In this episode, we're chatting to Otoroa's renowned neuroscience educator, Nathan Wallace, all about how to engage the brain, the problem with early literacy and numeracy, the importance of the first thousand years and homeschool versus schooling. Before we start, we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kabi Kabi and Gabi Gabi people.
We honour their songlines and storylines and pay our respects to the elders, past, present and emerging. We'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which you are listening to this episode today.
Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.
Each week we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.
We're your hosts, Vicki and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in and join us on this next adventure.
Hello and welcome to the Raising Wildlings podcast. I'm your host, Nikki Farrell. Today we're chatting to the very lively Nathan Wallace, host of the documentary All in the Mind and co-host of the TV series The Secret Life of Girls. Nathan is Otaroa's renowned neuroscience educator and has been captivating audiences over 250 times per year to sell out events across New Zealand, Australia and China. Now, this episode is fast paced and packed full of information.
And Nathan is a really well balanced wealth of knowledge. So don't forget to pause and screenshot the timestamp of any of your favorite quotes. And then we would love for you to share them with your friends or to tag us in them in our social media. So whether that's on Instagram or Facebook or even a Pinterest quote, it really helps us help parents just like you learn how we can all make parenting easier on ourselves and our own little wildlings. Together we can make change.
So let's all be a part of this ripple effect of change in childhood and education. Good morning, Nathan. How are we going this morning? Good. I'm great. Thanks. How are you? Very, very well. I've just dropped my children off at workshop for a woodwork workshop and my husband's in the other room. I'm actually in the
Yeah, fair enough.
And where are you today?
I'm in a Meritan apartment in Sydney. So I've been doing a conference circuit. I'm off to Brisbane this afternoon for a G8 conference. You're
just down the road, we're up here in the Sunshine Coast, so yeah, fantastic. We're just going to jump straight in because I've only got you for an hour and I just want to pick your brain for five days straight, I think. So tell us a little bit about what you're working on at the moment and what you've got coming up that's exciting.
Okay, well, since you mentioned the television series, that's probably the most exciting thing. I spent so much of the start of my career doing professional development for teachers and psychologists and stuff, mainly teachers. And you saw the big impact that had because, you know, as a teacher, you're influencing those 30 kids or whatever. And then you talk to the teachers and each one of them is influencing those 30 kids. So you know you're reaching much more children.
So a lot of my career was like that, doing professional development. And then I started doing media things and was just blown away by the scope that media has and the reach that it has and the longevity that it has. You know, I mean, that's written articles as well. I lectured at the university for a long time, so you have to publish.
But there's a published article by Miriam and I that we did like 20 years ago that still gets republished and people still read to you know contact me about it I just think wow the power and reach of that so I moved into media stuff more and I made a couple of documentaries with um I moved into parent education which originally it was like no point that teachers are knowing this information and the parents are all you know rowing in the opposite direction so that's why we're here okay Yeah, so
my model then moved to, I'd train the teachers during the day and then I'd do a parent evening session at night. So the parents will get on the same page and get the same information. And then, like I say, I started doing media, did a couple of documentaries, really loved that. And then tried multiple times to get a television series. But don't just give you one when you ask, strangely enough. So that took about four years, I think, or three and a half years to, you know, putting in proposals.
Then we finally got a television series. Well, we got a six series, you know, six episodes. for the first series for Māori television. And that looks at traditional Māori approaches to parenting and child-rearing and how that aligns with modern neuroscience, basically, because they kind of say the same thing.
So it's very validating for Indigenous people in New Zealand because it looks like after, you know, 200 years of scientific study, we've come full circle and gone, oh, no, the way you were doing it. Yeah, yeah, that way. It was right all along. How amazing. We spent 200 years telling and they were doing it wrong and they shouldn't do it that way. Yeah.
Yeah. That's really refreshing, actually. You know, we have the same oppression here in Australia, if not worse, because we don't have a, not worse, but, you know, we don't even have a treaty here in our constitution.
Yeah, you don't have a treaty. That does make a big difference.
It does make a big difference. I don't know if it's only a small piece of the pie, but it's just that acknowledgement. So just to have that on mainstream media saying, you know, you've had this right all along and you know what you're doing and you're doing the best thing for children is just, that's powerful.
Yeah. It's about reigniting that traditional Māori approach because, of course, so many Māori have been affected by colonisation. We made it illegal for them to speak their language. We made them move away from their tribal areas. All the things that people have done to Indigenous people, the same thing happened to American Indians. It's just a way of decimating people, really, is move them off their tribal lands, take away their language and make their culture illegal.
We did all of
that. Should have wiped them out completely, but didn't. They're incredibly resilient, but it just means that
Yeah,
a lot of Māori and a lot of Indigenous people, I suppose, need that help and guidance as to what is the original Indigenous model before we were so heavily affected by colonisation. Can you speak to that? Yeah, well, I mean, colonisation sort of come in, religion come in and told us we're supposed to smack our children. You know, Māori have a huge problem now with child abuse.
And you get a lot of people that have quite a rough idea of about, you know, basically I hear a lot of people say this is a traditional Māori approach and they're coming from the 1950s when it wasn't a traditional Māori approach. It was heavily influenced by religion, spare the rod, spoil the child.
So when the missionaries first come to New Zealand, the only record we've got of Māori parenting that's written is all the missionaries because missionaries were here for about 80 years before the treaty was signed and they have to keep diaries.
And so even though they're writing a lot of it negatively, They're really negative about the fact that Māori men are too soft on their children and they don't issue enough discipline and that when the kid misbehaves, the father's more likely to smile with joy than he is to give him the proper smacking that he should have. But you get this clear picture of... how children were treated as full human beings. You know, the missionaries are saying, oh, they waste their time in their meetings.
If a four-year-old asks a question, they're given the same authority and the same respect as any other adult in the room. You know, what a waste of time that is. So a lot of the things we're saying are incredibly negative. Actually, I would say we've come full circle to go, actually, that's how we should be doing things. You know, we talk about the first thousand days now, and I often say that it's biologically, neurologically impossible to overindulge or spoil a child in the first year of life.
