Parents Pass Nature Connection to Their Children Heart to Heart

How can parents deepen their own intimate connection with nature, and pass this, heart to heart, to their children? In doing research for my book With Stars in Their Eye: Brain Science and Your Child’s Journey Toward the Self, I discovered a mountain of studies that shows the foundation of all childhood brain development is what I call “The Love Connection.” The sacred love between parent and child is crucial in many ways, as we know.

A more subtle, yet profoundly necessary circle of love, is the child’s need for intimate connection to the natural world. Research shows that the child in nature will imitate their adult in nature; the child’s immersion in nature-connection is dependent upon ours. It is through their deep imitation of us, that they “slip inside our skin.” As we engage in this exploration, we care not only for our children, but also for our own well-being through the healing forces of the natural world. In this process our own earth-knowing is bequeathed to them from the inside out. Recognizing this need, how can we deepen our “nature love-connection?” It is this question that I explore through essays, meditations and poetry in my new book A Litany of Wild Graces: Meditations on Sacred Ecology. I hope this book will sit on your bedside table and, one poem at a time, seep into your dreams. I hope it will inspire your days and encourage you to go outside with your children. I hope you will get down on your hands and knees ~ the way they do ~ and make intimate hands-on relationship with our green mother and with all the exquisite beings with whom we share our one home, the Earth.