Importance of little blessings

Dear readers,

Cast yourselves back to when your were four or five years old. In the fog of memory are there any images of you as a free spirited munchkin running with total abandonment and zero fear of falling down? And, if you did fall, do you remember rolling with laughter?

Last week twenty one delightful four and five year old “little ones” from the Nubeena primary school, near to where I live, came to Windgrove for a half day of engaged fun, a bit of learning and just hanging out with me and the land.

Colleague Richard Louv in his book ‘Last Child in the Woods’ coined the term “nature-deficit disorder” (NDD) and showed how children in cities, when deprived of experiences in the woods, lakes and outdoors, develop social and learning problems that would hamper them in later life as adults.

The children here don’t have that problem. Despite not having some classroom luxuries found in big city private schools, the long term money is on my neighborhood kids being happier, more socially well adjusted and intellectually adventurous than their city counterparts.

All well and good for the kids having a grand day out, but was there any reciprocity from them to the adults or, more intriguingly, to the land itself?

To answer this, let me coin a term along the line of Louv’s NDD. It is “Children-Deficit Disorder” or CDD. This happens when adults no longer have contact with children or even wish to have any connection to them; or worse, when the child within them dies.

Without children around, the ability to have fun, play imaginatively, wear your emotions on your sleeve and be honestly direct gets lost.

This is the moment when adults become grumpy, disillusioned, cynical and drink forever more from a glass less than half full. It’s when their creative womb shrivels up. It’s when the artist dies.

CDD might even apply to the flowers and animals on the land itself. Remember the book “The Secret Life of Plants” where it was demonstrated that flowers and vegetables grew better and were more robust when music or thoughts were directed at them?

Maybe not scientifically proven, but my intuition tells me that even the earth benefits from the frolicking of youngsters. And this is why it is not only not a burden, but a boon for both myself and for Windgrove to have children visit.

Boisterous kids running are nothing less than a pack of angels descending down a hill side.

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