Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention,

on purpose,

in the present moment,

non-judgmentally.

 

—Jon Kabat-Zinn

Claudia L’Amoreaux

Mindful Digital Life

The Children & Nature Network

Nervous system resets and social lifelines in the COVID-19 times

© by Claudia L’Amoreaux

That’s my mother Jeanne in the photo below. Look at that smile. She’s on my mind and in my heart today. She died six years ago today. When I look at this photo, I realize two things: 1. Where I got my fondness for plaid wool shirts, and 2. Where I got my deep love of nature. During this strange time of sheltering in my home, the fragrance from hundreds of freesias in the neighbor’s yard that I pass on my morning dog walk, the unfamiliar birdsong I encounter in my new neighborhood, the little pocket park I stumble upon, reset my nervous system challenged by days of social distancing.

At the same time, Facetime and Zoom are providing me a social lifeline—especially to my daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter who are all celebrating birthdays during this strange time. The big party in the park has been cancelled. On my daughter’s birthday, we gathered in Zoom—her dad and his partner, her brother, and myself, each in our Zoom windows, and Zoe, husband Shane, and daughter Aya in their Zoom window—bridging the physical distance between us. I know we’re not alone in finding new ways to celebrate the important life passages that don’t stop for a pandemic.

Meanwhile, I’ve been sharing resources on a local women’s network to support parents and caregivers. Here are a few:

The Children & Nature Network has launched a new resource: Finding Nature: Staying connected to the natural world during COVID-19. In the introduction to their new project, the hosts write, “We’ll need new and creative strategies for connecting to the natural world — even if some of those ways are indoors.” They’ll be kicking off the Finding Nature network on April 1, 10–11 am Pacific time with a webinar with Children & Nature Network’s founder, Richard Louv. It’s free but you’ll need to register here.

Mark Rober does a wild video science experiment in an elementary classroom with students to help them visualize how a virus can spread.

Tinkering School’s Gever Tulley is doing a daily tinkering hangout at 3 pm Pacific Monday–Thursday in Youtube. And you can watch past events on the Tinkering School Youtube channel.

This mother and her daughter get the Creativity Shout Out for their inspiring Lego Challenge. Maybe something you can adapt…

Make sure to read Grandparents Academy, an opinion piece in the New York Times. An especially striking quote from the post caught my eye: “In truth, we could have done this a long time ago. Grandpa has always ‘known some stuff.’ We just stopped asking him questions. We’d gotten a little too used to asking Siri, or Alexa, or Google.”

How are you supporting your kids, staying sane, and keeping connected with family and friends? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Be well.

Bumblebee—not the movie

© by Claudia L’Amoreaux

Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) Worker. Photo by Alvesgaspar.

“British children are becoming so disconnected from nature that many struggle to identify wildlife and plants.”

That’s the headline of an article I came across this past week. In a recent UK survey of 1,000 adults and 1,000 children between the ages of five and 16, 83% of the children could not identify a bumblebee. 23% could not identify a robin. Four out of ten kids could not recognize a dandelion. And half of the kids didn’t know what a nettle is…if you’ve ever had an encounter in the wild with “stinging” nettle, you know it pays off to be able to identify this plant.

When I was just beginning to create this blog and launch Mindful Digital Life, I gave a lot of thought to my “tag line”—that short phrase that communicates the essence of what I’m aiming for in my practice. I chose Grounded in Nature & Connection because I sincerely believe that nature and connection are foundational in creating a mindful digital life. I believed it when I started Mindful Digital Life, and I believe it even more today. When we ground ourselves and our families in nature and connection, we’re getting our priorities right. And we can a little more easily bring forward a mindful digital life.

If your children are young, make it a practice to explore regularly, close to home. Richard Louv, founder of the Children & Nature Network, talks a lot about beginning with your backyard, or your neighborhood. Wherever you are, you’ll find birds and bugs, trees and the hardy dandelion. I’m pointing you to the archives today for a piece I wrote in February, 2018 titled “Mindful tech hack: Make Nature your default browser.” If you read to the end, you’ll find several suggestions for making nature your default.

