What Children Really NEED!

As a mother with an autistic child, our co-founder Jenny Bailey is delighted to share this.

“This is so wonderful and really it confirms what we already know. Children NEED the outside and the freedom to explore. Thank you Svetlana Robertson for allowing us to share and for writing a thought provoking and fabulous piece. Bring on the mud!!”

NO YOU DON’T NEED A SENSORY BEDROOM for your child. Seriously, you don’t.

Diagnosed or suspected autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions, behaviour issues and so on. What a great business selling all sorts of ‘special’ things to frustrated parents. ‘Special needs toys’, ‘sensory toys’ are advertised almost like a prescription kind of thing.

Guess what – a bedroom is where your child needs to wind down, rest and sleep. It’s not a disco, nor is it a gadget shop. None of those bells and whistles or flashing lights are needed either for sleep or during the day, and will be overstimulating. You might even find that your child’s sleep improves when you got rid of all those.

Well, OK, you can keep one lamp with a red bulb – there’s some evidence that red light might be helpful to wind down at bedtime.

You do want the best for your child. I have seen many mums showing off their latest version of ‘the sensory room’ – and even more mums saying they are jealous that they can’t do this kind of thing due to lack of space or not being able to afford all the shiny stuff.

This shiny stuff is being sold as a substitute for how to feel like a good parent. Making you feel happy for a moment or two, thinking that now you bought the latest shiny object, you have done the best for your child.

And yet, quite the opposite is true. Your child does not need all those latest tech gadgets, shiny and loud bells and whistles. By the way, he or she doesn’t really need Spiderman/Elsa curtains either. You can throw the ready made plastic tent out, too.

How did society ever survive just a few years ago without all those things?

What your child needs is feeling safe, play, interaction, movement and nature. All the real things. Those with additional needs and various struggles, need that even more. Not be kept in the ‘sensory room’ with hundreds of toys, flashlights, sensory lamps and other weird ‘sensory’ gadgets. This stuff does give a boost – to the economy of those countries where it is cheaply produced. Not to your child’s development.

The brain changes and develops in response to the environment it is in – the kind of environment you create, will create a brain and a child matching that environment.

If you really want to boost your child’s brain development – there are better things, and they are free. Long walks in nature whatever the weather, playing in the mud. Yes. Mud. Very sensory enriching and completely free.

Written by Svetlana Robertson, BSc (Hons) Psychology, Child Neurodevelopment Consultant
email: svetlana@svetlanarobertson.com
facebook.com/thesvetlanarobertson

It’s Friday; late frosts nip the buds of emerging shoots and coat the lawns with a carpet of sugar frosting. The sun in April skies, spreads dappled shade under budding trees, with greens and yellows especially bright in the spring sunshine.

I’ve joined Mark Douglas of Bee 1 on his land, just outside Neath in South Wales. Apart from putting names to faces, I’m here to assist him in relocating three colonies of bees to their new home in the valley’s. I don my mask and join him in his car. In the back are three Nucleus boxes (‘Nukes’) containing around 60,000 bees complete with their Queens.

Although we can’t hear them, I’m assured by Mark that they are probably a tad fed up, after being rattled around in the back of the car for over an hour, and now as we complete their journey with a mile and a half of bumpy gravel track to their final destination, I would imagine they’re planning their revenge!

Several cattlegrids later and we climb steeply to a clearing in the gorse bushes. In front of me is our ‘Phoebe the Bee’ hive, busy with workers coming and going. Tales from Mother Earth are currently collaborating with Bee1 in getting the conservation message out to children about Bees and other pollinators and has very kindly donated a home for Phoebe.

Mark initially hopes to get a copy of our book to all primary schools in Wales.

Next to that, there’s a fenced off area containing the main apiary, with an array of different hives and the all-important field HQ of Bee 1. I’m charged with carrying one of the Nukes and placing it on a vacant hive, which will become their new home. I suddenly feel the huge weight of responsibility in their success.

We leave the nukes to settle for half an hour or so to calm the bees down, while Mark shows me around the apiary, describing the different hives, looking inside one of the empty hives and talking about his work and the relationships with his sponsors and supporters. Despite the buzzing all around me and the obvious activity around the entrances to the hives, I felt surprisingly calm in the bee’s presence. With the gorse in full bloom, we could see the bulging pollen sacks on the bee’s legs as they returned to the hive after their mornings foraging. Interesting, I noticed the activity being more prominent around the hives that were currently in the sun.

“Right,” said Mark. “Time to get you suited up.” And so, it was a first for me, at 59 years old and with no hesitation, I found myself looking through the netting of the head covering in my bee cover-all suit, with my host also duly attired.

Photo opportunities taken, I discovered that bees don’t much care to have their pictures taken, so no luck there. I then rotated the disc on the front of the nuke to open the entrance allowing the bees to escape, stepping back briskly in case some of them were still looking for vengeance.

In this situation, Mark tells me that bees will fly straight upwards to get a bearing on the hive’s location, taking note of landmarks and trees to guide them home after foraging. He then tells me that the nuke will be left in place for a while before moving the queen and brooding stock to the new hive directly under the styrene box which has been their temporary home.

Having commissioned the three colonies, Mark and I return to the car smiling.

Bee1 was set up to promote the awareness and importance of bees in our ecosystem, and also to use bee keeping as a way of helping in the treatment and recovery to mental wellbeing in humans. The other biproducts from bee keeping is the wonderful honey they produce. Bee1 is also developing and marketing products, from Hive building kits and instruction courses for bee keeping, to honey and flavoured drinks and alcohol. All these products come with a strong message that bees are the most important species on the planet and to also highlight the dangers of the decline in the global populations of all pollinators.

My thanks to Mark for an enjoyable and educational visit. It was truly wonderful to share this experience and to get close to the bees, and to see Phoebe’s home in the beautiful and idyllic countryside of South Wales.

Thanks to Paul Webb, Energy Expert for his wonderful podcast Energy Speaks Back. It was lovely chatting with Paul and being part of it – No.24! If you missed our discussion on how Tales from Mother Earth is making a difference, our journey and what this means to us, you can catch it here.