Nicki

Did you spend much of your childhood climbing trees? Did you know that one out of four Australian children have never climbed a tree and that this quintessential childhood experience is banned in most of our educational settings? In this episode, we talk about why sharing the view with birds from the branch of a tree is so beneficial for children.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education, and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.

Nicki

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.

SPEAKER_00

We're your hosts Vicki and Nicki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in, and join us on this next adventure. And before we start, we wanted to let you know about two amazing Australian-based nature craft books that have been written by an Adelaide mama, Brooke Davis, who has written her first book, which was Your Wild Imagination, but she's just released the second in this series called Your Wild Child. Now each book includes more than 20 different nature play activities which are aimed at children around two to 12 years. And these books are absolutely stunning. We've been looking for a really long time for a book that has simple nature crafts that are Australian-based. But on top of that, it also ticks some other boxes, such as it's printed in Australia, it's photographed by an Australian photographer, and it's written by Brooke, who lives in Adelaide. And she is an experienced and passionate nature play advocate. And right now you can get 10% off your purchase of your wild imagination and your wild child from either of our online stores. So you can head to yourwildbooks.com or you can head to wildlingsforestschool.com forward slash shop with the discount code of Wildlings all in capital letters. And you that will entitle you to a 10% discount on those books up until the end of October 2020. And we are so excited to be partnering with such a like-minded, woman-owned, child-centered business, and we are really, really proud of what Brooke has accomplished.

Nicki

Hello and welcome to episode 22 of the Raising Wildlings Podcast. We're your hosts, Nikki Farrell and Vicky Oliver.

SPEAKER_00

In a 2011 study by Planet Arc on childhood interaction with nature, a thousand parents were surveyed, and one of the disturbing findings was that 73% of the respondents played outside more than inside when they were children, compared to just 13% of today's children. And then further from that, only 20% of children today are engaged in tree climbing. It appears that kids are just not climbing trees anymore. No, they're not. Look, this is pretty unsurprising as we've seen a dramatic change in the face of our education settings with things like soft fall and height restrictions that severely impact the ability for children to climb really anything, let alone a tree. So in today's episode, we want to talk about why we should be encouraging our children to climb trees.

Nicki

Our kids climb trees all the time and probably to heights that are not commonly seen anymore. No. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about some of your experiences, Vicky.

SPEAKER_00

Oh gosh. So one of the new challenges that my children have set themselves, they love to climb the pine trees that we find along our coastline. My husband tells a story of how we had met him down after he was surfing one day, and he could hear uh my eldest yelling out to him on the sand, and he couldn't see her anywhere. And she he could keep hearing, she was yelling and yelling to try and get his attention. And as he finally got over the dune and back um near the car park, he realized that she was, you know, 30 metres up a pine tree, and um and get a lot of comments and a lot of people alerting us that our children are in all sorts of situations and heights. Yeah, and they can hear people yelling and they just can't see where it's coming from because it's that high up, because they have been climbing since the moment they could pull themselves up onto things.

Nicki

I guess what surprises me is that people assume that we don't know that they're up that high and that we would want to know or that we need to know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. I have to caveat now when we have we do programs and our children come along, particularly when there's parents of younger children there, that they they will be up the trees and that's okay, and I'm okay with them being there because otherwise we do get a lot of like really anxious parents, and they'll often tell them to come down, and it really confuses our children because they don't understand why another adult is telling them to get down from something that we allow them to do. So I try and pre-warn people so that we can avoid that situation for that which disrupts the flow and play that they're engaged in when they are tree climbing.

