From left to right, two-year-old Naomi Bergren, four-year-old Samuel Bergren and eight-year-old Charlotte Bergren slide to a stop at the bottom of a snowy hill in Morgan’s Grove Park on Monday. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Two-year-old Naomi Bergren, four-year-old Samuel Bergren and eight-year-old Charlotte Bergren sledded to a stop at the bottom of a snowy hill in Morgan’s Grove Park on Monday afternoon. Their parents, Jim and Molly Bergren, could be found watching them from the top of the hill, with their seven-month-old son, Benjamin.

“It’s a good hill!” Jim said, mentioning they moved to Shepherdstown in 2021. “We live right across the street from Morgan’s Grove Park, so this is the ideal place for us to go sledding. We sledded out here last year, too.”

Jim noted that the recent snowfall was an exciting change for their children, who begged to go sledding that morning.

“Charlotte said this morning, ‘Daddy, you’re going to take me to the park, right?'” he said, chuckling with his wife. “They make sure we get outside!”

This was not always the case for the family.

Shepherdstown resident Molly Bergren, right, smiles at her seven-month-old son, Benjamin, as his older siblings play in the snow at Morgan’s Grove Park on Monday. Tabitha Johnston

But then, two years ago, Molly heard about a movement to get children to spend more time in the outdoors, called 1,000 Hours Outside. The nationwide movement was founded by blogger and homeschool mother of five Ginny Yurich, of Michigan, who began counting the hours her family spent outside throughout a year and realized they amounted to over 1,000 hours. Based on this, she decided that it would be an achievable challenge for her to give other families, to spend 1,000 Hours Outside every year.

“It’s a movement about less screen time and being out and active and enjoying just being a kid!” Molly said. “The challenge was based off of how much screen time kids were spending and thinking about, if you just took a fraction of that time and spent it outside, how much better it would be for them! It really aligned with how we wanted our kids to grow up, with nature in this beautiful area.”

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), the amount of time spent watching or using a screen in 2024 for the average child was four-to-six hours a day and for the average teenager was nine hours a day. That amounted to a minimum of 1,460 hours of screen time for children and 3,285 hours of screen time for teenagers. AACAP found that this huge amount of screen time has led to adolescents developing of a number of health concerns, including: sleep problems, lower grades in school, less time spent with family and friends, not enough outdoor or physical activity for their physical fitness needs, weight problems, mood problems, poor self-image and body image issues.

After first undertaking the challenge in 2023, the Bergrens began noticing how the increased time spent outside led to an improvement in their children’s mental and physical health.

“I made it past 1,000 hours last year, all on my own!” Charlotte said. “It’s made me feel calmer.”

And so, on Jan. 1, the family restarted the challenge for their third-year-in-a-row.

Although meeting the goal every year can be challenging, the Bergrens agreed that it was more than worth the effort.

“We’ve found ways to make it fun,” Molly said. “We do school outside, we eat outside, we hike, we play outside and they bike and go fishing in the summer.”

To learn more about 1,000 Hours Outside, visit https://www.1000hoursoutside.com.