June 21, 2021
June 21, 2021
In this day and age, spending time outdoors can be more difficult than it has been in the past. People often spend the majority of their time indoors because that’s what is required of them when it comes to work, home life, and travel. Working in an office often keeps people indoors for the majority of their day, and then they spend their commute home inside their vehicle. Once they get home, they’re stuck inside doing chores – making dinner, cleaning up, or getting their children ready for bed. Combine that with the vast amount of indoor entertainment available for families and children (Netflix, video games, social media…), and it can be hard to find five minutes to step outside and smell the roses.
What many people may not be aware of is the fact that spending the majority of your time inside can lead to you missing out on all the health benefits that the great outdoors has to offer. And when it comes to learning and brain development, being outside plays a vital role for your child. Read on to find out how access to nature can influence a child’s cognitive development.
What are the health benefits of being outdoors?
Spending time outdoors is good for overall health for people of all ages. There are many reasons being outside is helpful when it comes to staying healthy. One key example: spending time outside can provide you with adequate levels of vitamin D, which is important for bone and immune health, as well as the health of the blood cells. Being outside has also been proven to help mental health by lessening anxiety and depression and calming stress. This is because sunlight can help to raise serotonin levels.
Spending time in nature is also shown to improve sleep, which is vital to the overall health of every system in the body. Daylight helps to calibrate the sleep-wake cycle, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up feeling refreshed. Nature is also shown to be an immune booster. This is because many plants contain organic compounds known as phytoncides. These compounds are in the air, and when you breathe them in, they help to boost your immune system.
What are the impacts of the outdoors on children's brain development?
When it comes to a child's brain development, being outdoors can play a vital role in many different areas of cognition. For example, being outside stimulates more than just one of their senses. When playing in a park, there will be other children running around, cars driving by, the smell of grass and flowers, and a lot to see. When multiple senses are stimulated at once, it can help to hone and sharpen each sense as they grow older. This is especially important for younger children, as their senses are the basis of the majority of their learning.
Studies have also shown that being out in nature has an effect on cognitive disorders such as ADHD. The green colour that’s so abundant in nature has been shown to be a calming influence for children, and has also been shown to help sharpen their ability to focus and pay attention to one task at a time.
Stress also plays a vital role in cognitive development, and playing outside can help to reduce the overall stress that children feel. Other research has shown that executive functions such as planning, problem-solving, multi-tasking, and prioritization can all be improved by spending more time outside.
Why is nature play important in early childhood?
Activities conducted in social situations outdoors can help a child's development when it comes to building social relationships and emotional connections. This can help them learn how to practice sharing, self-control, and independence. It also leads to the development of knowledge surrounding acceptable group behavior, which they will bring with them into their adult lives.
Allowing children to explore the great outdoors freely is also an important part of their cognitive development. This unstructured level of play gives children the opportunity to think and create on their own, which helps them build their imagination and be in control of their actions. While children play freely, they are also developing reasoning skills, behavioral control, and independent thinking.
Playing with other children can also help, because they are forced to learn rules and strategies as well as specific goals. All of this helps children develop a better attention span and ability to focus on specific tasks.
What are the impacts of a lack of nature on children’s brain development?
Kids who spend too much time indoors are at risk of suffering from impaired cognitive development. This is because they miss out on important activities that can increase their cognition. Studies have shown that children who do not spend enough time outside are more at risk of developing mental illness, vision problems, and other health problems such as obesity. Kids who spend more time indoors are also at an increased risk of being more easily distracted, having less control over their emotions, and experiencing more difficulty following through on tasks.
Outdoor activities for cognitive development
With the effects of nature on child development being so clear, it's important to know what you can do with your children outside that can help encourage proper cognitive development. Allowing your children to participate in free and unstructured play outdoors is a vital activity for their development and can lead to a range of positive benefits. You can achieve this by taking them to the park and allowing them to find their own activities to do, going on family hikes or walks through forests or other nature areas, and simply making a plan to spend more time in nature as a family.
Featured image by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash