Angela Hanscom: Hi Rusty.
Rusty Keeler How are you? I’m
Angela Hanscom: doing great.
Rusty Keeler Yeah, great to see you. I’ve been looking forward to our chat here and I am really glad today’s the day. I’ll read your bio here. We’ll start off. I’ll say, Angela Hanscomb is a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of Timber Nook, an award-winning developmental and nature-based program that has gained international popularity.
She’s the author of Balanced and Barefoot, how Unrestricted Outdoor Play makes for strong, confident and [00:02:00] capable children. Hanscomb is also a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, and in 2019 won the Small Business of the Year award for the State of New Hampshire. Yay.
Angela Hanscom: Yay. Yeah.
Rusty Keeler Timbernook
Angela Hanscom: Yes.
Rusty Keeler Okay. I love it. Well, so you know, these states like Vermont, New Hampshire, you know, all these beautiful mountainous places, and I love the idea that they would pick like. Outdoor play in nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Word.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. Well, um, could you start off just, you’re an occupational therapist. Mm-hmm. And could you just explain Yeah.
What that is and so where you’re coming at it.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, of course. Yeah, so my undergrad degree is actually like kinesiology, so the study of movement and then my master’s is in occupational therapy. And you know, I always try to explain it in this way that, you know, the main occupation of a child is play and you know, it’s also school.
And so you’ll hear a [00:03:00] lot occupational therapists working in school settings to get kids as independent as possible and as successful. As possible with the occupation of school and academics. But play is also a really important occupation. And specifically for me, I really started to pay attention to outdoor play.
And this was, you know, TimberNook started to become a thing around 15 years ago, and I was really just paying attention to my surroundings and. This rise of sensory issues in children, we usually work indoors actually as occupational therapists. We’re not often outdoors, so that was very non-traditional for us.
You know, we work in clinics and we’ll bring a little box of sand inside and call that sensory. We bring our swings inside, everything’s indoors, and we’re supposed to be sensory experts, treating issues like not wanting to get dirty, you know, balance issues, kids fall and, you know, starting to become more and more clumsy is an issue that we’re starting to see.
You know, being able to [00:04:00] process auditory processing, you know, like responding to your name. So like, if you’re like Tommy. Tommy and they finally register that you said their name. A doctor might refer to an occupational therapist if a child has trouble paying attention in school. You know that. All those sorts of things.
And so for me. I started seeing kids not even want wind in their face in a clinic setting. And being in that setting, I remember thinking, how do I treat that indoors? Like, do I get a fan and blow the, the wind? You know, the fan on the child. Right, right. You know, like, yeah. And a lot of kids didn’t want glue on their fingers.
They didn’t wanna get messy and, but the number one issue is that kids were, you know, starting to have trouble with knowing where their body wasn’t. Space, like they were falling out of their chairs in school, and so I really started paying attention. That occupation of outdoor play is incredibly meaningful to most of us.
So if, you know, a lot of us talk about some of our most meaningful memories was playing outdoors, but that particular occupation [00:05:00] is at risk and it’s really affecting child development in ways we never expected. And so that’s kind of the mission behind Reck, is to restore authentic occupation of outdoor play and to make it as real as possible.
And to me it’s probably 10 times more therapeutic than what I can do in a clinic setting with a child.
Rusty Keeler I wonder if we back up just a little bit and mon talk just about play itself. Yeah. From, from your point of view and, and outdoor play, but also, you know, I calls the Play Nature podcast because we talk about play and nature, playing in nature and nature, but also the nature of play.
Like what is that in child development? Like what is childhood like, what are, I’m fascinated by like to hear from you, like what is going on in the developmental. Sweep of, of growth and, and becoming, you know, a person I guess, but, and how play, what, where’s play in there?
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. Well play is, [00:06:00] um, it’s actually the way that when we work with a child, we use play as the medium of treatment.
Like, so everything that we do with the children in treatment is all through play. And so if someone sat in on a clinic session, they would be like, what are you doing? You’re just playing with the child. But we use it as a medium, but for me it’s bigger than that. It’s like. What is, what is incredibly meaningful to a child?
So play is where they learn social emotional skills. It learn, it’s where they learn to come up with their own ideas and execute those play schemes. It’s where they learn to be mentally flexible with other children’s ideas out there. It’s pretty complex and beautiful at the same time, and it brings, it brings purpose and joy and meaning.
To children’s lives. So yeah, I think it’s pretty transformative for children when we allow plenty of time for play, not just little snippets.
Rusty Keeler Right, right. For sure. So I’ve heard you talk about like, [00:07:00] I almost think it was like. Different as the child ages, like different things coming online as you know, physically, what’s what’s going on in their body like from eyes to, to bones, to joints, to all the senses.
But what is, what is that like? Like what do children need?
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. So to break it down on a, a deeper level, here’s just one, one thing to think about is, um, when you play, especially outdoors, you know, one of the. The things that children need more than anything is to move in pretty vigorous ways. They need to roll down the hills, they need to climb trees, they need to jump off things.
And the reason why is because inside their inner ear are a little hair cells and there’s fluid in there. And when we move in rapid weight, so like I’m talking spinning in circles, like that kind of rapid movement, that that moves the fluid back and forth and stimulates those hair cells. And what that does is it develops your vestibular [00:08:00] sense.
And that particular sense is key to all the other senses. We call it the unifying sense for sensory integration. So sensory integration is kinda like organization of the brain so they can learn and pay attention in the classroom. And what’s happening is a lot of kids are being overly restricted. So they’re sitting for, um, the most recent research I sat in on is that they’re in a chair for about nine hours a day.
So they’re, you know, a lot of kids in elementary age especially are being driven to school. Being driven home from school, sitting for hours. They might have like little go noodle breaks, you know, like those little movement breaks. They might have a 20 minute recess session, but then even afterwards, a lot of these kids are sitting for homework or they’re overscheduled and they’re in this constantly, this upright position being very much restricted.
And so what we’re seeing is a lot of kids. Are really walking around with this underdeveloped vestibular sense. It’s not quite where it should be, and what it does is [00:09:00] it affects a couple different things. One is that it helps you know where your body is in space. So it helps you get from point A to point B safely, on and off playground equipment effectively, and to be able to stay in your seat without falling out.
So now teachers are reporting, kids are literally falling out of their chairs and onto the ground a couple times a day. So like this is, you know, becoming a real issue. And the way we treat that in a clinic setting is therapists will put children on a swing and spin them in all different ways. Um, and we actually will position ’em on their side, on their back, you know, in different positions and spin them.
Um, an example of this is we have a, a OT that worked very closely with nasa. And because before astronauts go into outer space, they get into a machine that moves them in all different directions. So when they go into an anti-gravity environment, they have a really good sense of body awareness. Um, when navigating.
We do the same. We have the spinning board that we [00:10:00] also use called the astronaut board, and we will spin children on that board so they have good body awareness. Now, sometimes I will see a child that’s spinning in circles to get dizzy, right? We used to just grow up, we would spin and then get like fall and then get back up and spin again.
And I’ll hear an adult say, don’t spin. You’re gonna get dizzy. Or get down from that rock, you’re going to get hurt. But what’s really interesting is that actually helps ’em to become more aware of where their body is in space and become actually safer when navigating their environment. So when we keep them from moving in those different ways, then we become the barrier to that neurological development that naturally happens.
So that’s just one example of, of a system that’s being, um, not developed properly because kids are not moving enough.
Rusty Keeler That is so interesting. Back when children were less sedentary, they’re moving all over the place, right? I mean, that’s how the children naturally moving and jumping and running and, and doing all and spinning [00:11:00] and all that kind of stuff.
So, so it’s like the body gets to know itself because of that. Yeah, in the natural way. Gosh, it’s fascinating that, that you would, with that board, that you’re spinning it and it’s almost like you’re helping the child’s system, but it’s like they don’t have to do it. They’re not doing anything to do that.
Lifting weights or reading things. It’s like you’re just, you’re just doing this system that is built into our, to our bodies.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, and it’s interesting ’cause I, Zoe Maleek is a researcher, um, in, in the, the world of occupational therapy and worked very closely with Gene Airs who was brought the whole, uh, term sensory integration to the forefront.
And, um, I’ve, you know, met with her spoken. She’s come and talked to our group and, um, she said that babies, if they’re full term, that system is fully functioning. So they have looked at, they did testing to see if it’s fully functioning. It’s not like vision when a baby’s first born, they see in black and white, and it takes [00:12:00] time to develop.
That sense is fully there. However, if you take that baby and you keep ’em upright and you’re not letting them move enough oh, and you put ’em in a container and then another container, then right away that fluid in the inner ear can thicken and you can have start to have ear infections at an early age.
They start to not know where their body is and space and you, so you get issues from a very early age when you’re overprotecting kids and not letting them move enough too. ‘
Rusty Keeler cause, ’cause they need. To do that. Yeah. And very ironic that it’s like, oh, people would be protecting and keeping it perfect and or, or worried about necks and Yeah.
But they need to be wobbling and moving.
Angela Hanscom: Right. Absolutely.
Rusty Keeler Bumping around. Gosh, it’s also interesting that it’s, that’s in the wound that it, the moving around. Yeah. And slash right, they’re moving.
Angela Hanscom: Exactly. Yes.