But the ancient, you know, the English people didn't think that. It was all about training. So they come and saw one of them doing this, treating the baby like a god in the first, you know, year of life and said, no, they're not.
wrong you shouldn't be doing that you should be it's going to be such a shock to the baby when the next baby comes and then they're not going to get the same amount of attention so you should deprive them of that attention right from the start so that they're used to it before you have another baby you know that was the it
makes you wonder how you know white europeans came into power when they were messing everything up so badly like everything is so so far off of what we actually need as human beings you know the connection to nature the connection connection to community the connection to you know the diet of a mother
yeah
how are we still here
it's incredible from my perspective you know I'm English as well so they're also my ancestors um and and there's lots of things I'd be proud about about English it's a tiny little island and it managed to dominate the world you know so and you know they started from there so there's plenty of things brilliant about being English but it is interesting from a colonization point of view that like when France comes in and colonizes a country, they say, I'll keep speaking your language, keep your
customs. You just need to do us as well. It's a very much an English, you know, you go to Tahiti and everyone still speaks Tahitian and French. There's just English things. There's no, get rid of your own language. It's interfering with you learning English, you know, stop it altogether. It's just a unique thing about being, I don't want to wipe out a culture.
Ignore the benefits of being bilingual. It's just so many things.
You know, then they would have just thought that English was the top of the pyramid of the superior language. And if you know that, you don't really need to know any of these other, you know, savage languages. I think it was how they more thought at
the time. What could you possibly know that we don't? Oh gosh, it makes you feel nauseous now, doesn't it? I
thought that Māori had already been discovered by somebody else because all of their gardens were in nice, neat rows and organised and they just didn't have a concept that Indigenous people could do things in nice, orderly fashion. But anyway, that's not our main topic.
No, but it's important. It's really important. So thank you. Thank you for indulging me on that because it's something we're still learning a lot about our First Nations history here because a lot of it was hidden or burnt. You know, we find out that our First Nations people and we always knew they were fantastic hunters and gatherers, but we're now learning that they're incredible agriculturalists as well, but it was destroyed and the diaries of the missionaries were destroyed as well.
So I think it's really important for people that don't know because I wasn't taught that in high school and I'm, you know, I'm an 80s baby. So there's a generation of parents that might not know that, that I think is, yeah, we need to definitely get that out there.
Can I, yeah, probably speak to myself that you can't get to be the oldest culture in the world with 50,000 years of history by coincidence. You know, that takes, that takes brilliant No other culture in the world, no other history has ever achieved that. So, you know, that speaks to how great the Aboriginal people are inherently, I think.
Yeah, the totems and the lineage that they were able to keep. It's, yeah, it's incredibly, it's incredibly intricate. And the fact that it was passed down by stories as well is just beautiful. I'm an English teacher by trade years ago. And I just think, you know, the more we can tell these stories and pass them on, the better off we'll be as a society.
Yeah. here fingers crossed for the planet we had good news in our election well good news depending don't get too political but good news for the climate their
election
Yay, climate! Fingers crossed. We'll see how we go, but I'm eternally optimistic, so we'll see how we go. But we're here to talk about brains. So we work with preschoolers and school-aged children. So I thought, because you've got a myriad of, I would love to get your brain about all of the topics that you focus on, but... I'd really love to talk about how we as parents can help engage the brains of our children outside of our school or childcare centres.
So do you want to talk to us a little bit about that?
Yeah, well, I think it's really, when you talk about engaging the brain, the key academic term would be dispositions. So dispositions, academically, they're what we talk about as the, it's like the, well, officially it means the total set of attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that you bring towards a topic. But probably a simpler way of understanding it is how you feel about the topic.
So what I'm driving at is that there's no point in the kid having a really high IQ if he feels dumb and he feels inadequate and he feels like his opinion isn't valued and he feels like he's going to be ridiculed if he gets it wrong. And his feeling is really what's going to contribute more to his intelligence than his IQ. So when I, it might be easier if I explain the structure of the brain because it's like, Basically, you've got four brains inside your head.
Now, brains grow from bottom to top. They've evolved from bottom to top. It's just a universal principle of brains. They work inside out, bottom to top. So it's really the top one, brain number four, I'm calling it, that we get all excited about. It's basically, it's the largest of all our brains. It's like a helmet that goes over top of brains one, two, and three. And it's basically your forehead. Think of the front half of your forehead. that part of your brain is called the frontal cortex.
So that's the home of higher intelligence and empathy and controlling your emotions. The fastest way I get parents to understand what brain number four or frontal cortex does is when I point out, I haven't told your brains one, two, and three yet, but when I do, you'll work out that your dog has brains one, two, and three. So that makes it nice and simple to work out what brain number four does, because it's the brain, the frontal cortex is the brain you've got that the dog hasn't got.
So if you want to know if a function's in brain number four, the only question you have to memorize is can the dog do it? Because if the dog can do it and you can do it, it's got to be brains one, two, and three.
Nice.
Brain number four is just the stuff you can do the dog can't do. So parents tend to think that's where intelligence is. And it is in lots of ways. I mean, that's the home of higher intelligence. That's where your IQ is. But sitting beneath that brain, brain number three is your limbic system, your emotional brain. And that's where your feelings come from. If I go right down to the base, the brain number one at the point of your neck is your survival brain. It's called your brainstem.
It's your heartbeat. Beating, keeps you breathing, does all your basic survival stuff. T-Rex. And the education, yep, yep, yep. And the education model we use, number two, the cerebellum, is your movement brain. Slightly different to the medical model because they put movement and survival together and they use the midbrain, which is the diacephalon, which, you know, regulates things. Let's not make it confusing though. Just think brain number one. Don't worry about the medical model, right?
We'll just sit with the education one. Brain number one, survival. And brain number two, the back of your head is movement. If that's all you've got survival and movement and that's it, then you're a reptile. That's called the reptilian brain. Because to have brain number three, that limbic system where your feelings come from, you have to be a mammal. So it's often just called for that reason, the mammal brain, but it's renamed the limbic system.
So if you like your pet lizard has survival and movement, your dog is a mammal. He's got survival, movement and emotion.
It's
pretty easy to work out just from your own experience. When you get home from work, you can tell the dog's super excited you're home from work. You can't tell if the lizard or the snake is excited that you're home from work because they're never going to be excited that you're home from work because excitement comes from your limbic emotional brain. Essentially, as mammals, we have an emotional brain to nurture our young.
Reptiles
don't, they lay eggs and leave them to it. They're pretty much ready. I would say if you've got two, it sounds like a tempting parenting model. But because they're That's because most of their brains are formed when they're born. They've just got to grow larger. As a human, most of your brain grows outside of the womb. So your parents basically need a limbic emotional system to love and nurture and protect you while your brain grows.
If we didn't have a limbic system, then as soon as our kids got annoying, we would do what reptiles do and eat them.
There's been days.
Because we love them, right? We're besotted with them. It's a limbic system. It's essentially a parenting brain. And then brain number four on top of that is this frontal cortex so it's like survival movement emotion thinking and learning you can see that in the way the children grow Because they have to do their brains, have to come online in that order. You know, brain number two is movement. For no one, no human being is a brain number one.
It doesn't matter if both your parents were gold medal winning gymnasts. You did not walk at a week of age. No baby walked home from the maternity hospital. Human beings, movement is brain number two. In fact, most of your movement brain comes online in a pretty nice, steady, regular period of time for most human beings. The vast majority of motor skills you've ever learned in your whole life come online between in a one-year period between six months and 18 months.
If you think of six months of that, just do a babe in arms, not doing a lot of movement, and then one year later you can walk, crawl, run, climb, use the pincer grasp, you know, all of these fine movements come online in that space of a year.
And
that's because... A horse can get up and walk straight away. So obviously nature can arrange for movement to come online first if it needs to. Really a horse and a human are doing the same thing. We're focused on survival, the prime director. The difference is that the best method a horse has come up with for surviving is running away from his predators. So within an hour or so of being born, his survival method's ready and he can run away from predators.
That means if nature can arrange that for a horse, it can arrange it for us. The reason we put movement off to brain number two is basically because we just have a way better survival method than running away. And we spend the first six months doing that. Our survival method's called attachment. We spend the first six months looking so damn cute and adorable.
We manage, with all that cuteness, to get someone to fall so madly, deeply in love with us that literally most of us, by the time we're six months old, have someone who would sacrifice their life to save us, if need be. I mean, that's a powerful form of... It's wild, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's way more effective than running away. So, yeah. So your baby might not be able to stand up and walk when they're born, but they can do other miracle things like hold their head in one spot.
People don't think that's a miracle. Most babies can do it, but try and get a lizard to do it. Lizard will be like this the whole time because it takes quite a lot just to be able to hold your head in one spot. But that's actually one of the adult functions that a baby is wired up with when they're born. Because it takes quite a lot of to keep your head in one spot, but that's all pre-wired because the baby needs to keep their head in one spot because they need to gaze at you.
As soon as they lock up with you, you start leaking oxytocin. Well, you leak a whole cocktail of hormones, right? Thank you. oxytocin, that attachment one. And when you lick oxytocin, you know, the baby licks it back and that sort of starts that snowball process of their brain development. So it's really important for their survival. Head in one spot to eye gaze so that you release oxytocin so that you fall in love. It's very strongly biologically driven.
If we throw up a picture of a cute baby right now, then everyone's going to see that baby and release oxytocin. It doesn't matter how macho Australian man you're making out you are. Biologically, you know, you've evolved for thousands of years. to recognize that baby and to leak oxytocin. I mean, it's so strong about ugly babies. Stick up a picture of the ugliest baby you can find. Because it's just so important for survival. It's
so true. I went to woodwork last week and dropped the kids off and I was meant to just drop and run and there was a baby and a puppy and I stayed and I left there and my cup was full and my oxytocin cup was just flowing.
Yeah.
I mean, a baby and a puppy. I mean, how can you resist both?
And I can hand them both back and leave.
That's the joy of being a grandparent. Anyway, that's another whole topic, right? Yeah. So yeah, we got this. So you sort of see your baby in the first six months and they do seek attachment. And by the time they're six months old, we can usually see they're attached primarily to one person. And then when they're between six and 18 months, like I say, you see all these motor skills come online and your baby becomes a moving creature.
And then around 18 months of age or around and off to about two, because none of this is exact ages, obviously, we all develop differently. But 18 months to two, we really move into that limbic system, that emotional brain. And that's the part that's really key to learning. That's really key to engaging the brain. This emotional brain kind of say center stage in development. I mean, all four brains are developing at the same time, obviously.
The baby doesn't stay dead still the first six months, but I'm just saying what's center stage. That emotional brain is really center stage from about two to somewhere between seven and eight.
Now,
that's not new, really. Piaget, without brain scans, was looking at kids from the outside and said, oh, you reach the concrete operational stage where they start to focus and do things differently and think more symbolically between that seven and eight. So brain scans are really just coming in and confirming what Piaget could see from observation from the outside. Around about the age of seven to eight, we move into the frontal cortex and that's the brain that recognises patterns.
So it does symbolic thinking. So it's very, very good for literacy and numeracy. That's the brain that does literacy and numeracy. But if we decide to start literacy and numeracy at four rather than like between seven and eight, then essentially you probably failed to meet the needs of brain number three because you've cut them off and gone straight to brain number four.
Now, it's worth noticing that the countries in the world that produce the kids with the best literacy, so we measure the PISA scores internationally, you're probably aware of them, it's in the Western world, but it rates education systems and decides who's the best. And Finland always comes out as the best, as number one. Not that Finland cares, they don't. That's
what I love even more about them.
They don't do any assessment either, which I think, because as soon as you've got an assessment driven curriculum, you've kind of got a low quality curriculum. From an educational point of view, you're either teaching the child for the test or you're teaching the child how to think. You know, it's hard to do.
Yeah. I think that's the quote of the podcast already right there. Thank you. We're only 10 minutes in. Keep going.
Yeah, but the point is they, all top five countries in those PISA scores are Scandinavian countries. So what do all those Scandinavian countries have in common? They don't introduce literacy and numeracy until between the ages of seven and eight, but the brain is naturally matured to be able to do that. I mean, you do get individual variation, right? Research, the big fault with research is we use averages. So we talk about the average person.
We don't take into account any individuality, not even gender. So when I'm saying these stages, we're talking about an average person. But when we say that frontal cortex, we would typically say it reaches full maturity. So it comes into center stage between seven and eight, kind of reaches adulthood around about mid to late 20s. But that's an average in everyone's results together. You know, so say what mid to late 20s is about 27.
But if you isolate just females' results, actually you see that females show an adult brain scan between 18 and 24. So even the females take quite a long time to get to adulthood, are there by 24, well before 27. So obviously something is really dragging that average up if the average is 27. And that can only be the male brain. Because I don't want us to have a lens when we talk about how long it takes to develop. So I want us to think of the male brain as a fine wine. I
love the positive spin on that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the male brain typically shows an adult brain scan between 22 and 32. So men typically show a scan 22 to 32, women 18 to 24. The literature combines them together and comes up with this imaginary average person with no gender who's mid to late 20s. So what I'm saying there is, yep, you're... daughter, combined to that actually firstborn. Firstborn children receive so much more interaction.
