Maybe it’s for good reason that I’m not a lover of electronics for kids. Seems keeping children in the great outdoors, not the closed-up indoors, is best for the little bodies of the world.

Did you know there’s actually a “No Child Left Inside” bill geared towards getting environmental education into schools so that kids can learn in nature, not just learn about nature. Nothing in the bill about plugging in. Nope, just fresh air. And research reveals that our kids need lots of it.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, children are disappearing from the natural world and are spending more than six hours a day in front of computer screens, video games and televisions rather than outside. In the past 20 years, the amount of time kids spend outdoors has declined 50 percent. And as we all know, our kids are getting fatter and fatter as a result of their sedentary tendencies. Our kids have what experts call “nature-deficit disorder,” and this condition contributes to poor physical and mental health.

I like that education might one day be more geared toward outdoor learning, but I’m not confident it will happen. It seems all the extras in my kids’ school (like PE, art and music) are being cut. How, then, are administrators going to work in outdoor programs when the budget doesn’t support a game of kick ball in the field behind the school? I think it’s up to us — parents — to get our children outside. No reason to wait for Congress or our schools to make it happen.

Where are your kids right now: Inside? Or outside?

Photo by: celebdu on flickr