Nicki

Again, what surprises me is that I've got no doubt that any of these parents that come and alert us climb trees when they were kids. So somewhere along the way, there's become this almost cognitive dissonance between what was okay when I was a kid is no longer okay now. And you had a really specific example of this recently.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so not long ago, Nikki was uh doing a presentation at the local university, and I had the four children to keep entertained while she was doing this session. Thanks, Vic. And um at first we were just playing around the little pond they had there, we're looking for tadpoles, and uh eventually we wandered through the university and there was a tree right in the middle of right in the middle of the quad. And uh the kids straight away were drawn to climbing this tree. Now it wasn't it wasn't a a high tree, it wasn't like a pine tree. So I think where the highest branches they could have got to would have been maybe two metres above the ground, but for the most part, for the most part, if I stood next to the tree, they were actually around my shoulder height, maybe. And the two eldest were in the tree, plus one of the youngest, and a security guard came past and he said to me, you know, quite abruptly and with a little bit of authority, for me to get the children out of the tree. And normally, me being me would have been like, Oh my goodness, we're breaking a rule, we better get the kids out of the tree. And I thought, no, this is an opportunity for me to advocate for something that we believe in and something that we know is beneficial. Plus, my children are so happy there, I wasn't gonna have to find something else for them to do. So I stood up and I said, Look, they're fine in the tree, they're very capable, and I am a hundred percent responsible for their safety here. And he said, Oh okay, well, I can't guarantee that someone else won't come out and say something. And I was like, That's fine. And no sooner had he left, another security guard came up to me and said that the kids had to get out of the tree again. And I said the same sort of thing, and I was starting to get like, you know, really flustered and a little bit hot. And look, I get it, I understand from their point of view, liability-wise, children in a tree, it looks risky. They're doing their job, they're doing their job, however, the thing that made me upset and annoyed was exactly what you said. We've forgotten most of those security guards, most of the management of the university would have climbed trees at some point in their childhood. No one would unsupervised, no one would even have known that they were probably in a tree. And it's just not acceptable for children to do this anymore. It's like we've just we're stripping away these childhood experiences because we're so worried about liability. And think that's what annoyed me the most about the situation. Yeah. Was that my children were just being children and they were being told to get out. And they were and also I'm their parent, I'm their caregiver, I am responsible for their safety.

Nicki

Yeah, I think that it keeps going back to the whole reason we do what we do and advocating for this is that again, how are children supposed to connect with nature and learn to love nature if they don't get the chance to actually bond with it and be much.

SPEAKER_00

And I also want to see, I want it to be visible. Like it was a good opportunity to be visible by a whole heap of adults who probably don't, particularly young adults, a lot of them don't have exposure to children's activities or what children are doing. So it was a good opportunity for adults to be seeing children doing something that naturally they're drawn to do and they can do it safely.

Nicki

So many complaints from the older generation about this generation having their heads stuck in screens. But what other choice do they have when they constantly get told to not be with nature and not be in nature because it's dangerous and risky?

SPEAKER_00

That's right. So let's talk about why tree climbing is really healthy and beneficial for children because I think that when we remember that and we keep that highlighted, then we can further advocate for more of these activities to be seen, understood, and accepted by our society.

Nicki

So one of the first ones is focus and concentration. Climbing requires a great deal of extreme focus and concentration, and these are skills that serve children immensely as they grow, both academically and beyond. When our children are getting really high, you can barely communicate with them because they're so focused.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. It does require a lot of concentration to keep an eye on where your body is, where you're going, where you're going to be able to stay safe, where you want to go, where your challenge is. Managing your fear. Exactly. It also is really good for that hand-eye coordination. So we're using all four of our limbs to maneuver a difficult obstacle, and it's done in such a coordinated fashion. So uh it's great exercise for kids, and especially if they're starting from a young age, and it's really starting to develop both the fine and gross modus skills.

Nicki

I look at our children and the way that they pull themselves up onto things, and I just I couldn't do a chin-up right now if I tried. But these children, honestly, I've seen your youngest, honestly, some kind of Tom Cruise mission impossible maneuver with two fingertips and just pull yourself up somehow, roll a leg over and just just scramble her way up. And again, that shouldn't be surprising to me as an adult. That is how children are meant to move and how strong children are meant to be. And it's sad that that was a surprise to me to see.

SPEAKER_00

Isn't it? I always get shocked at where my mind goes when I see children doing something outside that should just be a normal activity and how we we do get that like shock and that awe and that surprise that they're so capable, even though this is what we do.

Nicki

We should be far more shocked by the amount of children that come down to our programs, particularly on school excursions, that A, never climbed a tree or B, have, but I don't feel comfortable watching them climb a tree because they don't look like they have the physical capability to do it safely. Another one is problem-solving skills. So climbing a wall or climbing a tree is exactly like solving a problem. And solving these particular problems requires your mental and physical skills. And you can hear the children, you know, out loud communicating about this. Oh, this one looks hard. Oh, this one's dead. Oh, that was really hard.

