Nature Is Imperfectly Perfect, Filled With Loose

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.

When We Raise Our Children, We Relive Our Childhood. Forgotten Memories, Painful And Pleasurable, Rise To The Surface.... So Each Of Us Thinks, Almost Daily, Of How Our Own Childhood Compares With Our Children's, And Of What Our Children's Future Will Hold.

Kids And Adults Pay A Price For Too Much Tech, And It's Not Wholesale.

It Takes Time--loose, Unstructured Dreamtime-- To Experience Nature In A Meaningful Way. Unless Parents Are Vigilant, Such Time Becomes A Scarce Resource, Not Because We Intend It To Shrink, But Because Time Is Consumed By Multiple, Invisible Forces; Because Our Culture Currently Places So Little Value On Natural Play.

We Attempt To Remember Our Collective American Childhood, The Way It Was, But What We Often Remember Is A Combination Of Real Past, Pieces Reshaped By Bitterness And Love, And, Of Course, The Video Past--the Portrayals Of Family Life On Such Television Programs As "leave It To Beaver" And "father Knows Best" And All The Rest.