I just finished writing an article for Growing Up in Santa Cruz about non-drug alternatives for treating behavioral problems in kids. It was a fascinating subject to read about. I have a personal stake, given that we have chosen to work with our daughter’s problems by trying to find the root of them rather than masking them.
This is not to say that I blame the families who have knowingly chosen to use drugs to calm their children. I know that families are facing situations far worse than ours. But I do think that the majority of families whose children are prescribed drugs don’t know that there are alternatives. That’s why I wrote the articles, and I hope they offer food for thought to families who are facing a hard decision.
One of the interesting things about doing the research was how many well-designed scientific studies I found that corroborated what my husband and I have learned through trial and error, talking with other parents, and watching our children and how they react to things.
Something we noticed since our son was a baby was the calming effect of nature. Many parents of colicky babies know this: your baby is fussy and you bring him outside — no matter what the weather — and he calms. Our son was born during a rainstorm that didn’t seem to end for six weeks. I remember those painful six weeks very well, stuck inside with a very fussy baby, in pain for much of the time due to a very difficult birth.
The cool thing is, what we have noticed is now validated in studies, and the study of Nature Therapy has a physical home at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory. Their studies not only confirm what many parents instinctively sensed, but more: Not only do kids diagnosed with ADHD do better outside, they actually improve in a lasting way when their unstructured time in nature is increased.
The key here is unstructured. Almost everyone who studies the root causes of behavioral problems in children admits that lifestyle is a huge factor. So many of us have scheduled our children into days that resemble an office job more than the life of a child. I remember the first family I knew like this: my parents had neighbors in Berkeley whose children they saw twice a day: early in the morning on the way to daycare and early in the evening on their way back. These children never played in their yard. In fact, they were never outside, even though they were preschoolers in one of the best climates in the world. And, not surprisingly, they were always crying.
I feel that keeping my children’s access to unstructured play time is paramount in our lives, and is a constant struggle. There are so many cool things to DO! Today, point in fact: my son’s school has a short mid-winter break, so he was home. I was doing some school stuff with my daughter (we were charting the number of days seeds took to sprout against the time to germination listed on their packets). My son was sulking and had refused to play a game with us. My daughter was getting frustrated and suddenly without warning tossed a pencil at my face.
Time to do an about-face! I ordered them outside. “I want to go to Blue Balls Park!” my daughter protested. “I want to stay inside,” my son grumbled. “Out!” I commanded. Amazingly, they went. We have the great fortune to be able to walk into Nisene Marks State Park from our backyard, so I herded them down toward the creek. We were out in the dripping wet of the newly rained-upon redwood forest about 30 seconds before their bodies relaxed. Then their voices. Then their faces.
They raced down the hill! They ran up and down a muddy embankment and pretended to fall down a steep hillside. When we got down to the stream, they balanced on rocks and logs. My son, in sneakers, got a soaker. My daughter, in rain boots, waded into water to her knees. Laughter, silliness. They found half a hollowed-out log that tipped back and forth and created waves outward across the stream.
They were happy again. They loved each other again. I loved them again! After we got back, my son worked on his newspaper story for class, and my daughter picked up the pretend “computer” she and her dad made and talked about how it ran MacOSX AND MacOS2 AND Windows.
Nature Therapy. I can’t recommend it more than that.
