Journal #3

After reading Richard Louv”s article, I feel so enlightened. This particular passage was of interest to me, not because I have ADHD, but because I’ve worked with kids who have had it. I used to nanny for 3 small children, all who were diagnosed with this disorder. When they would come home from school I would be the one to help them with their homework. It was a disaster. They could never focus. They were always jumping up and down in their seat, and took forever to accomplish one single task. When reading about how something so simple such as nature could help improve an ADHD child’s behavior, I was shocked. Shocked and bummed. I wish I would have known this years ago! It would have saved me from loads of frustration and stress. I would never have thought to take the kids outside to do homework. They were the kind of kids who always owned the latest in technology, therefore they were constantly inside watching T.V., playing video games, etc. Maybe that in itself was the problem. In today’s world with all of this technology around us, it really is important to expose our kids to nature. Not even neccesarily the children with ADHD, all of them. It is so easy for a parent with a child with ADHD to simply put them on medication such as Ritalin, when on the other hand you could just make an effort to take them outside for 20 minutes. I mean, nature is all around us. We, in Florida, have it a lot easier because of the simple fact that the weather is mostly warm year-round. So theres no excuse for “it being to cold out to go for a walk.”