We know that you speak on average 20,000 words a day to your first baby in the first year of life. And you're speaking 15,000 words a day in the first year of life to all the other kids. That's not really rocket science. That's the only time you only had one baby. So all of that extra input propels their brain growth. So firstborn children reach the milestones earlier. So if I combine those and get, so if you're a girl
and
you're also the firstborn child, then when I said they're between 13 and 24, if you're a girl, you know, to reach maturity, if you're a girl who's a firstborn, I'd imagine you're closer to the 18 end of the spectrum. You know, if you're a girl who's not the firstborn, you had to share your parent in the first year of life, then you're probably closer to 24. Same for guys. If he's the firstborn child, you have to share his parent. He's probably 22 when he reaches adulthood.
But guys like me who are not the firstborn, we're closer, to 32.
what
that means is that your firstborn daughter could probably start school at five and she can already write her name and she already knows the colors and she already knows the alphabet so it's well ready for literacy and numeracy but your boy who's not the firstborn um you know this is you notice this the most if you had like me and a girl first and then a boy because if you had a boy first girl that averages it out because they got one advantage each he got the firstborn advantage She's got the
girl advantage. But if you're like me and you, the girl got both advantages. If the girl's the firstborn, she got both advantages, he got neither. So you tend to get a firstborn girl with both advantages. She's at the top end of that bell curve. So like I say, she's five and she can write her name and she knows the colours, she can count
to one.
And then the son you had two years later, you start him at school at five and a year and a half later, they put him in reading recovery because he still doesn't give a shit about writing his name. And, you know, he can write the alphabet. But both of those kids are entirely normal.
know people tend to think the firstborn girl is as normal but it's not she's kind of on steroids in a way you know she's got um so what's more normal is the boy well i think we destroy it i'm always learning though because you know i was on a committee for the minister of education here and um in new zealand a few years ago i say here in new zealand but i'm in sydney but yeah in new zealand She wanted to know why are boys' results falling behind girls?
Every year, the gap's getting slightly larger. What's driving that? She said, I know everyone's got an opinion. I want to know what does the evidence base and the research actually say is driving that? So there was eight of us at every month in Wellington, the capital. We had researchers attached. They could run away and find out information to inform us before the next meetings. We were fully informed.
So at the end of the year, we could give the minister a research evidence-based answer as to what's driving that gap between boys, outcomes, and girls. And it's obviously a myriad of things. It's a complex issue, not just driven by one thing. But it's interesting. There was eight people on that committee. Only two of us were early childhood.
But by the end of the year, what we told the minister was the main thing driving boys' failure in their education system in New Zealand is the first two years of primary school. When they're forced to do a cognitive curriculum two years earlier than their brain is really ready for it. So I know, yes, I'm trying to get people to say that your firstborn girl might be ready for it. Doesn't necessarily mean it's good for her though. It just means that she can do it.
But your boy who's not the firstborn, it's very unlikely he's going to be doing that before seven. So if we start putting pressure on at five, that's two years of being asked to do something that you can't do. That's this disposition. your feeling of yourself as a learner. You're going to feel dumb. You're going to feel useless.
I think by the time a lot of boys are like seven and a half and they're actually ready for literacy and we could just introduce it now like they do in Scandinavian countries and the kid would learn it in six weeks. We started two years earlier to make sure it's a long, slow, drawn out, painful process.
and then yeah so by the time they actually are ready at seven and a half they've fully got a disposition that says um i'm lazy i don't try hard enough i lack focus because those are all the things oh yeah i hate reading they're all the things that they're told that they're lazy that they lack focus that they're not trying hard enough for the two years beforehand so in reality we're asking them to do something that's biologically not appropriate
I can see it in my own child. And it's one of the reasons we've chosen to homeschool. We're both ex-teachers that both no longer teach. And it's just to see my youngest, especially to see him in, you know, I've got two boys, but the eldest would have been fine and would have coped fine.
Yeah.
But we held him back for you emotionally with the second one. There is no way. He's nearly eight and he still just, he needs to move. He's still working through his gross motor. He's still finding his fine motor. To sit him in a classroom would have been torturous for him and his teacher and his classmates.
You just don't have a lot of faith in the kid following the kid's own process. There's a school in New Zealand called Unlimited where they very much let the child lead their own learning. And I've got a mate, a teacher, He's a teacher at a mainstream, quite conservative boys' school, right? But he sends his daughter. That's a very alternative thing.
He was saying to me, she's 11 and she doesn't read yet because she has no interest in reading and the school's not going to make her do it until she has an interest in it. He says there's no... no, we're not worried about her being intelligent. She understands politics and world politics way better than we do. And there was a lot about them at the table. She's clearly highly intelligent, but she's got nothing to read. She's got audio books and stuff.
And whenever Dad brings it up, I don't need to do it. So it was really challenging for him as a teacher at a mainstream school. I'm like, oh, she's got to 11 and she still can't read. He said it was when they released the last Twilight book that they said that they – Usually they release the audio version at the same time. But for the last one, they weren't releasing the audio version for another four weeks. So she taught herself to read so she could read the last Twilight book.
And then now she, you know, scours after that week, she goes through like three books a week.
How amazing is that? That intrinsic motivation, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Because there's a period for their kid to get to 11 and not be able to read. But I bet you that girl's far more intelligent than she ever would have been because she's been allowed to do it that way. She'll take charge of her learning. She will have a confidence in her learning. She'll just really drive her through life. She won't have that concept of it being bucketed in by other people. It is really something that's coming from curiosity and exploration. And that's how learning should be.
Yeah, that. How do we get more schools like that? How do we get not just our parents, but our teachers and more to the point, our education ministers trusting children, not data?
I don't think we're going to be realistic. Oh, no. It's not what mainstream schools are about. You know, you can do that. You can do what you've done, take a child out of the education system. You can go to a school like Unlimited. But I think you've got to seek that because the ministry can only move as fast as the mass population. The mass population out there, Not like that. They would think that sounds fringe and alternative. So I think we can only go.
I'm grateful that we have a society where we can select schools like Unlimit. Absolutely. We do have the option.
And we need them. There will always be a populace that needs a safe place to go.
Yeah, that's right. And so I think I'd also like to see the mainstream education system or I've been pushing in New Zealand for us to make sure that we're play-based before the age of seven. Before COVID, we were reviewing curriculum. And of course, the research is all on the side of that. It is.
It's purely cultural that we think that, you know, we've got this idea that, well, if he's going to learn to read at like eight, if we teach him to learn to read at four, he's going to be like four years ahead of everybody else by the time he gets to eight. And of course, that might seem like a common sense approach, but that's not what the research shows.
Over and over again, in all different cultural contexts, you can see that whether the child learns to read at four or whether the child learns to read at seven and a half, nobody can tell for the rest of their life after the age of eight. So the kid didn't learn to read until seven and a half, but eight has caught up with the kid. who started to learn to read at four. And there is no advantage to that kid that learned to read at four.