SPEAKER_00

Or when they're working together as a team, they're like explaining how they got where they are to their friends. Yeah, I I got up that you have to put your leg down on that branch before you, and then you use your arm to pull yourself up on that one over on the far side. So they will actually coach each other and explain how they got from A to B to help someone else achieve the same goal, which is really fun to watch.

Nicki

Yeah, and on that, those communication skills really I've just seen so much empathy from that coaching. I was really scared there, you know. So it's none of them are like, ah, don't be scared, you know, just hop down. Every single one of them when they're coaching is like, I was scared there, or that part's really hard. So show compassion and empathy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so that emotional resilience and being able to express and overcoming those fears, like you mentioned before. So it's a really perfect example of allowing kids to explore their abilities in a safe environment. So once they've mastered that challenge, they can learn that it's fun to face your fears and they can be proud of giving it a go, which is uh something that often children don't get a chance to be able to engage in.

Nicki

No, not at all. Which that helps them build their self-esteem. So gaining that skill to to climb requires the kids how to think and make decisions, and they have to rely on their own strength and their own mental and physical capabilities. And when they've mastered that, that is something so intrinsic. No one can make you climb a tree, no one can help you climb a tree. That is pure self-mastery. And that's the kind of thing I think commonly that children are not getting anymore is that mastery of themselves and their physical abilities.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. And then ultimately, tree climbing helps children to really respect and connect with nature. So once children become capable of climbing, they gain even more benefits. So they're spending that time outdoors, which is scientifically proven to reduce stress, they're connecting physically with nature, which then helps them develop a healthy respect for it as well. So they can develop other outdoor interests and learn about the natural environment, to learn the intricacies of the trees that they're climbing. So, you know, they get to learn about the types of bark, the types of branches, the leaves, the birds that are in the trees that are sharing the space with them. That that connection with nature, you cannot replicate by bringing nature inside. It's only something you can do by being one with it.

Nicki

I know as a child that when I needed to retreat from the house or my siblings, or I was just in a mood that I had a peppercorn tree at the back of our backyard, and it it was big to me, but I don't think it was that big and it had beautiful, safe horizontal limbs. I would spend hours just sitting in it. And I think again, that free leisure time to sit and process emotions, yeah, and having those secret places where we can feel safe. The secret places.

SPEAKER_00

And then I know that at my grandparents' house, and they've been there for years now. And in fact, I'm going there on the weekend, they have a mango tree that we built just a cubby platform in, and it I flooded back with memories when the last time I was there and I was explaining to the girls how we used to play there and what sorts of games we did, and um where my sister would sit and where I would sit. And that that connection that I have just because of that tree is something that stands the test of time. And and then when trees get taken down, like it becomes such an emotional experience because you are connected with these beautiful, majestic plans.

Nicki

And this is what we want. We want that connection because that's how we protect. And it's also, you know, we need to belong as human beings. It's one of our needs, and to belong to a place. And you know, traditional custodians, they know about this and they knew about this. It's something that I think the Western world has greatly lost, but that we can really try and encourage within our own families by it doesn't have to be in your space because let's be honest, a lot of suburban backyards don't have good climbing trees, and a lot of parks often don't because councils often cut the lower limbs. But if we can find a climbing tree or a space, a cubby, something that they can to find that sense of place and belonging.

SPEAKER_00

There's so many I can think of for our children. You've got a mango tree at your home where there's you guys have built a tree house. I would cry if that died. Oh my gosh, so would I. Uh, but they've also got that space out the front that off to that bush. So it may not be climbing in a tree, but it's still feeling like they're surrounded and in that big bush. And then also our fig tree at forest school, where our our children have mastered being able to climb because it's a tricky climb, and they've found a possum in the tree that lives there. So they've been up there a few times, and the possum has been in the tree, and that experience like that's a story that our children will tell anyone that will listen.

Nicki

And so special, you know, they've got a connection with the possum and the tree, and there's that's right.

SPEAKER_00

So the difficult thing for us as parents is supporting our children when they're learning to climb. So we have a few tips around this one.

