More trees around the child=better grades in school

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More trees around the child=better grades in school
More trees around the child=better grades in school
Anonim

My grandmother also told me not to sit in the room so much, but to go out in the fresh air. Although some of his he alth-related insights were not later supported by science (if you drink a lot of water, you won't grow a frog in your belly), the beneficial effect of the natural environment on children and the nervous system is now confirmed by a surprising amount of research.

Yes, children will be really aggressive and distracted if their living space lacks the natural environment and there is too much concrete in it. They do better in school if they are in the green a lot - but it also matters if there are trees in front of our house or a parking lot.

shutterstock 104475683
shutterstock 104475683

Nature Deficiency Syndrome

Richard Louv, one of the pioneers of the topic and the author of several books, coined the term "nature deficit syndrome" based on psychiatric diagnoses. Of course, this is not a diagnosis, just a perceptive description of the problem that affects many children today: that they are forced to do without the beneficial effects of the natural environment. Because they live in a place where there are more paving stones than bushes; or because they lead a lifestyle (or their parents lead one) that does not fit into a walk in the forest.

According to the specialist, direct contact with nature is important for children, i.e. don't let their hands get wet and their shoes muddy. Playing in nature also involves experimenting and taking risks, which play an important role in personality development.

Of course, it's easy for us to give you the opportunity, but our child refuses to leave the sofa - in this case, it's difficult to find the limit between excessive strictness (we throw him out into the garden against his will) and giving up (keep the TV on) before, at least there is silence) between.

Supposedly, it is true for many children that throughout their childhood they whine when they "have to" go on a trip, and then as young adults they refer to the trips together as their favorite childhood experiences. According to Richard Louv, it is relatively rare for someone to recall the day when he could watch TV all day as the best days of his childhood.

Heals distraction, improves concentration

The effects of the natural environment on the nervous system, and especially on the developing nervous system, have been supported by more and more research in recent years. One of the much-studied childhood diagnoses is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: it turned out that close proximity to nature, i.e. time spent in greenery, improved ADHD symptoms.

On the other hand, indoor occupations (e.g. watching TV) and time spent outdoors, but not in green areas, but in concrete-paved areas, did not improve or rather worsened the children's symptoms. In a study, children's ADHD symptoms were assessed after playing in various locations - it turned out that the symptoms are the most severe when the child plays in a room without windows, even a room with a window is one better than this. An open space covered with grass had a good effect on symptoms of attention deficit, but the best was a forest or park with both grass and trees.

You don't have to have ADHD to have an effect that improves concentration, it's enough if you're tired. The concentration disorder caused by fatigue has very similar symptoms to the hyperactive attention disorder: if we are sleepless, or we "just" have a lot to do, we have to pay attention to many things, we are overwhelmed by tasks, then after a while we become forgetful, defocused, and less able to focus.

According to research, time spent in nature also cures this attention fatigue - i.e. company managers, air traffic controllers and doctors should at least be required to walk to work in green rows of trees. Of course, it's even better if they go camping on weekends.

The various researches have therefore examined the effect of many different natural environments: according to experience, hiking in the wilderness improves attention functions, but so does "just" gardening. But even if we live in a place where there are grass and trees around the building and sometimes we look out the window. In other words, there is no need to think in extremes: if it is not possible for us to regularly take long walks in the forest, it is still worth looking for something green in the area.

The child is more aggressive if there is not enough wood

Another topic is the relationship between the green environment and aggression and self-control. According to research, children growing up in the city center are more vulnerable in many ways compared to their peers in the suburbs: in their case, learning disorders and behavioral disorders are more common, as well as juvenile delinquency and unwanted pregnancy.

According to experts, these are multi-factorial things, but they are partly related to self-control and self-discipline - and it seems that children living in concrete jungles have less self-control than their peers living in green surroundings. In the course of a research, a significant correlation was found between self-discipline and the proximity of green areas, mainly in the case of girls.

shutterstock 361989881
shutterstock 361989881

The researchers used tests to examine concentration, the ability to delay, and the ability to control impulses, that is, the ability to control our momentary impulses. It turned out that the more natural the view from the window of their apartment, the better the girls perform on the test.

Impulse control and self-discipline can also be related to aggression, since those who have good impulse control are better able to control their aggressive impulses. During another research, they came to the conclusion that there is a significant correlation between aggression and the amount of trees in the neighborhood: the greener a person lives in, the less aggressive he is.

According to the experts, all of this is related to attention fatigue, because the level of aggressiveness was also related to the level of attention fatigue. In Hungarian, if we are mentally tired, we become more nervous and violent. The natural environment probably affects our behavior by "curing" attention fatigue, thereby improving self-control.

More trees=better school performance

Children's school performance is relatively well predicted by their IQ, but it is even more related to their so-called executive functions. Executive functions are the functioning of our nervous system when we perceive and organize the elements that exist in the outside world and in our thoughts. Executive functions, like memory, can be innately good, they can be developed, and they deteriorate in the case of mental decline in old age. And children with good executive functions do better in school.

According to research, time spent in nature also improves the executive functions of children - at different ages. In other words, the proximity of trees indirectly improves the child's school performance. In other words, it would make a lot more sense to spend the weekend on a trip than with studying or writing homework. We are pushing for the above connection to become known one day to the schools and the current committees that produce the curriculum.

I live in a city, what should I do?

In her books and articles, Louv gives advice to parents who themselves have become disconnected from the natural environment and have no idea how to show it to their children. Louv highlights what we have seen from the above research: all green locations have psychological advantages. That is, if we live in a city, then look for a park, if there is none, then a quiet corner with a few trees.

The author of this article recently observed the following scene at a playground next to a Budapest panel housing estate: ten- to eleven-year-old children were sitting under five nearby trees and filling out workbooks. The teacher who was with them gave them the following instruction in military style: "Then grab the ground, good, and write that the ground is wet at the edge of the forest." Although at first hearing it is very sad that for the children those few trees represent the forest, it is still better than having the same workbook filled in the classroom.

Of course, the goal would be to plan our cities taking the above aspects into account, i.e. to build an environment in which inattentive, aggressive children do not grow up. According to Louv, there are already encouraging trends in the USA: many schools have their own gardens or integrate learning about nature into their programs.

Environmentalists of the future

It is worth making children fall in love with nature if only so that they do not want to destroy it when they grow up. It turned out that the majority of people are left completely cold when climate change and other ecological catastrophes are mentioned to them: these are too big topics, too abstract and seem too far away. We don't want to think about such things and mostly ignore them - that is, no one will become an environmentalist if we give them a short lecture about fossil fuels and melting polar ice.

shutterstock 85954576
shutterstock 85954576

According to experience, the desire to protect the environment is characteristic of those who love it; and it is mainly loved by those who loved it in their childhood. The personal relationship with nature determines whether we want to protect it or not: we want to protect what we love. If we like the walnut tree, we don't cut it down, if it leaves us completely cold, we are more likely to concrete the yard as a parking space.

In other words, if we want to avoid our great-grandchildren starving in a desert littered with mountains of garbage, all we have to do is make our children love nature. Of course, it doesn't hurt if we love it too.

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