Actually, that kid that learned to read at four now has statistically more chance of anxiety and depression as a teenager because they've developed probably a very black and white thinking. They didn't, you know, because literacy is very black and white and repetitive. I mean, that's why the frontal cortex likes it. This is a T. It always makes a T sound. You can't be creative and say, let's call that a B today and say it makes a F sound. because that would screw up literacy.
So literacy is a repetitive pattern. Wonderful for the frontal cortex, but when you're supposed to develop in creativity and these dispositions towards learning between two and eight, if you introduce too much of that right-wrong answer of exactly how it has to be, you tend to produce a very black-and-white thinker. You tend to produce a kid that wants to be the first and the best at it straight away or doesn't want to continue. That's a personality problem.
that is prone to anxiety and depression as a teenager. So who is it that has most of the anxiety and depression? I mean, those stats are a bit hard to interpret really, but I mean, there's lots of girls that are developing, you know, lots of girls, I think, have anxiety and depression for exactly that reason. They were reading it for, and everyone told them how great it was, and they didn't get to develop their creativity, their diversity of thinking.
You know, I think it's, I know it's hard, we only got an hour of time, but it's like, If you're in a free play centre when you're four, and so you're doing as you please, right? So you decided to dam a river.
It
is very unlikely as a four-year-old that you were successful at damming the river the very first time. Try and fail, try and fail, adjust it. You'll probably get someone's help. And eventually, on about the 20th time, you managed to successfully dam the river. So what you learned was that if I fail once, just keep going, fail again, keep going, you're persevering through failure. You're focusing your attention for a long period of time.
If you're instead at a mat time at four being asked, what color is this? What number is this? what comes after that that's very right wrong answer stuff so you tend to the kid tends to put up their hand and if they get it wrong once they shut up and don't have another go after that so in that way you're in danger developing a disposition that says either get the right answer or give up.
Whereas the kid who's building the sandcastle or damming the river is like, oh no, just keep going and keep going and eventually you get it. So then that translates to when they're 15, that was in this adult-led early childhood curriculum, thinks it's right, wrong answers, goes, okay, I'm depressed. What's the answer for that? Apparently, jogging. Jogging releases endorphins. So the 15-year-old goes jogging, tries that for a couple of weeks, doesn't help his depression.
So he thinks he got the wrong answer. He gives up, locks himself in his room, gets more depressed, increases his chances of suicide and stuff. The child that is in a free play curriculum at that young age, I mean, it's not 100% about that because there's temperament and lots of other stuff as well, but the kid who was in that free play curriculum failing 19 times, they get depressed at 15, they go, oh, what should I do? Oh, I'll go jogging, that releases endorphins.
When that doesn't work, they generate another solution and go, oh, well, I'll adjust my diet. When that doesn't work, they generate another solution and go, oh, I'll spend more time with my grandparents. It's kind of easy in some ways to see why they've got less chance of anxiety and depression the more free play you had under seven, because that's the correlation. The more free play you have under seven, the less statistical chance there is of anxiety and depression.
I think it's for that very reason I've just explain there, because you have learnt to persevere you have learned to do things creatively and you've been allowed to play
yeah it's exactly what we say is our motto down at forest school is we're just scientists down here we're just experimenting you know scientists don't make mistakes they learn that's all they do it's the only way you learn so it's exactly and that's the reason i left high school
some of the best learning is in the mistakes yeah some of the biggest things in history has been from the mistake
absolutely yeah it's it's one of the reasons i left teaching high school was I could see the mental health crisis and it is an absolute crisis in our high school years and just feeling like our hands as teachers are tied because by the time they get to us as high schoolers, there's not much left we can do.
And then we're just throwing this academic pressure in those senior years just shoving it down their throats, it doesn't really matter what we say as teachers because they're getting it from everywhere.
And, you know, like you said, if they're not able to fail or they're not able to try because they're scared of trying or don't think there's any point trying because they've got that disposition of, I'm dumb, I'm stupid, I can't do English, I can't, you know, then, you know, they're just, they are, they're more susceptible to that anxiety and depression. It's devastating. It's devastating seeing it.
Yeah.
There's so much pressure on school kids, isn't there? I feel sorry for secondary school teachers because, I mean, there are some things you can do. I see secondary schools responding really well in terms of upping their, you know, what do they call it, their personal care of the kids, you know, trying to anchor them in relationships.
A lot of the schools, like secondary schools, are saying, oh, well, you used to be year nine dean every year, deal with the year nines, but next year you're going to be year 10 dean and the year after you're going to be year 11 dean. So now you're going to follow that cohort through So that's a way high school's trying to, because that dyadic one-on-one relationship is one of the central features that we can do to help kids be resilient.
So there are some things high school can do, but I appreciate what you say in terms of so many of their patterns of behaviour and thoughts about themselves and stuff are already well set. I think it is that they're starting to look to for guidance in adolescence, not their adult figures like teachers and stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the other thing too. And then that's, I find that really difficult too, is that we need these youth mentors for our high schoolers, but they're all out in the workforce, you know, so we've got teachers who are probably that generation gap too, too far ahead, unless you've just come out of university and you're that very first, second year teacher.
But there's this gap of where our teams just don't have those youth mentors to help them through that, you know, those rites of passages of these young adults and we need more community participation and we need our youth to be involved heavily in schools too in high schools as well it'd be amazing
because i lived in christchurch after through the earthquakes and i saw that generation of teenagers after the earthquakes where they didn't have any nightclubs to go to and they didn't have the same tools of um that other people and just how badly that impacted that whole generation of kids not having they you know they're kind of in a war just felt like they're in a war-torn zone you know after the earthquake or buildings falling down lots of people in trauma um yeah just really stole their
typical adolescent pathway and you saw the devastating result a lack of ritual and that lack of mentorship
yeah i'm really curious to see how we go post-covid too with all all our young adults in their 20s that you know typically in australia new zealand go and have their gap year and they're traveling and they're going overseas and they're really becoming their adults away from the the central family system and they haven't had that to the extent that they've been able to. So I'm curious what rites of passage they've been able to create for themselves.
I've seen that between my eldest daughter, who went off at 19 and travelled around the world and did her, and then my youngest daughter, you know, so going from the eldest down to the youngest, you know, she was ready to do all of that. And she's in that generation, you know, she's 23 now. So she's been grounded, you know, she hasn't been able to really go anywhere. And it has changed the trajectory of what she does. I see she's quite career focused now.
now in some ways, because I think that generation's been a bit more serious because they, all they can do is buckle down where they are and yeah.