Nicki

And I think it's important to know that yes, while our children are great climbers now, they weren't, and we too felt the feeling when they first started at times, and there's definitely wobbles that we were worried about. And yes, we have definitely rescued our children out of trees multiple times. Still do. Yeah. We'll talk about some tips on what what we have done to encourage them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the first thing that is really important to remember is that they will show some interest in climbing. When they're developmentally ready, you will find places that have low-lying branches that you can allow your children to climb and explore on. I know that at our local, just down here at Karamundi Lake, and same with at Chambers Island, have these amazing cottonwood, almost forests. And the thing about this tree is that it has a level of complexity that is beneficial for beginner climbers all the way to advanced. So their branches are easily accessible because they start almost from the ground and they will plane out horizontally so that there is a surface for them to climb up where the fall would literally be 30 centimeters to the ground. So it's a great platform for them to start or even just on logs.

Nicki

Yeah, logs are great. You know, we all kind of know this, but if if they can't get up, then they're not ready. Yeah. Pretty standard rule. And you can accept that too. Yeah. You can place children up in a tree and hover, but you'll be hovering for a long time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's the perfect. We have said that so many times. If you can't get up there yourself, you're not ready to be there. So one of the rules that we have is that if they want to get onto a high branch and they can't reach it for themselves, is that we don't put them up there. It's a very important rule that has been like my savvy to also because you don't always want to be following your child around, helping them to master something that they're not ready for. You know, our job as parents isn't to enable our children to experience everything they want to experience when they say they want to. Because we actually need to help them learn that developmentally, if you can't reach it, then you will just need to wait a little bit more time and try something that you can do on your own because that's part of risk assessment.

Nicki

Yeah, and there's got to be things to look forward to as well as you grow older. You know, when you're a bit taller and when you're a bit older, you'll be able to do that and you'll really enjoy it. Yeah. Now we can watch from here or we can I can help you climb as high as you can get, but I'm not I'm not going to rescue you.

SPEAKER_00

And also the really important part of this is, and this is a really, really important part of tree climbing, when you go up, you need to have a plan of how you're going to get back down. So do look down regularly. Yeah. So if you you really push yourself to get in a situation and then you can't get down, and and this can be the scary part as a parent, if you can't get up there to reach them to get them back down, that's when the risk starts to increase. They need to have a plan of how they're going to get back down. So if they're trying to reach a spot that is just a little bit too high and they're asking for your assistance, it means it's going to be harder for them to get back down again.

Nicki

So I would say as a parent, is just keeping an eye on them. And if they're getting above your head height when they're learning, is perhaps to ask them before they get above your arm's reach, what's your plan to get down? Have a look down. Do you think you can get down from there already? Yeah. Because once they're above your arm's reach, it's it's hard to help them. It is.

SPEAKER_00

And then we need to be mindful of our language around this as well. So we have to avoid the be careful shtick that we always pull out that rolls off our tongue. Uh, I heard it multiple times in our holiday programs the other day. We all say it. But we need to reframe our language so that we are giving them more specific advice or helping them to make observations for themselves.

Nicki

Some examples of that are do you feel safe right now? Or look, that branch isn't thicker than your arm. Do you think it can support your weight? Or that branch is dead. And telling stories, those anecdotes again. When I pulled on a dead stick when I was climbing as a child, I pulled on it and I fell. Yeah. That's what happened. Obviously, don't just make up stories about children falling, but they do need they they know they're fully aware that a risk when they climb a tree, that the risk is falling. They know that once they've hit that about two-year mark, that they feel that that's a risk.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, and then there are some other tips that we're constantly talking about in terms of coaching them through climbing trees. And one of those is that they need to check the surface of the ground beneath them, should they fall, removing any sticks or rocks that might be in their path, to be mindful that there might be some exposed tree roots that they could fall on, and sometimes even concrete. So a lot of branches will actually extend out over concrete paths, and just to make them aware, will they feel safe? And if you fall, what's beneath you?

Nicki

It's often not to fall, it's what you've landed on that causes a break. Another thing we teach children is to always have three points of contact. We're just like a rock climber, you need to have either two hands and a foot or two feet and a hand holding on at all times. In case one of them slips, then you've still got a hand and a foot or a foot and a hand. There's always two points of contact.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a really important one and something that we reiterate quite a lot. And then also we try not to rescue them. So we and absolutely stand beneath the tree if you're not sure of their abilities. But if they are finding it hard to come down, avoid the temptation to just go up and rescue them. See if you can give them some pointers. Of where to place their feet and hands as they're working backwards. And a lot of the time they'll work it out themselves. It's just they need the encouragement that they are, they are okay to begin with. So you're safe and you can find a way down. You'll just need to make sure that you've got somewhere to put your foot. Or you might be, you might even just coach them to like, you're nearly there, your foot's almost there because they can't see and they're waiting to feel for the branch underneath their their leg to come back down. And it's just giving them that verbal reassurance that they're that they're still safe.

