We know that as a society we are living an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and children have never moved as little as they do today. And that's why people like Katie Bowman, author of Move Your DNA and now her latest book Grow Wild, who is my guest today, is so important in helping us to recognise why we need to move more. Katie joins us all the way from the US today to chat to us about movement and to give us some simple, actionable changes that aim to combat our super sedentary culture. Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education, and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.
SPEAKER_00Each 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 traveled.
SPEAKER_01We're your hosts Vicki and Nicki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in, and join us on this next adventure. Before we start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kabikabi and the Gubby Gubby people. We honour their song lines and storylines, and I'd like to pay my respects to the elders past, present, and emerging. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which you are listening to this episode. Hello and welcome to the Raising Wildlings Podcast. I'm your host, Vicky Oliver. Now before I start, you may have heard Nikki and I talking a fair bit about your wild business, which is a course that we're hoping to launch to you guys very, very soon. But we're really excited to let you know that we'll be offering a free webinar called Educated to Entrepreneur. And this is where you can steal our step-by-step roadmap for growing your own Nature Play business. Now we're going to be sharing with you our tips to help you take the first steps into the world as a Nature Play entrepreneur. And this is the exact same behind the scenes process that we did when we started Wildlings all those years ago. Now we've never shared this training before, so it's a don't miss event. Now we'll be running this on Thursday, the 25th of November. So that's this coming Thursday at 7.30 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time. And you do need to register for this webinar. So to do that, head to wildlingsforestschool.com forward slash masterclass. I really hope I see you there. Now today on the podcast, I have a best-selling author, speaker, and leader in the movement movement, biomechanist Katie Bowman. She's been changing the way we move and think about our need for movement. Her nine books, including the groundbreaking Move Your DNA, which is on my to read list, and her newest book, Grow Wild, which I have finished and it is amazing, have been translated into a dozen languages worldwide. Katie teaches movement globally and she speaks about movement ecology and about our sedentary lifestyle to academic and scientific audiences and has worked with companies like Patagonia, Nike, and Google, as well as a range of nonprofits and other communities sharing her move more, move more body parts, move more for what you need message. Her movement education company, Nutritious Movement, is based in Washington State, and that's where she is joining me from today. So let's meet Katie. Katie, I was so excited to have you here on the podcast. Welcome. How are you today? I'm fine, thank you for having me. Yeah, that's so you're so welcome. I recently finished your book, Grow Wild. Um, you've written a few books before, but this one's a little bit different. It takes a bit of a different format. It's full of beautiful pictures, and it was actually really, really lovely to read. What was the inspiration for writing this one and focusing on family movement?
SPEAKER_02Well, I I think uh when I started writing books, I had newborn children, and so um I wasn't quite ready to write books about children's movement. Uh and and I also didn't want to write about it when they were three and four, but I learned so many things. They're now a nine and ten, and I learned so many things along the way that I thought that this was a good time. I, you know, I wrote dynamic aging, which was sort of the later years end of the spectrum that I wanted to write the first book. And it was just time. It was just time. Yeah, that's excellent.
SPEAKER_01And that's it, isn't it? When it becomes relevant and when you're ready, these things come out. I love some of the terms that you used in the book. The first one that I really, really loved is stacking. So can you explain what stacking is?
