Go Outside and WONDER: Restoring the Real for Our Children

We live in a world obsessed with efficiency. We track progress, optimize schedules, and measure achievement. But if you look closely at your children, their deepest need isn't for a new app or an earlier start on algebra—it's for wonder. And the soil for that wonder is not found on a screen or a spreadsheet. It is found, as it has always been, in the real, tangible world outside.

John Senior, that great advocate for a richer culture, reminded us that true learning begins with poetic knowledge, with a kind of immersive innocence that precedes dry facts and analysis. It's the imagination, the soul's ability to truly wonder, that prepares the ground for wisdom. And as modern mothers, we have to fight to restore this imaginative ground for our kids.

The Call of the Wild Wood

Think about the classic books we cherish, the books that shape a child's moral imagination: The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden. What is the common thread? It is the transformative, magical power of Nature. In the pages of these books, nature is not a scientific specimen; it is a place—a place of adventure, solace, and revelation.

For instance, when Rat and Mole abandoned their spring cleaning for the riverbank, they embraced a life of "simply messing about in boats," finding joy in the current and the sun. Likewise, when Mary Lennox found the key to the locked garden, she didn't just find plants; she found a sanctuary, a wild, untamed place that healed her heart and taught her how to care for something outside herself. Even Winnie-the-Pooh wanders the Hundred Acre Wood, and in doing so, perfectly embodies that contemplative, slow pace that opens the mind to simple, profound truths. These stories do not give children a lecture on botany; they give them an invitation. They tell our children that the greatest adventures don't happen in a brightly colored theme park—they happen down a muddy path, under an old oak tree, or by a stream that goes "where it will."

Escaping the Mechanized Cage

Senior warned against the mechanization of modern life—the speed and the standardization that strip the world of its shadows and its mystery. Our children are growing up in a cage of artificial light and prescribed activities. They are being taught to look at life rather than to live it.

As mothers, our urgent task is simple: “Smash the Television set” (as John Senior advises) and open the door. Take them out for no other reason than to be. Go on a "pathless" walk, where there is no destination but only discovery. Let them feel the sun on their faces and the chill of the afternoon shadow; let them get dirt on their hands and find the strange, cold, smooth stones in the creek bed; let them watch a cloud until it changes shape and becomes a dragon or a sheep; and let them hear the absolute silence that lies beneath the hum of the city.

In all things of nature, as Aristotle noted, there is "something of the marvelous." This marvelous quality is what teaches the soul to be receptive, to be still, and to be grateful. It is how we cultivate that poetic knowledge, that intuitive grasp of truth, that will make them wise, not just smart. Don't worry about the dirt, the time on the schedule, or the planned educational outcome. Just step outside and let the world reveal itself. Let Nature be their teacher.

Will you be joining me in giving your kids the gift of the real?