Yeah. And can you, you know, they're just a product of their generation, aren't they? And with all the things that we've seen in the last, you know, three to five years, whether that's climate or, or, you know, pandemic or earthquakes or whatnot, it is for them, it almost feels like this full circle of back, almost depression era of, you know, I need a secure job because I need to get a house and I need, you Whereas prior to that, we were all like, let me out, see your parents.
Let me break all the rules. I feel like these guys have come full circle and they're like, no, I just need a stable. I want something stable in my life.
Yeah. I don't know if it's necessarily a good thing, though. You know, like I think when you grow up so quickly, I would prefer my daughter to be tripping around the world, getting to know different cultures and improving her interpersonal skills and, you know, and being culturally enriched rather than just focusing on a marketing career. But, oh, well.
Well, because you worry then that they're going to find their youth in that midlife crisis, you know, because you've got to hit at some point, you're going to have that rebellion and that exploration, I think.
Yep.
You need
it. Yeah. Mind you, I completely rebelled as a youth. I still had a midlife crisis and bought a sports car. It's not like one or the other. I think the
sports car is a pretty harmless midlife crisis, though. There's other ways
you could have gone. Yeah, yeah. My son tells me I'm too old for
it. No such thing. No such thing.
That's what I said. It's funny when your son's quite conservative. You see his car beside my car. and you assume that my car is the teenager's car, you assume his car's the old dude.
You've got that Kiwi inner boy racer, do you?
I've been
conservative. It's funny, yeah. You've got a little bit of the Kiwi inner boy racer, do you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't pass that gene on to him at all. He's got that little old...
The interesting thing that comes out in his midlife.
He's always been a bit more mature than me. If you read the dialogues and the conversations as a teenager, again, you're probably getting mixed up who was who. Because I'd be going, oh, go on, just get a piercing or something, just to be a little bit different. Maybe, girl, you're here a little bit longer. No. No. Short back and sides. No, I will never pierce anything. I will never tattoo anything.
It's amazing, isn't it? It's really amazing how they do separate themselves from their parents. It's almost like, you know, John Marsden, the author, speaks about killing the parent, and it's almost like I'm not going to become you, so this is how I don't become you, is I do the opposite of what you're telling me to do.
Yeah, yeah. I wonder if that's even stronger when he's got a dad and a public figure and people go, oh, is Nathan Wallace your father?
Yeah.
So there's even more pressure to, well, I'm not like him. Don't put expectations on me about him. I'm my own person.
Wouldn't that be really interesting? I'd love to see research on that. Yeah, that'd be really fascinating. I
always remind myself when I think of a kid's outcomes that, their temperament is already there when they're born. It's not like you are completely responsible for who they are. You don't create that person. A person is born and you've got to have a relationship with who that person is already with all of your ideals and your parenting stuff has to integrate with who they are already when they're born. So yeah, only 50% of it's our fault. 50% of it. That's going
to be my takeaway. Thank you for the Monday morning parenting inspiration. You're right, though. You know, when I was in hospital with both my babies, I knew straight away, I was like, oh, this one's quite placid. And then the next one, I was like, well, this one's not. And just born like that. You know, we've had to completely parent them both completely differently.
And that's been amazing and just fascinating, absolutely fascinating to watch the difference and how well they've benefited from that different parenting for both of them as well.
Yeah, yeah. I think it smacked me between the eyes when I first, when my daughter was first born, she's still attached to the umbilical cord and she's been held up and she looked around the room and she locked her eye gaze on me and looked at me and I could see a whole person there. I could see a blank little baby. And instead I saw someone looking at me. There was already someone there and that just smacked me between the eyes.
It's like, oh my God, I had all these plans of how I was going to parent and who she was going to be based on all my, it's going to be like this, it's going to be like that. And it was like, oh my God, There's already someone there.
Yeah. Yeah, look, if you had told me, you know, five, ten years ago that as a high school teacher I'd be homeschooling, I would have laughed. But, again, when they smack you in the face like that and go, ha-ha, this is me, you go, okay, right. Why don't you tell me what we're doing then?
Yeah, yeah.
So we've got a high homeschool population that listens to this podcast. So I'd love to... hear your thoughts. And look, I'm an open book either way. Outcomes wise, do you know if schooling, not that I never want to verse because, you know, sometimes you just can't homeschool and sometimes you just can't school. But outcomes wise, how does homeschooling compare to schooling?
It's an interesting question because you get a bit skewed in the homeschool research results because to be perfectly frank, I'm known for being a bit blunt, right? How good, I love it. There's a group of parents that homeschool because they're too stoned to get out of bed to take the kids to school, right? Now, I know that it's only a small percentage, but it means that it drags down.
If you take those out of the group and then you just leave it to the parents to do it because they're the same reasons you are because you're consciously deciding to do it, then the outcomes are phenomenal. You sort of kind of remove the hit on how well the child can do, which makes total sense really.
If you're a teacher and you're dealing with 30 kids and managing their learning journey through a day, dealing with two kids, you know, you can usually get the school curriculum done within like an hour and a half. So all that extra from learning is learning. You know, we talk about relationship-based teaching. Who's got a better relationship that knows the kids better than usually their parent? I did a study as part of my master's on the development of creative genius.
And so it was a creative genius meant that you had to actually create the area that you become a genius in.
Oh, wow.
So it was, you know, practice. So I studied 13 creative geniuses from throughout history and tried to look at what are the unifying factors, how much of that was sort of just biological genetic fluke in their genes and what environmental factors correlated. And yes, you come up with a list of things that they had in common. And out of these 13, 12 of them have been homeschooled. So it really sparked,
you know,
homeschool really lifts the ceiling. Because, you know, as a teacher, if I'm dealing with all these 10-year-olds and you've got 13-year-old ability maths, and then I've got these other kids who've got seven-year-old ability maths, then I'm probably going to give my attention to the seven-year-olds because they're behind and not up to the 10-year-old people. You're only doing 13-year-old maths, so I don't really need to focus too much on you.
Whereas if I've only got two kids, it doesn't matter that you're only 10, but you're doing 13-year-old maths, then we move on to the 14-year-old maths. I've got time to do and cater it to you individually. So, yeah, I think that, you know, homeschool can be a huge advantage in that way. The reason people say, oh, the bad thing about homeschooling is you're not going to get socialised because you're not going to get socialised.
And I think clearly some of the homeschool networks I know must have picked up on that because they did more socialising than all the other kids. It's more get-togethers and stuff and more contact, I think, than there isn't. Yeah, so I don't, I think it's a good thing right across the board, you know. My kids asked me to homeschool them. They thought it would be a good idea. I, like you, laughed.