SPEAKER_02Stacking is selecting a task. Uh, you know, we all are selecting tasks to meet our daily needs that we have, like work and uh food and relationships. Um, but we're picking tasks, whether we know it or not, to meet those needs. And oftentimes um we're we're in a habit of picking tasks that meet one need at a time. So stacking is picking tasks that meet multiple needs at a time. So um you're going to uh, you know, like having dinner is a task that meets your needs for feeding yourself and your family. But one of the things that we do is we at least once a week have what's called a soup and sports night. And so that's where we take a big pot of soup down to the park and invite, you know, five or six other families to eat from that same pot of soup. So I make an extra pot of soup, make an extra big pot of soup. And then we bring, you know, a couple like a soccer ball and a and a frisbee, and um, and in that same hour or two hours of time, we not only meet our food need, you know, we not only had dinner, but we also had social time, time with friends, and it was also outside and moving around a lot time. So it meets our movement needs, our our need for food, our need for community and to hang out uh for the grown-ups and to play. Um, so so just a task switch, you know, like I was gonna make dinner anyway. So it's not, it it doesn't require that you do a tremendous amount of work, but you're picking things that actually are much more nourishing on uh many more levels.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's that's such a great idea. I think that when we can when meet all those needs in more than one task is such a brilliant way of, you know, just being with the community as well. I think that that's a really important thing to do. Actually, do you want to talk to us a little bit about uh how you've started out in like why movement's so important and your background a little bit?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm a biomechanist, so I'm someone who studies um the impact of the mechanical environment. So that'd be like the movement environment, the pressures and the frictions and the loads that are placed upon our body. And the bio of biomechanics is our biological system. So I just uh focus on humans and I so a biomechanist will study things like levers and and uh individual muscles and and and how injuries come about, like why uh what why do certain people get certain injuries? Why do certain sports result in the same sets of injuries? Why are those quite common? And then I was I was less interested in sports though going through graduate school and more interested in just uh you know the everyday, everyday life uh injuries that arose for just householders, you know, just everyday people. And and I was really fascinated to like why is this culture? I didn't know that there were different types of injuries and diseases found in different cultures, you know, like it it took me growing up and learning quite a bit to realize that my experience wasn't everyone else's around the globe's experience. And the more I understood that, you know, I grew up with this concept of exercise and sports, and you know, it made a lot of sense, but then you realized like it's I I realized like, oh, it's quite um new. And then I became really interested in like when did we start exercising? Why are we exercising, you know, and and and um became interested in the history of movement. And then of course it doesn't take a broad study to realize that that really it's been a lot of our technological developments that have created such a sedentary culture, and then that sedentary culture in trying to solve a problem is come up with exercise as a concept. It's like, okay, well, you don't move in your regular life anymore, so we're gonna have to now dose with movement. And so that's when I wrote my first book seven or eight years ago, Move your DNA, which is like we're really like what we understand to be human movement is really exercise. And that's more like a vitamin movement. You know, it's like it's it's a small dose where you used to get all your nutrients from food, but we don't really eat a broad or nutritious diet anymore. So we have to eat sort of our not great diet and then take supplements. And so we similarly don't really move anymore, and we have not a really great movement diet diet. We're sort of movement starve, we're missing all these movement nutrients, so we have to take exercise vitamins. So once I realized what that was, I was like, oh, well, it intersected with a lot of other issues that were near and dear to me. And then I was like, oh, we really human bodies need a lot of movement and they need movement throughout the day, and they need a diverse range of movements. And then the next question became like, well, where can we get it since our culture has gotten rid of a lot of it? How can we add it back in? You know, which led me to soup night, you know, and then lots of other things along the way. But it's like, oh, because we used to just eat in community, running around outside. So I can recreate that and it fits in with my culture now just fine.
