Deepening children's interaction with nature addresses the issue of environmental generational amnesia

This study addressed the issue of environmental generational amnesia – that is, each generation in its youth perceiving the degraded condition of the environment as the non-degraded (normal) condition. This means that across generations, the baseline for what counts as healthy nature shifts downward. A proposed solution is to broaden and deepen children's interactions with nature, to engage them with “big nature.”

One way to think of “big nature” is nature in its untamed and unmanaged condition. Some people are fearful of nature in this unmanaged state. Others are strengthened and nourished by it. But “big” is also a relative concept. For a young child growing up in a city, a squirrel could be "big animal, and water in an urban fountain could be experienced as “big water.” From the child's perspective, both the squirrel and the water may be more wild than what they usually encounter. This research is based on the understanding that both perspectives about “big nature” have value for children in an urban environment. Small positive changes to domestic nature can make the experience of nature a little more wild. Such changes can also keep the larger vision of wild nature and wild human-nature interactions alive.

Close observations of preschool children (age 3-5) in a forest preschool in Seattle revealed interaction patterns illustrating engagement with “big nature.” One example involves the experience of falling on ground and learning to do so safely. Falling on ground safely is not innate knowledge; it is constructed knowledge involving repeated experimentation of child with ground. In Nature Language terms, falling on ground is a child-nature interaction which helps the child develop environmental capabilities, values, knowledge, intimacies, and relationships. “Nature Language” is a term introduced by the researchers as a means of speaking about deep and meaningful patterns of human interaction with nature.

Ideas related to “big nature” and “nature language” can help mitigate the problem of environmental generational amnesia. Since lack of interaction with nature has partly caused the problem, deepening children's interaction with nature is proposed as a way to help solve it. Children's educational environments –and entire cities -- can be designed with this goal in mind.