No.150: Read With Me // How to Raise a Wild Child (Part 4)

This post contains affiliate links.

Quick recap: I assigned myself a summer reading book, How To Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature, to help me have a better relationship with nature and encourage that relationship in my children.  I’m jotting down some notes and thoughts as I read through it this month and sharing them here.  Maybe it will inspire you in a new way too!

The book is divided into four sections.  (Find my notes on Part One, Part Two and Part Three.)  Part Four contains Chapters 9 and 10 and is called “Obstacles and Solutions.”

Chapter 9: Dangerous Liasions

Ultimately, children who develop this hybrid mind will be able to interact deftly with both technology and the natural world.  Technological tools will be used to augment, rather than block, human senses.  Just as a birder uses binoculars to look closely at a robin and then lets the optics hang while she absorbs its lovely song, so too, with practice and mentorship, will kids learn to migrate between digital experience and the real, multisensory world.  In this sense, the litmus test for nature-friendly technologies might be how long it takes to transition from a digital focus back to the multisensory world. (p.242)

 Notes and takeaways from this chapter:

• Chapter 9’s theme was one that really fascinates me: the balance between technology and nature.  Sampson’s argument is not that we should eliminate technology, but rather asks: How can we embrace both?
• Books to check out:
• The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future
• Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
• The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age
• “the hybrid mind” = individuals who are capable of switching easily back and forth between the digital and physical worlds
• spotlight consciousness = narrow, directed attention that blocks external stimuli (reading, school, etc.)
• lantern consciousness = broader, more diffuse kind of attention
• “Spotlights are purpose driven, focusing their beam tightly on a particular subject.  Lanterns illuminate broadly, shedding light on a broad range of subjects.” (p.239)
• Today we value the spotlight far more than the lantern (ie. pushing academic-style learning beginning in the preschool years) but we shouldn’t count the lantern out.  I found this part really interesting: “Directed attention and spotlight consciousness tend to be fatiguing and stress-inducing, robbing us of energy.  Think about how you feel after staring at a computer screen for hours on end.  In contrast, being outdoors in, say, a park or a forest encourages a less focused, more diffuse mode of attention, the sort that opens up our senses, relieves stress, restores energy, and fosters clear thinking.  This explains at least in part why even a brief walk outdoors can be so rejuvenating.” (p.240)
• Ideas for including technology with outdoor adventures:
• Apps like iNaturalist and Sky Map
• Geocaching
• Photography

Chapter 10: The Rewilding Revolution

In the end, raising a wild child is much more about seeding love than knowledge…Antoine de Saint-Exupery expressed this point beautifully: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” 
Nature connection is the ship we’re trying to build.  Our goal as mentors is not to share facts or assign tasks.  It is to be match-makers, to help children fall in love with nature so that they long to be immersed within it.  That emotional pull, if deeply entrenched, will nourish a lifelong sense of wonder and a desire to seek answers.  If you help to cultivate that longing, children will figure out the rest. (p.281)