SPEAKER_01Um, so just restoring a lot of practices, but in a modern context, and making it easy for people because that's sometimes the idea of switching to what we've regularly done and what's easy and convenient, and um making tiny switches, which is what I loved about your book because it was so much practical advice. And throughout the book, you relate to like environments as sort of containers. So, do you want to talk to me about why you thought it was important to sort of write the book in that way and what the containers are?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, so um in Movie or DNA, I started this idea of a cast, you know, or in, you know, I my first books were on shoes and feet. This idea that you could take your foot, so if you look at your hand and you wiggle your hand around, it does all sorts of movements, but our feet really do the same thing. The the potential for them to do the same thing is there. But they've been casted effectively by um the fact that we've worn shoes most of our lives. And we've can we've put our feet into containers that inadvertently, we didn't think about it. We just wanted our feet to feel good walking on spaces or whatever, you know, or someone just gave them to us when we were very little. And then we lost that ability to move our feet. And so chairs are another cast, you know, where you don't really think about it, but you are putting your physician, you're putting your anatomy into one shape again and again and again. And and casts, you know, like that you would get at the doctor's office, they limit motion. And so I wrote Grow Wild, I organize by container, because sometimes casts are clear and small, like a shoe. Sometimes they're not clear at all. So the first container, the broadest container in Grow Wild is culture. So culture is tough because it's not as tangible as a shoe. You're sort of always inside your culture, but you can't always see the walls of your culture. And so there's a lot of movement rules that we have. You might have movement rules in your house. You might tell your kids like stop jumping around, stop, you know, you shouldn't run in this place. And and and maybe that's for safety, and maybe it's just for normalcy, but but whatever the reasons are, each one of the containers that I picked, I picked containers that were in order of time that you spend them in. So you're in your culture, you can't really get out of it. You're in your culture most of the time, but then you are inside, you're also inside your clothing. You know, that's a container. You you literally put your body into something every day. You are in a home, you are in school, you are in activities, you are in um eating or food as a container. So I organize them from biggest to smallest and and tried to show the decisions that we make or the practices that we have in each one of those containers, how many of them are like casts. And then, like you said, it was really important for me to offer a lot of practical advice to say, here's how you remove some of the casts within this container, pretty simply.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I love one of one of the bigger aha moments I had was in the explicit and implicit rules we have for movement in our homes, in our communities, in our schools. And I just it really hit home to me that we do have so many messages going out to our children about where and how they can move. And sometimes they are really explicit, like they're written down. And I often have, I think about it when we're at pools and things like that, where it's like no running, no jumping, no diving, and I think like, are they allowed to move at all? Like there's a very, very small amount of movement that's available or that they're allowed to do. But more importantly, the stuff that we don't say, like it's the unspoken rules as well that just come through and how that sends a message to our children. Do you want to speak to that a little bit?
SPEAKER_02Well, so that's in the often in the culture, which is yeah, there's we I think that children had a lot more uh freedom and encouragement to move, but it's been dwindling over time. Um and what we haven't, I think that the rules are understandable in many cases, but what we're not doing is collectively providing a place to say, here's where you can move. So it's not so much to say that movement rules shouldn't exist. It's to be really mindful when all of the rules are about not moving and none of the rules are about moving. We're not balancing out the, well, you can't move here because it's not practical or safe or whatever, but you can move here and and we will bring you to these spaces or we will create these spaces. We've just gotten into the pruning movement phase. We're not growing any movement on the other side. We're just whittling it down. And so that's that's really the point of that chapter is where can you start making uh pro-movement rules first in your home, really, really for each container. Each container has uh has um pro-movement rules that you can then go on to add.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's that was a really, really important chapter for me. Um, do you want to talk to us a little bit about some tips to in ensuring that our clothing is not a barrier for movement? Because that's a a really important one. And one that we even sometimes struggle with in it in getting people in our programs is making sure that they have the right equipment to enjoy themselves in their environment.