Nicki

Yeah. I think particularly in those early climbs, it's climbing up seems natural. Climbing down feels unnatural to the body. So sometimes just hovering behind them and letting them know if you fall, I'll catch you. You don't even have to support their bottom or or hold them, but I'm right here. If you fall, I've got you. Let's practice this. You know, it's really that emotional support and helping them regulate that fear because it's a fear that's stopping them moving, it's not their physical abilities. Exactly. That's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So it's important, I think, to also touch on the risk that's associated with tree climbing. And it because it does, it feels like a really risky thing for our children to do because when we think about the worst case scenario, it it does feel really horrible.

Nicki

And we don't want to downplay that. There absolutely is a risk of severe injury with tree climbing, as there is risk in everything that our children do. So it statistically, there is more risk of children falling and slipping on the pavement and hurting themselves, or getting in the car to come to one of our programs than there is falling out of a tree in one of our programs.

SPEAKER_00

And like they've done surveys on tree climbing. So a survey of over 1600 parents who let their children climb trees had found that only 2% had fallen from a tree, broken a bone, and even less receiving a concussion, which is one of the more obviously severe repercussions of falling out of a tree. But the greatest injury is generally scrapes, uh, so when they've scraped their body against a tree limb. And always to keep in mind just a bit of perspective. So uh I know that this comes from America, but this the statistics would be equivalent here, is that there are over three and a half million American children who receive medical treatment for injuries from organized sports. So your child would is probably engaging in soccer, netball, football, all of those sports, those injuries happen frequently and often, and we don't second guess it. We don't say, oh gee, we're not gonna let them play those games. We accept that as part of the risk of the activity. But for some reason, when it comes to free play nature risky activities, we see it as so much more dangerous when really it's not.

Nicki

Personally, I'm far more worried about my child receiving concussion at rugby, and statistically I should be than climbing a tree. That's right. Yeah. So whilst there's physical risk of injury climbing a tree, there's physical risk of our children sitting inside playing video games. Yeah. And there's physical risk of letting our children sit all day in our educational facilities.

SPEAKER_00

It's just that it's not so visible, it's not as shocking as a broken arm. Uh that's not to say that the effects, the physical effects of being sedentary, aren't more insidious and long term, and having ramifications far beyond a few weeks of having an arm in a cast. It it just because of the you know, having to go to the hospital and all of that when you break an arm feels really traumatic. The insidious effects of doing nothing, of sitting down, playing video games, not moving our bodies, not climbing. We don't see those because they're not they don't feel traumatic. And we just are accepting those as lifestyle things.

Nicki

It's just like, you know, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, uh, you know, children breaking bones, you know, it was just not that it was common, but it was an accepted part of childhood. It feels less like that now.

SPEAKER_00

Look, there's just a risk of children tripping and falling on the pavement. There's risk everywhere we go. So we have to remember that we are weighing up the benefits of the activity that we're doing with the risks that it might or the hazards that uh may come up in engaging these activities and putting them into perspective and thinking about our own fears around them and challenging those.

Nicki

So to summarize, we believe that climbing trees should absolutely continue to be a quintessential childhood experience. And we can help children to risk assess and to problem solve by actively encouraging this outdoor activity. We've actually got a really great resource for you on our website, which is what to say during risky play, which will help you to transform the language we use around risky activities so that we can encourage problem solving and risk assessment in lieu of saying unhelpful phrases like be careful. So to grab our free printable, head to wildlingsforestschool.com forward slash free-downloadables.

SPEAKER_00

And we might just drop in here that we are in the final stages of completing our introduction to Bush Kindy online course. So we will be giving you more information about our launch date for this. We're really excited to be able to deliver this professional development opportunity for educators or anyone that's interested in programs that involve children outdoors and in nature. So if you're not subscribed to our mailing list, we encourage you to head to the website, pop your name down, that way you'll receive the very first invitations to signing up for this much awaited course.

Nicki

Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast this week. We hope we've inspired you to take yourself and your wildlings out to find a beautiful tree to go and climb somewhere in the wild this week. Until next week, stay wild.