A Natural Childhood: happy memories and hopes for the future

'Every child should have the right to connect with nature. To go exploring, sploshing, climbing, and rolling in the outdoors, creating memories that’ll last a lifetime'

(The National Trust, Natural Childhood)

I'm sure when I look back at my childhood my memory is selective and I'm seeing it all through rose-tinted glasses. But I really do remember spending lots and lots of time playing outside with my friends. We made dens out of fallen branches and pretended we were witches, we whizzed past our neighbours' gardens on our bikes gathering handfuls of rose petals to make our own (disgusting) perfume, and we were always a bit muddy or came home with a new scrape requiring first aid from mum. As that lovely quote above says, we created memories that will last a lifetime.

I didn't grow up on a farm or in a village and my surroundings were far from idyllic. I grew up on an average housing estate that backed onto an industrial estate near the main road into town. But we were explorers - me and my brother and the gang of kids from my street. Without realising at the time, I look back now and see that we sought out green and natural spaces in this environment, making them our secret hideout places. I remember a pond surrounded by tall trees hidden in a dip and a small wooded area with a rope swing between two of the factories on the industrial estate. We played in the street and ran from garden to garden chasing each other with water pistols. We'd rush home from school and the first thing we'd do was knock on our friends' front doors, ready to play.

These days I spend a lot of time worrying whether my daughter is spending too much time indoors. We live on a very busy road (the window frames rattle when the bus goes by) and the world is now full of distracting electronic gadgets and games - things we couldn't have even dreamt would exist back in the day! We are lucky to live within striking distance of some beautiful countryside and our ideal holiday is always either under canvas or a week in a cosy cottage in the middle of nowhere. We had a lovely week in the New Forest last month - the wide open spaces sent our little one a bit loopy. She spent a lot of time running round in giant circles as if we kept her in a cage the rest of the time! She was going through a particularly stormy tantrum phase at the time, but as the week went on and we spent more time outside, her mood lifted and she was a lot easier to live with!

I hope as she grows, she decides to seek out her own hideouts in the woods and make mud pies with her friends and create her own memories to last a lifetime.

Read my guest post over at We Are Wildness for ideas on how to help kids connect with nature.