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I think the first step is just to realize that clothing is affecting your movement, that clothing is a cast. Um, if you don't know a lot about how each body part moves, then I imagine it would be quite challenging. You know, if you just think my child is either moving or not, you know, and if they're outside in the program, they're moving. And if they're inside, then they're not. But really, if you teach an outdoor program, then you might be familiar with um, you know, a child who's sent with really stiff footwear. That then makes it so um they can't run well or or balance well. Um, and so it was really just to help parents. That section was just about to help parents figure out how to make purchases or to source gear that not only did what we want gear to do, which is you're right, to keep us warm or dry or um covered, you know, whatever the purpose is of a certain type of gear, but but does so hindering movement as little as possible. So the general, the very general, I mean, there's a lot of different situations that the book covers, but like in general, something to practice would be um, or something that we could probably relate to is like a pair of pants that we wear that maybe doesn't allow us to squat down or bend over. You know, if you have something like that in your wardrobe and can relate to to that feeling, that's what you're looking for in your kids' clothing. Do their arms go overhead where they could climb a tree comfortably? Can they squat down or bend down to touch the ground? Are the soles of their shoes have no traction? So slippery surfaces become a liability. Um, or are they not fully connected? Are like they come into school in flip-flops or like a sandal, which which makes them more prone for uh, you know, tripping or slipping if they're running around or you know, trying to do something like play an epic game of tag or something like that. Um, or and and and it's not only tight, it could be you know, skirts sometimes, this idea of something or baggy, baggy clothes aren't always the antidote to very tight clothes because they can get caught up on things. They can, you know, or you know, if you raise your arms and your whole front of your jacket lifts over your face, so you can't see when you're climbing. So it's just to think about clothing as not only in a child that's standing still putting it on, but a child crossing a set of monkey bars, climbing a tree, running around, taking a walk for four miles, you know, like like if a shoe rubs them in a little way, then their ankles aren't gonna feel good and they're not and they're gonna complain when they take a walk. And it might not be because they don't enjoy the bout of walking as much as their gear is making them uncomfortable. And they they don't always have the wherewithal to separate the difference. All they know is this walk is making them miserable. They don't always connect the dots of it's not the walk, it's what you're wearing. Let me change it. And then now you're free to process another part of the walk that's not this, you know, this I have a blister or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can identify with that. I know we've recently had a similar problem with a mask fitting for snorkeling. And now my daughter relates snorkeling to being uncomfortable, she doesn't want to go, and um having to have that conversation about, well, we'll just have to find you a mask that doesn't cause intense pressure on your face. So having that ongoing conversation and having the conversation with children as well as thinking about it in our own heads, I guess, too, and describing to them about certain clothes that they're wearing. Because I know that some children really like to wear certain clothes, like we'll wear thongs or something like that. Describing to them about, you know, we're about to go into the bush and you wanted to climb trees, and maybe having your thongs on isn't the greatest idea, or what do you want to do if you want to climb a tree, and and helping them to have a think about what they need to be wearing as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm definitely a fan of uh involving them in the process because ultimately they'll be making their choices. Yeah. And if you have a thong, you know, that's always negotiation and parenting and working with children, just and like with any adult, it's all a negotiation. So it's like for my kids who had that one thing that they love, I was like, bring it, let's attach it to the backpack so you have options when we're there. Because, you know, if you if you disallow children to make a bad choice, then they never actually really learn. Yeah, they just they just learn that you're the person who will tell them everything, you know. And so, so I'm all for uh, you know, the hike with bad shoes, but also it's nice to have the other shoes on backup, you know, or or sometimes you can, you know, let the like just toggle between the two different things. So yeah, yeah, right there.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, because you don't want to swing the other way where they hate it completely. So you do like want to have that backup there. I also love the comparison you make between wearing mittens to wearing shoes. And I I think that sometimes when you have these really concrete examples, it makes it tangible to understand why shoes make a huge difference with our feet if you think about how much like I know that we don't we're not cold enough in most of Australia to be wearing mittens most of the time. So when I wear them, I feel like really, really clumsy. Yeah, very, very. I just don't know what to do with like I you know sometimes I feel like I you have to go through with this discomfort to get my hands free and be freezing cold so I can actually feel what I need to feel, or do things really clumsily. So I love that anal analogy to shoes with feet because I don't think a lot of people see the similarity between needing to be able to feel your environment with your feet. Do you want to talk about how going barefoot um can really benefit our children and ourselves?
