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

Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation; the first truly multicultural generation; the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television; the first post-sexual revolution generation; the first generation for which nature is more abstraction than reality; the first generation to grow up in new kinds of dispersed, deconcentrated cities, not quite urban, rural, or suburban.

Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.

Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered.

Use all of your senses.

This tree house became our galleon, our spaceship, our Fort Apache...Ours was a learning tree. Through it we learned to trust ourselves and our abilities.

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?