Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child's life. You'll likely never see a slick commercial for nature therapy, as you do for the latest antidepressant pharmaceuticals. But parents, educators, and health workers need to know what a useful antidote to emotional and physical stress nature can be. Especially now.

If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other species, never experiences the richness of nature, what happens to that child?

Environment-based education produces student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math; improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and develops skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making.

What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?

If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There's not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.

How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?

Children need nature for the healthy development of their senses, and therefore, for learning and creativity.