SPEAKER_02I think that the more you understand what the juvenile period is for, and we are all humans are mechanically sensitive, meaning we are perceiving our environment, and we tend to think of like the an order of sense dominance, right? Like, oh, we have to be able to see it and hear it and smell it and taste it and touch it. But it's really, you know, it's how it's moving you is really giving you a lot of information into how you will ultimately be formed physically. So touch just seems to be down, it's like on the like the last level of important senses, but but your physical deformation and and how you are interacting. Physically touching and those touching parts being bent by the environment that it's in is providing a tremendous amount of information that goes on to shape and form your adult body. So you can think about like the it's not like you're not like just passing through your juvenile period so that you can become an adult. The adult that you are becoming depends on your juvenile period. And that's why I started with the line: children are like trees, because the shape that a tree has is informed by the genetics that a tree has. But but not only. So every you can have a bunch of oak trees, but each oak tree will have its own shape based on the loads that it experienced. And those loads that it experiences informs the shape on how to grow, the direction to grow, how robust to be to succeed in that environment. Like our feet are at the bottom of this entire structure. So for us in a modern context, it's hard to think about the feet as anything that, anything besides something that needs to be protected from the modern environment. And while that can be true, at the same time, we still have these millennia-old programs that depend on the sensory input that our feet get about the shape that we will be moving over, you know, that our feet and our ankles and our knees and our hips and our spines are all working together. And so we have to, in a modern context, again, negotiate that one, we don't live on a savannah any longer or in a in a in a context that doesn't require any protection, but simultaneously, we need periods of time where we take off the mittens of our feet that that dampen the input. Like uh, you know, like if you think about the ears as hearing what's on the ground, they've never fully been able to hear. And the rest of our body sort of trying to decipher what's coming in muffled in through the feet. And so, yeah, um, definitely creating barefoot time. I imagine that there's areas of the world where this is easier. You know, if you have a beach environment, you're gonna have kids that are growing up moving around on bare feet. If you, you know, live in a very urban setting without any nature, it's gonna become more difficult. But the fact that you need it remains. And so you're just trying to maximize the amount of time. You know, you can even set up barefoot obstacle courses in your home, you know, if you're that concerned about it, so that a child is able to hear what it takes, you know, hear with their feet what this obstacle requires and can and can connect the foot to the rest of the body to inform, you know, your whole nervous system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's great. Such great advice. And and I think just knowing all of that information really puts that idea to the forefront so that we do prioritize it. And I and I think that that's the that's why it's so important to know this information, is because if you don't, then you're not going to make conscious effort to go out and take the shoes off or move your body in a different way. And one of the other things that you mentioned in the book is that we're with modern-day movement, we're now predominantly containing that to the lower part of our bodies. So why is it that we need to be moving the upper part of our bodies? What are we forgetting?
SPEAKER_02Well, you're forgetting that your shoulders are just like your northern hips, uh, you know, like it's just it's another big section of your body. Um, so it's just that. It's it's we we move our, I mean, we're a very sedentary culture. Like, uh, and I don't mean that like we're not exercising. I mean that relatively speaking, humans in in our culture now move drastically different and less than other cultures that exist on this planet right now. And it's not that they're not doing an hour a day. I just mean that like there's almost like we're not moving multiple hours a day. We're not carrying anything, you know, we're not climbing anything. You know, it's just we're just shooting for steps, you know, at this point, like if I could just get some steps, I'll have made my my, you know, even then, like, so it's like, okay, well, if you're we've reduced the need for movement to like a whole body phenomenon. If I could just step my whole body, you know, 5,000 steps or like two miles, I'll have moved. And you have. It's just that the more nuanced, correct understanding of movement is it's not only your whole person that needs to move, your parts need to move too. And steps are really good at moving your lower half in a um challenging way, but they're not really great at moving your upper body in a challenging way. So if you imagine the pushes and pulls and the grabbings and the carrying that we would have to do in an environment where everything that you wanted was not brought in on wheels right to where you are right now, then you, you know, then you would use your arms. So it's just like as much as you need to move your legs and your hips and your knees and your ankles, you need to move your shoulders and your elbows and your wrists. So modern environments for the movement that has been preserved or promoted, it is mostly you know lower body movement. And so the upper body is like relatively speaking at a more of a at a greater movement deficit than the lower body. So what I mean is supplement your upper body movement somehow. Put up a chin-up bar in your office or in your house and hang from it, you know, multiple times a day. Try to do one or two pull-ups, even if they're part pull-ups, even if it jump up and just lower yourself down, you know, you have to supplement with upper body movement. And it doesn't have to be complex, but it does need to be done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, such important advice. I'm really, really um glad that I read that part of your of the book because that was another one of those moments of like, aha, yes, I do probably move the bottom part of my body more than the rest of my body. And um, I don't want to neglect these things because I don't want to have a harder time when I'm a lot older as well. And not only that, I want to be modeling good practices for my children as well.
