Re-wilding your family and your phone by Nicola Davies
We have a very relevant and thoughtful blog from author Nicola Davies today. We are constantly competing with smart phones and technology but Nicola offers some ideas for balancing nature with technology.
RE-WILDING YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR PHONE
When I was bringing up my kids there were no smart phones and the only computer in the house lived in my study. Today, parents who want to get their kids off the sofa into nature have to compete with the instantly rewarding screen. The good news is, that when you do get them outside children still get just as excited about live animals – even beetles and woodlice – as they always have and you can make the screen your friend in your efforts to get your kids interested in nature.
Infectious enthusiasm. If you are genuinely keen to get out there and look for birds in the park or turn over a stone to look for slow worms, chances are your kids will be too. But enthusiasm can’t be faked, so that might mean that before you try it on your kids, you need to some rewilding on yourself. Start building a bit of nature contact into every day. Make sure you always look up at the sky at least once. Stand under that tree on the way to work for a few seconds. Switch on your senses whenever you are outside; pay attention to the information they give you. In other words, open the door and let nature in. Once it’s inside you working magic, it’ll be much easier to share with your children.
Discover together. Don’t be held back by the thought that you need to be the Knowledgable Adult. It doesn’t matter if you can’t even put a name to a sparrow or a dandelion, it won’t hinder your enjoyment of them, and there are plenty of apps that can help with identification. The bird song ones are great because you have the excitement of being able to put a name to a species you can’t see, but only hear; you’ll be surprised at how fast your ears, and theirs, learn to tune in to bird songs and calls. Encourage your kids to learn and teach you. Nothing is more empowering for a young person than to be ‘the one in the know’ educating the adult..
Explore the night. Children, especially little ones, don’t get access to the outdoors at night time and it can be really exciting for them to go for a night time walk. Obviously this isn’t something you can do on a school night or if you live in a dodgy bit of a big city, but you can do it on holiday.
Dusk and sunset – even in autumn and winter – are great times to see animals as they know the humans are indoors and the dark is their time. If you can be somewhere with minimal street lighting you can look at the stars and learn the constellations together. Smart phones come in handy here too as there are many constellation identifying apps.
Keep a record. I adored making lists of the animals I’d seen when I was little and I still make notes in my plant and bird ID books about what Ive seen and where. Keeping a notebook on paper or on a phone might be a bit ‘schooly’ for some kids but others will love it. If you are tecky yourself you could help them set up a way of recording what you see on your wildlife walks and link it to other resources online that will help them learn more about what they’ve seen for themselves. So the next time they are glued to a screen it might be because they are looking at a video about swift migration or orchid pollination. Then you can smile and know you are raising a proper nature geek. Job DONE!
The Song that Sings Us by Nicola Davies is now available in paperback from Firefly Press. Illustrated by Jackie Morris.