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Resonant Parenting Project #13
I’ve been on holiday with Matthew and Matilda for the past week, taking advantage of the Easter break to stay with our relatives in Norfolk.
The trip wouldn’t have been complete without a return pilgrimage to ROARR!, the UK’s largest dinosaur theme park — now unrecognisable from my childhood memories of a nature trail with a scruffy fibre-glass T-Rex and a sullen stegosaurus.
Today’s version offers kids a chance to encounter life-size animatronic models straight out of Jurassic Park — along with the Swing-o-Saurus and Raptor Contraptor rides, Dippy the dinosaur shows, and a mini golf course set in the lavascapes of the Upper Cretaceous.
I don’t have a head for heights, but Matilda insisted on braving the “Predator High Ropes” — a terrifying attraction where you strap into a safety harness and navigate death-defying rope bridges and zip wires.
Though I knew she was perfectly safe, the nerves I felt watching her work her way across the windblown obstacles reminded me of an amazing TEDx talk by Angela Hanscom, a paediatric occupational therapist and author in the U.S., that I’d watched back in 2018.
Called “The REAL reason children fidget — and what we can do about it,” Hanscom’s talk made me an even stronger advocate of giving kids every opportunity for movement and outdoor play.
Hanscom argues that the main reason so many children struggle to focus at school these days is that they haven’t spent enough time running around, climbing, and playing outdoors. Spinning, hanging upside down, and rolling on the ground are vital for the development of the tiny hairs in the vestibular system — a mechanism in the inner ear that supports concentration, emotional regulation, and balance.
While it’s become almost a cliché for parents to lament the lack of opportunities “kids these days” have to roam around on bikes, disappear into parks, or climb trees, there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest these deficits are having serious impacts on their neurological development.
Hanscom quotes a study that showed that only one in 12 U.S. elementary school kids had the equivalent strength and agility of their peers from 1984.
Her concerns echoed Richard Louv’s warnings in his 2005 bestseller Last Child in the Woods. Louv argued that too much sedentary, indoor time meant children were suffering from ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ — characterised by difficulties focusing.
I wrote last month about social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s argument that we’ve shifted from a “play-based” to a “phone-based” childhood since the introduction of the iPhone 4 with a forward-facing camera in 2010, with negative impacts on teen mental health, particularly among girls.
And I’ve long been concerned that the emphasis on sedentary learning from an increasingly young age in the UK school system is depriving children of the opportunities for movement, play and exploration they need to absorb the information in the first place.
The parents I work with are doing their best to provide their children with as many opportunities as possible to play outdoors and get out into nature as much as they can — despite the challenges of today’s school routines and tightly controlled leisure hours.
These moments are so precious, that it’s especially important that we notice any impulses we might experience to over-protect our kids.
As Hanscom said in her talk:
“We need to allow children to move in ways that make adults gasp. They need to swing daringly high. They need to go upside down. They need to spin in circles and fall on the ground. They need to jump off things and, yes we do need to let them climb trees to new heights.”
A part of me would have preferred Matilda to have petted rabbits in the Secret Animal Garden at ROARR! instead of testing her mettle on the Predator High Ropes.
But I also saw how much confidence she gained from overcoming her initial nervousness about stepping off the platform onto the rope bridge — even if my heart was in my mouth.
Let’s celebrate our kids’ impulses to push their edges — and remember that we’re doing them a favour each time we allow them to make us gasp.
See you soon,
I write the Resonant Parenting Project in between my work as a conscious parenting coach and looking after my six-year-old daughter Matilda. Any support from readers through liking, sharing, subscribing or buying me a coffee helps make this work sustainable. Thank you!