SPEAKER_02And setting up a space for them to do it too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know my kids are always climbing, so um, yeah, having having somewhere for them to do that is super important. Um, for children who go to school, one of the main things that they do all day is to be seated. We're seeing that more and more with schools and kindies, but they're now embracing like flexible seating or dynamic seating, which I think started maybe for children with attention difficulties or special or diverse needs. But moving from like static seating arrangements to dynamic seating may not be so successful unless you implement some strategy around it. So, what advice or questions should educators be asking before they implement something like flexible seating?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that's in the education container. But it's this idea that like you should ask yourself how much does the curriculum or the environment that you have set up to teach, how much does it depend on everyone being still in their particular seat? Because I think that when we do generate curricula, we often have an uh an assumption that we don't really even know that we hold, which is, and everyone will be in these particular seats, and this is the flow of my classroom. And so if you go right to a dynamic uh classroom, it can challenge your curricula. It can challenge the the rules, the other rules, or the I should say procedures. It would challenge the procedures that you have of your classroom that maybe you didn't realize depended on everyone being in a particular seat in a particular way at a particular time. So before you uh yeah, develop a widespread flexible seating change to your classroom, really take a good hard look at procedures and curriculum to see how children moving in a different way would affect those so that you make an adjustment to the curricula or procedures beforehand. Or as one teacher I know did, allowed the children to be part, like he actually made changing the classroom from traditional seating to flexible seating. He made that the curriculum at the beginning of the year and allowed the children, because you'd be surprised what kids the that children are often picking up on implicit movement rules more because remember, they're coming with like fresh computers trying to figure out how things are, how things work. They have not, they don't know anything about being polite, you know, all these rules that we just forget that nobody that are cultural and that we've you know been studying for 30 or 40 or 50 years. We forget that these that we've been indoctrinated, sort of, so to speak, of these, of these ways. And so children have much uh much easier access to the forefront of like, oh, well, that's not allowed. The teacher doesn't like it when we do that. They might not have a specific name for it being a procedure, but they understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. So allowing them to participate would be an interesting step to sort of to help to. I mean, you can make the lesson then about moving more in a greater sense, because moving more as a concept is taught in health class. You know, it's like regulated to PE or health outside of everything else that you really need to know, you know, that you're really gonna be tested on, when in fact, movement and your ability to move to your full capacity is just as, if not more important than these other things. So it's a way of bringing them forward in a curriculum without making them seem separate. I mean, one of my big things about movement is we've made it separate from everything else. Uh, you know, in a sedentary culture, movement barely exists, so we're always supplementing it back in. But in its in the original human context, it wasn't a supplement. It was the way. You know, it was how it was the backbone. It was the it was the foundation. It can be interesting to study as a collective, you know, and and make that at least, you know, a small unit. But here's why we're doing flexible seeding, and then have them go home and go, like, what's your seeding like at home? You know, get them involved with tuning into their movement environment.
SPEAKER_01I think that's brilliant. That's a really great, great advice. And I would also advise anyone who has uh children in any sort of setting, but even in your homes, to be reading um Grow Wild that Katie's written because it's just so full of so many practical solutions and uh new ways of thinking as well. I just lastly wanted to touch on something that's so interesting that this came up in your book was the idea of elimination communication, because that's something that I did with my girls, and we haven't really talked about it much on the podcast, but I loved that you brought it up as being part of movement and and with children. Do you want to describe what elimination communication is for our listeners and um and and how how you made it work with your family? Sure. This is the first time anyone's asked me about that.