Rusty Keeler Okay, so then more about like the sensory Yeah. Integration. What else is [00:13:00] going on in the system? So
Angela Hanscom: another one that’s really being affected is the proprioceptive sense, and that’s the senses in the joints and muscles.
You’ll hear occupational therapists talk about the importance of heavy work, so push pull resistance movements. And that helps develop, you know, a sense of where their limbs are in relation to each other. So like a different kind of body sense. But it also helps a child to know how much force to use when playing games like tag without hitting too hard or pick up a frog and not squeeze the frog or the frog.
Like sometimes we see that timber duck where they’re like squeezing the the frogs
Speaker 3: and having
Angela Hanscom: to rescue them. So that develops. Through a lot of heavy work. And if you look, you watch outdoor play, especially with loose parts, right? Like where they pick up a big pallet and they’re moving it all the way across the woods, an uneven terrain, it’s heavy work, and they’re building those forts, so that’s giving nice resistance to the joints and muscles.
And again, that helps ’em to know where their [00:14:00] limbs are in relation to each other and how much force to use. When playing games like tag, and now we’re starting to ban tag in schools because kids are getting quote, more aggressive and hitting harder. But instead of banning things, um, we should really understand why is this happening in the first place?
Why are all these kids presenting with these interesting sensory issues? But, you know, through outdoor pay, they’re, they’re getting a lot of heavy work. Naturally without having to carry around weighted vests or just heavy backpacks from getting heavy.
Rusty Keeler Right.
Angela Hanscom: Digging in the dirt. Yeah.
Rusty Keeler Well, that’s interesting, right?
It’s, it’s, it’s just natural, it’s natural through the play. Yeah. As, and it’s therapeutic, like the, the heavy vests are therapeutic, but the, the natural play is the therapeutic or the way that we naturally, yeah. Go online.
Angela Hanscom: If you think about it, if kids are not getting enough of it, so a lot of kids aren’t, they’re just not, you know, playing with loose parts that much.
They, you know, they go [00:15:00] home and they’re, sometimes they’re on electronics and you’re not getting resistance to the joints and muscles with that. So you’re pushing buttons, but you’re not getting that push pull so that, that sense will be affected if they’re not getting enough of that.
Rusty Keeler So then if they don’t have that.
It, it comes out as looking aggressive. ’cause they don’t know their limits. Oh yeah. Or what else? Yeah. What?
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, and they, they might jump on another kid or they might like, want a big hug. They’re just much more like rough and tumble like a bull in a China shop type thing. And you know, that push pull type of experience is also very grounding and helps them to be able to pay attention and calm down as well.
Rusty Keeler Gosh, it’s so interesting that. Okay, so if there’s more, if we see this more aggression and it’s because they didn’t get the opportunity for heavy work and big work and or, or that physicality, that’s actually what they need the most. But, you know, busy adults or administrators or principals or, you know, recess aids [00:16:00] see the behavior and they don’t wanna stop it.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Rusty Keeler But, but it’s actually, that’s what they need to help. The behavior.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. And it’s what we do in therapy. Like, we’re literally like watching, watching kids play at TimberNook. What I learned is like, this is tenfold. That what they’re doing out here I could not replicate in a clinic setting. You know, it’s just a very small piece of it.
So Yeah. And it’s self-directed play. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s meaningful to them and that’s, yeah. Even more important.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. Let’s see. So many different things. I wanna, I wanna ask you, I guess, you know, it’s like, so you used to see occupational therapists, physical therapists, see, see children that need some help and as you know, assistance and for their lives.
Uh, and that’s always been, you know, that’s always been the, you know, the, that great profession and supporting children and families that way. And there’ll always be, you know, there were children that maybe didn’t have that kind of integration, but you’re seeing it more [00:17:00] on a mass scale. Yeah. Now. Yeah. That childhood is different.
How would you describe that or what, yeah, what, what’s the difference between like 20 years ago with occupational therapy, would you say and then and now, or?
Angela Hanscom: Actually, that’s a really great question. So when I was growing up in the early eighties, it was pretty rare for a child to need occupational therapy.
It was more reserved for children with more severe disabilities like cerebral palsy, that sort of thing. And then the last, I would say 15, 20 years, there’s been a significant rise in the need for occupational therapy. Like, so I remember working at a clinic setting where we had a wait list that went out at least a year, we couldn’t even get to the children.
So if you talk to occupational therapists. They’re overworked and we’re very limited with the amount of time we can see a child. It might be half an hour and what are you gonna do in half an hour with a child? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Angela Hanscom: But the big, I see, one of the biggest issues is the environment. Like what we have expected of children is really inappropriate.
You know, you just [00:18:00] talked with Peter Gray. Um, I spent three days with him. We were doing a talk together, but we spent, we. Ended up taking a plane there and back together.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. But
Angela Hanscom: he even calls it like child abuse, like a lot of times, like in the school, like what we’re expecting of children is incredibly restrictive and so the environment is really making things worse.
