Fwd: Nature and ADHD: What happens when kids go outside
Wendy Nadherny Fachon
From: Kate Howlett from Natural Connection <howlettk+nat...@substack.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 3, 2026 at 5:01 AM
Subject: Nature and ADHD: What happens when kids go outside
To: <storywal...@gmail.com>
Nature and ADHD: What happens when kids go outsideWhy the worst environment for ADHD might be the one we send kids to every day
This is part of my Nature Deep Dive series in which I unpack the science behind nature connection. Research is often inaccessible because of jargon and assumptions of prior knowledge. This shouldn’t be the case. Everyone has the right to know what we know. Knowledge is power, after all. AI can’t interpret and contextualise research for you, but I can. That’s why I read science papers that won’t make it into the media but should, so you don’t have to. Dear friends, This month, I’m looking at a paper on ADHD and nature. I keep being asked questions about this, and with good reason. We know being outside in a green environment calms us down, even when we don’t have ADHD, so can it be beneficial for managing ADHD symptoms? This research came out over 20 years ago in 2004, and it’s the work of Frances E. Kuo and Andrea Faber Taylor. These two have been prolific on the topic of attention, concentration and related behaviours, and how these are affected by natural environments. Today’s paper presents the results of a national survey of parents from across the United States with children who have a professional ADHD diagnosis: ‘A Potential Natural Treatment for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Evidence From a National Study’I really love this study because it places its question squarely in the context of the wider literature around the psychology of being outside. Our current best understanding of why natural spaces calm our minds, making it easier for us to focus and concentrate, is that they allow our attention to replenish. How much attention we can pay to things is a limited resource that we drain when we engage in highly attention-demanding tasks—reading, watching TV, driving. But nature allows this kind of attention to restock, since it is full of things that don’t take effort to pay attention to—birdsong, leaves blowing in the breeze, a flowing stream. This is known as Attention Restoration Theory, and I’ve written about it in more detail here, in the context of why I often go outside to write this newsletter:
Since nature helps us when we are suffering with attention fatigue, Kuo and Taylor ask, can it help those with ADHD, who struggle with even greater attention fatigue than the rest of us? Research can often seem super niche, with scientists asking only marginally different questions from each other. I love this work because it is so clear why we need to figure this out: ADHD is the most common neurobehavioural disorder of childhood, affecting many adults too. How can we better design environments and activities to help manage ADHD, rather than make it harder?
What did the researchers do?Very simply, Kuo and Taylor asked parents from across the US to rate 49 common after-school activities according to the effects they thought they had on their children’s ADHD symptoms. They received 452 usable responses. Parents were asked whether each activity made their child’s symptoms ‘much worse than usual’, ‘worse than usual’, ‘the same as usual’, ‘better than usual’ or ‘much better than usual’ for the hour or so after the activity finished. The instructions asked parents to focus specifically on four symptoms from the official ADHD diagnostic criteria that were thought to be easily observable by parents: ‘difficulty in remaining focused on unappealing tasks’, ‘difficulty in completing tasks’, ‘difficulty in listening and following directions’ and ‘difficulty in resisting distractions’. Crucially, many of these 49 activities were the same, apart from the social and environmental contexts in which they were listed as taking place. Reading, for example, could happen alone, in a pair or in a group, and it might take place in a green outdoor setting, a built outdoor setting or indoors. The researchers could then see whether a child’s ADHD symptoms were exacerbated or reduced after doing the same activity in these different social and environmental settings. In other words, can children’s ADHD symptoms improve when they are in a natural space and is this affected by the size of the group they’re in? What did they find?In short, yes—being outside in a green setting reduced children’s ADHD symptoms regardless of whether they did something alone, in a pair or in a group. In fact, being in a green area was the only environment in which ADHD symptoms improved regardless of social context. When children took part in activities outside but in a built setting, parents judged their symptoms to be reduced only when the activity was done alone or in a pair, but not when in a larger group. When it came to indoor activities, ADHD symptoms actually appeared more severe when in a group. Remarkably, these findings held regardless of children’s gender, age (all in this study were between 5 and 18 years old), household income (ranging from less than $25,000 to $75,000 or more per year), region of the United States and home environment (from rural to large city). The results were also consistent between children with hyperactivity (i.e., those diagnosed with ADHD) and those without (i.e., those diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder), among children with mild, average and severe symptoms, and among children with both ADHD and learning disorders.
There are two key takeaways here then. First, children’s ADHD symptoms are reduced by activities that take place outside in a green environment. Second, symptoms also appear reduced when activities are done alone or in a pair, as opposed to in a larger group. Why do we care?This is very simple, with very clear applications. It is also over 20 years old. The worst setting for children with ADHD, then, is inside in large groups. Where do we send children all day, expecting them to ‘behave’? Into school classrooms—inside spaces with little to no nature, with tens to hundreds to thousands of other children. What’s the second worse setting? Outside in a built environment in large groups—a pretty exact description of most schoolyards and playgrounds. ADHD diagnoses among children have been increasing for the last few decades, just as children’s home and play environments are becoming progressively less green. I know there are complex reasons and debates raging as to why diagnoses are on the rise—I am not for one second suggesting that all of this is down to nature access. I also know correlation doesn’t prove causation. But regardless of the strength of the association between environment and ADHD symptoms or its mechanism, if we know green environments are better, not just for those with ADHD but for all children, then what are we doing? This is why I think placing this study in the context of Attention Restoration Theory is so important, and why I like that the researchers did it. Yes, a study that shows a correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation. But based on what we already know about environmental psychology—about the effects of natural environments on our attention, concentration and behaviour, we should absolutely expect this kind of relationship between the severity of ADHD symptoms and green environments.
20-plus years ago, not as many people were talking about ADHD, but this research was happening. It’s continued in the intervening years, too. I think it’s important that we listen. I worry how many children are being forced into environments that do not work for them, being made to feel as if the problem lies with them and not with what we are expecting of them. I think we have both more liability and power in this than we realise—the environments we design for our children matter. This means, when we realise something isn’t working, even if it is our fault as a society, we can put it right. How much more effort must we expend trying to medicate and discipline children so that they fit the environments we build for them, before we decide to work with children and their environment instead? Nature has given us an environment that helps, for which we have evolved—let’s stop shutting kids out of it. Full credit to the authors of this paper: Frances E. Kuo and Andrea Faber Taylor. If you would like to read the full paper, click here.
I’d like to leave you with a couple of quotes from the paper itself:
If you want to learn more about the science behind why nature is good for us, would you consider upgrading to paid or buying me a coffee? It allows me to keep writing.
© 2026 Kate Howlett
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