SPEAKER_02It was sort of it was sort of in there as a low-profile thing because, and I think to give it broader context, it's in a section where I was bringing up diapers because so it's tricky when you're writing a book about containers. So I, you know, I have a home container and then I had a clothing container, but I couldn't figure out if nappies or diapers would go into furniture because you're sort of sitting in them all the time. Because furniture, you know, or would it go into clothing? And so because I because it's much more like furniture, diapers operate much more like furniture on a baby's body than it does clothes, I decided to make a whole section about them. And because I think well, I I I'm trying to even remember, like I don't even know how I came upon the concept of elimination communication. But in short, it's a practice, it's an age-old practice, still in practice in many parts of the world. Because remember, diapers in the way that we know them are relatively new. Again, if it's all you know, then you think it's the whole world, but it's relatively new. So, what did humans do before we had these diapers? And certainly there was like rudimentary traditional things now and then, but not in the way that we use them now. Elimination communication is, I feel it's like a reciprocity, it's a relationship that you're in with your offspring where you are observing your child and recognize the signs that they give when they are going or about to or are going to the bathroom. You it has to start with them going to the bathroom and it has to start with you recognizing with them going to the bathroom. But then you capitalize on you recognizing those signs, and then you program to those signs a sound. We used a sound, and so I'm looking at my child in the eyes as they're going to the bathroom, and I'm making this noise for them, and it takes you know two days before they recognize that that sound means them going to the bathroom. They they those two things are connected in their mind. And so from that point on, it is a again, it's a reciprocity of you tuning in to recognize the signs of when they need to go to the bathroom, but also you being able to just signal the sound and have them go to the bathroom. So it's both of those things are happening, and you're just deepening this uh relationship between the two. But it takes a lot of attention to a lot of things about your baby. And I think that's probably why it's been lost, is because we no longer live in a time where we give our children, we certainly give children a lot of attention, but not necessarily in this way, especially not if everything's covered up and you're not really, you know, we we sort of tune into the signs. You're you're already reading your child, but more for like, oh, they went to the bathroom and they're uncomfortable. And like the the sign, like reading the sign work is still there. It's just like late, too late. The diaper's already been involved in the equation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I guess when um when I was trying it and and I probably only went to the extent where I wasn't probably catching when they were urinating, that got increasingly difficult for me. But I I can count on one hand the amount of solid pooy nappies that I've changed in through both my girls, um, because I was able to get them onto the toilet or over a potty to eliminate in that way. But if you've got your child's like nappy or diaper off, you're probably more tuned into it because you know that if you miss it, then you know you're going to have to clean something up. So you're more tuned in. Whereas if you've got the nappy or the diaper on a lot of the time, there's this allowance for if it, if it, if you miss, miss it, then that's okay because it's been caught already and there's not so much of a cleanup involved. Um, but I just loved it so much because it was this really beautiful way to bond and slow down in time. Like, you know, we I'd sit there for quite some time, especially especially when we're both learning and when I was trying to really hone in on those cues, um, to sit there together, slow down, and um, and once we both sort of got particularly the number twos, then it was just it was so good. And my husband was just like, Oh, I'm so glad, I'm so glad that we did this, and it was one of the best things we'd ever done. But I do also appreciate that there is a lot of things that could come in the way of people learning that. So, you know, if you're having to go back to work or you've got lots of other children and you don't have that time. Um, but if it's something that interests you as a listener, elimination communication, if you've got a baby or a newborn, um, it's definitely something that I would look into because it is a really amazing practice.
SPEAKER_02Well, we did it in part, so same thing. I don't think my main motivation was to save diapers. My main motivation is probably more from a scientific perspective, is to be like, my mind was blown because my the framework for what babies are and what parenting is is so heavily biased towards this sort of rare bird, penguin, modern experience that is not that is not the normal, you know, it's our normal, but like on a human, human-wide scale, it's not normal. And so for me, it was just really appreciating how much communication babies are giving and taking from day one. And and my sister's deaf. And so like I'm fluent in sign language, and so I started baby sign, but not for not for baby sign purposes, just more like just more like I tend to, I often sign when I'm talking just as a reflex without really thinking about it, and could see that that these we babies, these we babies, when they were given, it's it's like it wasn't even about the toileting for me, I guess. It wasn't about the toileting, it was about communication and the fact that by by showing my children early on that I was hearing them in many different ways, and by them being able to show me that they were hearing me in this very specific way, I feel like our mutual relationship started a lot earlier. Like I didn't feel like like there's still the caretaking, but I was like more like, oh, this is a this is like a whole, of course they're a whole sentient being, but I even meant like this is an aware, this is an this is an aware person with preferences and and like I and I and I'm responsible for for informing it or them to some extent, but really it's because the context to them is completely novel, more so than their hardware isn't formed. Like it just it totally reframed my understanding of what this was. And it's been a challenge because you know, my kids really feel like total equals. And and I don't know if that's the norm. And it it poses its own challenges, but but I feel like it was set off by early on, going, oh, I see that you are just here, just like I am here. We're both just here doing this thing. So yeah, all that and elimination communication. But yeah, even if you just did it in like the first, even if you just played around with it a little bit early on. I think it's yeah, I think it's about the communication. It doesn't even have to be about the the diaper thing, because you know, we certainly depended on uh diapers in many a situation, but it just, I don't know, for me, it was about uh here, uh communication. Yeah, just about yeah, I love that bit.
