Nature’s Mental Health Benefits for Children

Among the many benefits of time spent outdoors—for children and adults—is its positive impact on mental health. Nature helps to recharge our ability to focus and direct our attention. It builds confidence and inspires responsibility. Nature also provides us with opportunities to rest, reflect, and restore ourselves. From here, everything flows.

Building your child’s connection to nature at a young age helps provide the skills they will need to thrive as an adult. Here are a few mental health benefits of getting kids outside:

Building Confidence
Allowing children to explore different environments and how they engage in them will help build their confidence. Through outdoor activities at home, the beach, a park, or a nature trail, they can begin to think critically and solve problems as they experiment with different scenarios. How can sticks and trees block the wind? How can they adapt to winter weather the ways animals do? These lessons will build their confidence as they explore through nature play.

Improve Focus
Getting children out in nature during school hours can improve students’ focus and ability to concentrate for the remainder of the day. This time outside gives them a chance to clear their heads, recover from mental fatigue, renew their interest, and reflect.

Pro tip: have your child’s teacher reach out to the Group to learn more about our East End field trips!

Encouraging Creative Thinking & Problem Solving
Outdoor education can inspire creativity by stimulating the senses and building a sense of wonder and imagination, whether it be through discussing the details of a spider’s web, the unfurling of a fern frond, or the ability of a bent tree to adapt and grow from the side of the trunk. These skills are essential as children face new challenges in an ever-changing world.

Promoting Persistence
Spending time outdoors in all different types of weather can help promote persistence, an important skill that helps children to continue even when a project gets frustrating or challenging. Children will naturally learn to adapt in a tough moment as they watch creatures of all shapes and sizes making the best of tough situations. In winter, it can be easy to see the challenge of surviving in cold, snowy weather. In the summer, they can observe how different creatures keep cool in the sweltering heat. These same lessons of perseverance can inspire their own everyday lives.

Getting your children outside will establish a lifelong connection to nature, provide the tools they need for success, and establish a commitment to protecting the nature of the place they love.