An indispensable guide to raising tough, curious, and competent kids who feel at home in the outdoors, from the New York Times bestselling author and host of the TV series and podcast MeatEater
The average American spends ninety percent of their time indoors, and children are no exception. Today, kids can spend up to seven hours per day looking at screens.
Not only does this phenomenon have consequences for our kids' physical and mental health, it calls into question their ability to understand and engage with anything beyond the manmade world. We can teach climate change in school and instill our anxieties about the future in our children, but until more humans make meaningful contact with nature, the welfare our planet is in jeopardy.
Thankfully, with the right mindset and instruction, families can find beauty, meaning, and connection in a life lived outdoors. Outdoor Kids offers practical advice for getting your kids radically engaged with nature in a muddy, thrilling, hands-on way. No matter their location-rural, suburban, or urban-caregivers will learn how to inspire kids with activities such as:
• Understanding yourself to be part of a natural ecosystem that is stunning in both its permanence and its ability to adapt.
• Growing a vegetable garden in order to develop a capacity to nurture and an ability to appreciate the rewards of hard work.
• Foraging for wild berries, nuts, and mushrooms as a way to explore the incredible abundance of nature and experience the delight of discovery.
• Fishing local lakes and rivers to learn the importance of planning, process, and organization; work on patience; and grapple with the possibility of failure.
• Hunting for sustainably managed wild game to instill responsibility and face the realities of life, death, and what it really takes to obtain our food.
• Camping to conquer fears, build tolerance for dirt and discomfort, and savor the timeless pleasure of swapping stories around a campfire-and, ultimately, to appreciate the comforts of home that we've taken for granted.
• Living an outdoor lifestyle even when you're inside, by cooking together with naturally sourced ingredients you procured, admiring and researching treasures from the wild, and planning your next adventure.
Living an outdoor lifestyle fosters in kids an insatiable curiosity about the world around them, a sense of confidence and self-sufficiency, and, most important, a lifelong sense of stewardship of the natural world. This book helps families connect with nature-and each other-as a joyful part of everyday life. Throughout, Rinella shares the wisdom he has garnered as a father whose family has lived amid the biggest cities and wildest corners of America.
