Nature in April. What spring teaches children about growth.

There is a hawthorn tree at the end of my son's school route that has been bare since October. Last week, he mentioned — as a fact, without excitement — that the hawthorn was in leaf. He had been watching it since February. He didn't tell me he was watching it. He just mentioned, when it happened, that it had happened.

I asked when he had first noticed it starting. He said: about three weeks ago the buds appeared. Then last week the leaves came. He had been tracking the hawthorn's spring for three weeks without any instruction to do so. He tracked it because it was there, on his route, happening.

The developmental psychology of nature connection is specific: children who have regular, sustained contact with natural environments develop a different quality of attention than children who don't. The attention that notices the hawthorn is the attention that can be applied to the friend's face, to the text that requires careful reading, to the mathematics that requires sustained focus. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the practice. The practice comes from the decision to try it once, this week, in the ordinary moment that is already available. This is the specific thing