SPEAKER_01So I think that's really valuable as well. Katie, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I just have our last little rapid fire questions for you. Uh so what's your favorite book of all time, or what are you currently reading that would be a recommendation for our readers, listeners, sorry?
SPEAKER_02Oh, my favorite book of all time is The Sparrow.
SPEAKER_01I haven't read that.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. Oh my gosh. It's my it's my I know it's a good one with material. It's like it's so intense. It's um by Mary Doria Russell, if you're looking for it. I don't know if there's another book by that name. She's she's uh she when she wrote that book, like there was some major genius happening. It's about it's science fiction, which I love, and it's about I don't even want to say what it's about. I want everyone to go just look it up and see if it's for you.
SPEAKER_01But it's yeah, it's it's great. Excellent. Um, so where do you go after a really rough day to reset or a rough week? On a long walk. A long walk. Do you have beautiful places around where you are to do that?
SPEAKER_02I do. Um, but I would even drive to one. Um, but yes, I do have some. And yeah, I would try to schedule something somewhere between seven and twenty miles. And by the time I'm done with that walk, whatever week I had was just great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's brilliant. Um, if you had to choose just one thing to change about the education system, what do you think that would be?
SPEAKER_02Well, anyone listening to this who knows me could probably guess, but that that it would um that it would be on uh again a backbone of movement that people could realize quite quickly that whatever they're trying to come across in lesson form can be done almost equally in a dynamic way.
SPEAKER_01So brilliant. I've so enjoyed listening to your perspectives, and I absolutely loved reading your book. And I've got lots of people who are who are lining up to read it, but I would definitely recommend, and I'm really keen to go back and um read Movie DNA because I haven't read that one yet. Where can we find out more about your work?
SPEAKER_02Uh, nutritiousmovement.com is the website. Yeah, and um, there's a blog like 10 years old, more than that, probably, and just Hundreds of articles. And uh if you like video, you could look at YouTube. Um, and then if you like short little bursts, social media, and uh it's nutritious movement for everything.
SPEAKER_01Ah, brilliant. Yes, I think that a lot of people will be coming to find you because it's such an important thing for us to be doing for our children, our families, and for ourselves. So thank you again, Katie.
SPEAKER_02And and uh Grow Wild is on audio. So I know that listeners might be far away for ordering. So um, you know, you can order the paperback closer to you for shipping. But if you want to look at the ebook or the audiobook, you can find that too. Did you um do the audio for that yourself? I always do the audio from all my audiobooks. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Uh it's weird to listen to. It's weird.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think I have a weird voice, but I think it's um nicer when the author reads it because they know what it where the stresses need to be. You know, like they absolutely wrote it, they know how it needs to be read.
SPEAKER_01Ah, so great. Thank you so much, Katie. I hope that um all the storms and everything where you are, calm down. Well, thank you for having me. It was great. You're most welcome. With all the advances of technology and the cotton wooling of our kids, children are spending more and more time inside and contained, as Katie would say, in chairs and lounges and beds, even, or even in their shoes. So now is a great time to invest in more of movement, stacking activities so that you can really achieve more movement and more fun in our lives. Before I go today, I also wanted to leave you a little reminder that we have finally started our own Patreon page. And if you don't know what Patreon is, it's a great way for content creators like ourselves to let our most passionate listeners support our creative work via a monthly membership. We really have had so many people reach out to us and want to support our work, especially if you live far, far away and you can't meet our team or come to one of our programs in person. From the feedback we get, we know this little podcast is making a really big difference in the lives of so many children and your own perhaps, and this is all made possible through our generous patrons. And if you would like to become a Raising Wildlings patron, you can head to www.patreon.com forward slash raisingwildlings. Now, as always, I absolutely love doing this journey with you, so until next time, stay wild.