We should share our love for running in the wind, careering down a hill or throwing stones into the sea. Or just sit at night with your children, look at the sky and “share the awe of it all”. Then, because they have that first connection, learning will follow. The natural outdoors provides “playscapes”, as Gunning labels them – a world apart from commercial play centres. What’s more, the four seasons and changeable weather can make the same outdoor surroundings a different experience for children throughout the year.

We’re lucky in Ireland, that the countryside, the sea, the mountains, the forests, are never too far away. But sometimes it takes initiatives like Wild Child Day to remind us to make the most of them.

Read all about it

Nature's Webis an attractive, free wildlife magazine for children that is well worth a look. It is published online four times a year – one for each season – by the Sherkin Island Marine Station in Co Cork.

Well illustrated, it is a good resource for teachers and parents, with the whole publication, or just single pages, downloadable. Articles in the current edition include ones on the puffin, the rhinoceros and sea urchins. See naturesweb.ie