That's not going to happen. It is relational
though too, isn't it? I've definitely got friends where I can 100% understand why they've made that choice not to homeschool because they put their relationship first and they, despite their intelligence and their EQ and their IQ, they're they are better off outsourcing that and 100% understand that.
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, like we said before, it's good that we have the choice, that we can choose, that we've got these different models that we can move from. But basically, the picture is all really positive for homeschooling parents.
You know, can get the whole school curriculum done in like an hour and a half a day and then all of that extra stuff you're doing is all enrichment and um you can follow the kids a whole lot more you can really extend them so yeah that is a positive thing at home schools are already doing making sure you maintain that social contact with your peer group
Yeah. Amazing. Silly, but it's still reassuring to hear. Like I know it intrinsically and I know it just seeing my own children and having come from a school and then coming as a parent, it's really interesting to me to see, to know both sides, but it's still reassuring. Again, this has been a great Monday morning parenting pep talk. Thanks, Nathan. I appreciate it. And on that note, I know I need to let you go soon. I'm wondering, do you have time for three rapid fire questions before you go?
Yep, sure.
Amazing. What are you currently reading or what is your favourite book?
Oh, jeez. You should have secretly snuck me these before hand. What am I currently reading? I've got like three books on the go. Do I remember the names of any of them?
my favorite book has always been bruce perry the boy who was raised as a dog because it speaks so much to what i did work-wise like i was a trauma counselor and i take these kids that have been really you know sexually abused or severely traumatized in some way and they're screwed up the whole wiring of their brain and then having to know how to rewire their brain and a pathway to well-being and bruce perry was the one that really pioneered that and you know and showed that neuro-sequential
model. So my favourite book has always been The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist. I mean, that's pretty severe though, you know, to speak to what my career was in terms of child trauma. But anyone that's got foster kids or, you know, stuff and they've severely traumatised, I think that's a really, really good book to read. Bruce Perry, and I love Bruce Perry. I also love Gabor Mate. If people want to follow him, have you heard of Gabor Mate? Yes,
yes.
He's fabulous too. I like how they take the top academic research but they wrap it up in a way that is meaningful and it's still human-centered and person-centered. And so I think both Bruce Perry and Gabor Mati do that. Bruce Perry has written a book released in April last year with Oprah Winfrey because she was so taken with the boy who was raised as a dog. She brought the rights to that. And basically they called the book What Happened to You?
Because the basic premise of the book is for the last 150 years, we've approached mental illness. We've approached it like, oh, you've got some biological imbalance in your brain or something like that. You had something happen to you and you responded badly. It's basically been what's wrong with you. It's been the base question for the last 150 years. When you have mental health issues, the base question has been what is wrong with you?
And they said the base question should be what happened to you? Because it's a response. Everything, every behaviour is actually an intelligent response to whatever was happening. It's just finding out what that trauma was and why they've responded in that way and how that's, you know, maladaption now, but it would have been the perfect adaption at the time. Yeah. So, yeah, that's another really good book. Also, like Daniel Siegel. Daniel Siegel, he wrote The Whole Brain Child.
Yes. That was a great book. He's written another book, Brainstorm, The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain.
I haven't read that one yet.
Here's another one that is very academically sound and anchored in the research, but also just writes in a very meaningful way and in a very practical way that you can immediately, you know, pick it up and run with it.
Yeah, his work's really accessible. Yeah, I remember reading The Whole Brain Child and being a bit like, oh, my God, I want to get through this, you know, because it's my night time reading this or my day time first thing in the morning. But no, it was really accessible. It's a great book. All right, number two. Where do you go or what do you do when you need a reset if you had a rough day at work or wherever?
If I had a rough day at work, where do I go? I've got a massage chair at home. You know, one of those ones you get at the mall.
Nice.
It's a joy to have a massage chair at home. I live in a place that is really beautiful. It's got a view. I like living in a place with a view because it helps me to you know, chill out and stress out. I don't sort of, I don't go to work and then come home. So to have a bad day at work, I'm sort of still at work because I'll be in another country or something. So I suppose it's a temptation.
it's this meditation and controlled breathing is what I do to chill myself out if I'm getting you know I mean I also will you know sometimes use alcohol
I appreciate
your honesty but really I do I mean it sounds a bit corny but you can't go beyond just the controlled breathing for a couple of minutes if I'm actually stressing up aggressively then I sit and just count my breaths and do that six four six method and it's quite hard to do when you're stressed out you know but I make myself do it and sure enough it only takes It's a minute of controlled breathing, and you do feel a whole lot more
chill. I've done that before prior to a podcast when I've been running late or the tech's not working. I'm just pinging here, and I've just said, I'm going to be five minutes late, sorry, even though I'm ready to get on, and I've just had to just, you know, slow myself down. And so I'm like... Yeah. All right. If you could change one thing, I was going to say about the education system, but maybe because you work a lot with early years, what would you change about the early years?
If I just had one wish, I would say that we had a society that structured it so that every child stayed at home with their most loving parent in the first thousand days of their life.
So
that no one entered until they were after the age of two and a half. And you're at home with your most responsible parent before that. I don't mean to say that to make parents feel guilty. I put my kids in childcare when they were babies and they're fine, doesn't wreck them. But if you ask me, what is my one wish? I know the best thing for humans is to be anchored in that dyadic relationship early on. So ironically, it's what sort of everybody got in the 70s.
So I'm wishing for something that we used to have. But if I could change one thing, that's what it would be. We would just value the role of the at-home parent. It doesn't have to be mum.
No.
If I was a dad and stayed at home in the early years, you can still drive the baby in once a day to get breastfed from mum at work. It's manageable. So it doesn't have to be mum that stays at home. It just has to be the most responsive parent. The parent is going to talk to the baby the most. because that intimate relationship and how the quality of that relationship in the early years really does set the foundation for everything that's gonna happen later.
I think it exponentially increase who the child can be that the more positive that foundation is just can't overemphasize how important the first thousand days are you know i said to my children with my grandchildren i'll help you financially and willing to contribute weekly in order for you to stay at home and not have to go to work in the first thousand days but when they get to high school you're on your own It's not that important. You send them to the local high school.