If you’re living with tweens and teens, here is a collaborative study that would make a great topic for your weekly family “co-creative conversation.” Researchers from North Carolina State’s Department of Applied Biology and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences surveyed 2,759 children in grades 4 to 8 across North Carolina about animals they liked and animals they feared. The researchers were surprised by the results and I think you and your kids will be too. You can read the overview here, but don’t stop there—it doesn’t give you the key insights. I encourage you to read the whole article, available here. It’s important information and it’s not that long. Reading and discussing this together could help you to clarify your own attitudes and values about local wildlife and consider how you can deepen your connections with your local ecosystem (I give examples of organizations helping connect people to local nature in the Mindful tech hack piece linked above). The Great Backyard Bird Count is coming in February. Get ready to participate this year.

Oh, and I did like the movie Bumblebee.

Urtica dioica from Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885

What I’m reading: An MIT team studied the effects of mindfulness for middle school students. Working with 100 sixth-graders in two charter schools in Boston, they found that “…more mindfulness correlates with better academic performance, fewer suspensions from school, and less stress…[and] showed, for the first time, that mindfulness training can alter brain activity in students. Sixth-graders who received mindfulness training not only reported feeling less stressed, but their brain scans revealed reduced activation of the amygdala, a brain region that processes fear and other emotions…”

What I’m learning: Bugs 101. Remember MOOCs? Massive Open Online Courses if you missed that chapter. They were massively overhyped when they first arrived. And they’re still around. Thanks to the August 23 issue of The Scout Report, I noticed a free MOOC—Bugs 101— offered by The University of Alberta, “an entymological powerhouse” as the Bug 101 lead expert Dr. Maya Evenden calls U of Alberta in the first video lecture. You’ll meet some of the top bug geeks (I mean experts) in the world in this 14-module course.

No wonder my deep reading muscles need a work out…

© by Claudia L’Amoreaux

I read a lot. I use Evernote extensively during the week to track what I’m reading and to record any notes I might have. If I’m reading online, I’ll usually copy and paste the whole article into Evernote. Then when I’m sitting in a waiting room like I was yesterday, or standing in a long line waiting for a single-shot nonfat latte, I can catch up on the longer reads I didn’t have time for in the moment I first encountered them. Midweek I dedicate an hour or two to scroll through my Mindful Digital Life editorial notebook to see what I might want to share in the Friday blog post. 

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you know I also write about reading…in particular, the work of reading. Starting last year, I shared my adventures reading Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. Working my way through Reader, Come Home helped me build my deep reading muscles again. I’d become impatient with books. When I opened a link today from the Christian Science Monitor email digest, I was struck by how the editors organized the article for their readers. Right below the title, “When water demand rises, this Montana town invests in forests,” they have a section WHY WE WROTE THIS with this brief explanation: “Whitefish, Montana employs a counterintuitive yet well-established method for cleaning its water supply: It spends money on forest preservation.” Cool. Then scrolling down page, immediately after a photo of Whitefish and before the text begins, I noticed TWO WAYS TO READ THIS STORY, with two buttons, QUICK READ, and DEEP READ (5 MIN.). I appreciated that it defaulted to the “deep read.” But wow, 5 minutes is a deep read today.

No wonder my deep reading muscles need a work out…which brings me around to the book I am reading, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. Reading this book is not a walk in the park, although the author talks a lot about her own walks in the Rose Garden in the Oakland Hills near where she lives. It’s work. But it’s work worth doing. I had to give her time…I didn’t understand why she seemed to be taking an enormous and extremely detailed detour through territory I thought was way off topic. But after a short break, I persisted. And I was humbled by the journey I found myself on with her. I’m still reading. Unfortunately, there is no 5 min. version. You have to work for the insights. I’ll say it again. It’s work worth doing. It will surprise you and support you in how you consider creating a mindful life with technology. And your deep reading muscles will be grateful for the workout.


Photo by Joshua Coleman

From my Evernotes this week

“Welcome to the Natural Library: The Essential Role of Libraries in Creating Nature-Rich Communities”

I didn’t have to think much about what to share this week because the post by Richard Louv on Natural Libraries really got my attention. (I wrote about Richard Louv’s writing and organization, The Children & Nature Network, a month ago. I hope you have subscribed to the C&NN newsletter.)

What are you reading?

What are your children, tweens, and teens reading? How are you reading? When are you reading? Why are you reading? I’d love to hear from you. Respond here and I’ll set up a Zoom call to talk about reading in our lives.