But it's not, isn't it? Yeah, and
I think people forget that, that, you know, and it is, it's devaluing, you know, women's work, it's devaluing, you know, the early years and underpaying our early years workers, educators. But, you know, come university and high school, they're sweet if they've had that thousand days.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's
a wonderful, wonderful way to support your children. I'm going to bank that as a grandparent. Thank you. In my head as a parent, I was like, I just want a cleaner. Can you pay for a cleaner or a shepherd? No, it was really
just
a
cleaner. Give me a home. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's ironic. I have a cleaner now, but I don't have any kids at home making any mess. Then all those years, all those kids, I just had to build a cleaner myself because I couldn't afford a cleaner. It's weird how life's like that, isn't
it? My husband and I, and I speak about it all the time. We don't work full-time at the moment, so we can be home with the kids. And, you know, we can work five days a week when they're at home, but will we do it? Will we get in cleaners?
Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, it's just a lot more.
Yes, it's so much. And final question for you, Nathan, is where can we find out more about your work and about brains and brain development?
Yeah, there's lots of good sources. You can just follow me on Facebook and I do put a few things on YouTube. I find parents like short answers, you know, so we have seminars and things that are an hour long, but oftentimes they're busy and they want the, why is my kid biting? They want the less than seven minutes. So those 10 things I just put on YouTube. So if you're scroll through YouTube, you can normally find an answer to something.
But if you follow me on Facebook, we tend to post the stuff as I do media things and stuff. When it's appropriate, we post those. So, yeah. It's funny about brain development in general. I mean, the sites that I use that I find are really good. There's the Harvard University. Harvard University has a site specifically around child development.
Oh,
nice. Child development on the Harvard University site because it gives really good updates. And, yeah, there's an organization I used to work for in New Zealand called Brainwave. And they tend to keep updated on their website with good academic articles and stuff. So just www.brainwave.co.nz. Yeah, they're two good sources of information.
Amazing. Thank you so very much for your time. I know your schedule is, I can't imagine what your schedule is like now that the borders are open. I'm so excited. My husband and I are going back to his homeland. We're hoping in winter, which will be a snow trip for us. So, yeah, we're very excited. And we're so thankful that you've given your time to us and helped spread the word and continue that ripple effect of educating parents and for the pep talk.
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. Good on you doing the Forest School stuff. I love Forest Schools.
It's a good find. This is my first scar from Forest School. I had a battle with a five-year-old and a piece of firewood. But positive. We've been working with him. We're a problem. I know. You should see the shine around her. For those that can't see, I've got an incredible black eye at the moment from the tiniest cut from a piece of firewood. But on a positive note, we've learnt a lot about self-regulation on that day and we built a really good relationship. Progress.
Yep.
Amazing. Thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful evening. No, are you here for the weekend? What's today? No, it's Monday. What have
you got on this week? I go back to New Zealand midnight Friday. I get back. So I'm here for the week. I'm off to Brisbane and then Adelaide and then home on Friday.
Nice. Well, I'm sure everyone will appreciate your work and your time. So thank you. And we're so glad you're back and look forward to hearing from you again another time soon, hopefully. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks so much. See you. Ah, what a great chat that was.
I could, I know I say this to so many of my guests, but honest to God, this is the best part of my job that I get to just pick the brains of these experts, these scientists, these researchers, and that it validates not just my own choices, but what I firmly believe children need. You know, at our Essence Wildlings and myself and Vicky and our entire team, we're not just play advocates and we're not just play with risk advocates or play in nature advocates. We are advocates for children.
We are here to try and make change. We are trying to get children change in the education system in the early child care system in parenting education so that children are better off whether that's mentally physically or emotionally the research is there so our job is to try and get it out so please help us spread the word please share any quotes or episodes or research or the books that you hear these experts share because This isn't on mainstream media. People aren't getting this information.
You know, we have antenatal classes. We go... before we have children and we learn about what's going to happen during childbirth. And then we might be lucky if we get access to six classes about parenting a baby, but then there's nothing.
So if you're not reading parenting books or you're not going to parenting seminars or you're not actively engaging in podcasts such as our own or the myriad of other podcasts that are available or chatting with friends that have this knowledge, then our parents are in the dark. And the only things that we are getting are from mainstream media, which is still, you know, Courier Mail still pretty much endorses smacking despite the research.
It still endorses, you know, academic pushdown in the early years despite the bloody research. It drives me batty because I know what the research says and yet that's not what is being portrayed to our parents. And, frankly, our children are suffering and we see them suffering as teachers and we see them suffering as parents but we We might not know why they are suffering, but the research is there. So please, we'd love for you to share them wherever and however you can.
And it doesn't need to be our episodes. Go and share Nathan's website. Go and share Maggie Dent's website. Go and share whoever it is that is advocating for children and advocating for change, because it is not without parent power that we will be able to make change. Sorry, Monday morning rant over. And if you are interested in more free play and what that might look like, we are fast approaching winter holidays here in Queensland.
So if you're looking for something that will engage your child's brain these holidays, but somewhere where they can actually play freely in nature with risk or without risk if they choose, why not just come and send them to one of our holiday programs in Brisbane or on the Sunshine Coast? These holidays we're running things such as fire and bush cooking, so they'll learn to fire strike with a magnesium rod. They'll learn to cook... over the fire and make their own hot chocolates.
We've got our primitive weapon making where we're using our whittling knives and weed species. We've got our adventure club where they're learning. They can do any of those things. So adventure club is actually my favourite because they can do any or all of these things. We've got cubby building and we've even got sessions for our preschool years called Little Wildlings for the younger years.
But remember that while we theme our holiday programs, I'll be honest, we theme them pretty much for parents because they're your child may or may not leave one of our bow and arrow making sessions with a bow and arrow. Because if your child decides that they want to play in the creek or play games with new friends or sessions, then that's what we let them do. We don't force children that come to our programs, say a bow and arrow session.
We don't make them sit down and do that if that's what they don't want to do. They'll only make a bow and arrow or they'll only make damper in a session if that's what they choose to do. Because we believe in free play. We understand the benefits of free play. We know that this is the best thing for children.
So while our marketing and our beautiful pictures and our session titles are really aimed at getting parents to send their children to us secretly, not so secretly because I'm broadcasting it, what we're trying to do is educate parents on the benefits of free play. So there's our Marketing Secret 101. We love free play. We believe in it. We know it is the best thing for children creatively, emotionally, for all of the things. So they're for sale now.
You can head to wildlingsforestschool.com forward slash bookings and testimonial after testimonial we get from the children who really is all who we care about, to be honest. They always say it was the best day ever. And I don't think I could ask for a job better than that because I can tell you that wasn't what I was getting as a high school teacher. Despite my best efforts and despite how much I love my children and how much I love English and reading It's a vastly different environment.
So come and let your children loose. Come and let them have some fun. Come and have more green time, less green time. Come and get them in the sunshine, the vitamin D, the fresh air and get them connecting with a local nature space in their area. And until then, until the holidays, until next week, stay wild.