And like one just small example of that, from my perspective. Is the amount of transitions that we expect a child to go through in a school day. So a lot of times children with sensory issues have a really hard time with transitioning, and so you’ll start to see a lot of behaviors and they’ll act up when it’s time to switch gears.
And if you think about school, it’s like every 45 minutes to an hour, it’s like switch, switch, switch. And so it’s very disregulating and disorganizing to their neurological systems to do that. And so for at Timber Bruk, like what we do is we allow for lots of time, like the, the [00:19:00] shortest program we have is two hours.
You know, so when Timber Bruk goes into school, it’s at least two hours because it takes time, first of all to figure out who am I gonna play with? What am I gonna play and then dive deep into that play scheme. And then, you know, it takes a lot of time for them to just like come down from their arousal level.
Like kids are always off the wall type thing, but to naturally bring that back down, it takes a good 45 minutes to an hour for that. Just for them just to be regulated so they can pay attention. And the complex play schemes is where all the, the life skills come from, right? Like, you know, solving their own problems, conflict resolution, like all that stuff.
It just takes a lot more time than we expect. And so in school. They’re not getting that. And here we are doing like social skill groups, like, so speech therapists will do these and sometimes occupational therapists will do social skill groups where we, where they role play, how, how to [00:20:00] socially interact with other people.
And like for me, I’m like just get them playing in a real environment where they’re learning it. Real. It’s, it’s a real world situation. And so those skills will generalize over it into other real world situations better as well.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. So living it.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, exactly.
Rusty Keeler So you, so in your past, you started noticing this in, in the clinical.
Setting and then thinking about, you know, it sounds like you were like, okay, how do I bring in some outdoor things into this, into the inside? But then where did the light bulb go off? How did you, how did you start, I guess, the timber nook story? What is timber nook? How did you get the, the initial idea and then, I mean, it’s really taken off and
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, so I.
Just paying attention, like I said. And then I actually, so my, I have two older daughters, and then a son that’s nine. Um, my oldest is 20 and my, my, um, other daughter’s 17. And so [00:21:00] when my 17-year-old was a baby, I actually decided to stay home and I was like, I’m not working anymore. Yeah. I never wanted to be a manager of anything, by the way.
Like, I don’t like to be in the limelight. So I just, my dream was to be an occupational therapist, stay home with my children as long as possible, and then maybe I’d go back to work. But what happened was I was starting to notice all these sensory issues and then I stayed home with my children and I joined a mom’s group.
’cause that was kind of the thing to do at the time. And I had people asking me questions. Why is my child spinning in circles all the time? Or why is my child having trouble paying attention in preschool? You’re an occupational therapist, like you should have answers for this. And so like, it just thought they were interesting questions.
And then, um, my daughter went to kindergarten. I remember the teacher meeting with us at a time and she said, this is not kindergarten. Like you remember growing up? She’s like, it’s gonna be more like first grade.
Speaker 3: Right? Right. And
Angela Hanscom: she said, we don’t have time to cut with scissors. She says, you know, we don’t have [00:22:00] time to teach your children how to tie their shoes.
Re recess will be 15 minutes, and if it snows, it’ll be indoors. This whole theme of no time for developmental skills kept popping up. Long story short, I thought I was gonna run nature classes ’cause I, I, around that time noticed there was not a lot of kids playing outside. I just remember thinking, where are they?
Why are they not playing outside?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Angela Hanscom: And so I ran a nature class and until basically a parent come up to me and said, can you tell my son why the leaves change color? You know? And I was like, I don’t know. Like I was trying to remember from my, my science classes, ’cause I’m not, you know, I’m not an environmentalist or a naturalist.
And I was like, I, I honestly don’t. I think it has something to do with a pigment and the leave like, and um, but it just really helped me reflect on what is my background, you know, what am I doing here? And that’s when I really started to think, you know, what does an occupational therapist have anything to do with nature programming?
And that’s when I really started to realize that, you know, the main occupation of a child. Play [00:23:00] and, and then basically I had a friend in marketing and said, she, she said, I think you should run summer camps because I think you’re more likely to get kids to sign up and parents to drop off. And I was like, oh, I, I’m not trained to do that.
Like usually we work one-on-one with a child or small groups of kids. Occupational therapists don’t run huge groups. We’re not teachers either. So I had no idea what I was getting into. And I said, I’ll run one week of summer camp. And she was like, you have to do three to market yourself. And I was like, all right, fine.
So I did three weeks of summer camp and I went to the University of New Hampshire and I got OT students to volunteer and help out because I thought what a cool opportunity for them to see nature for its therapeutic. And so I had four volunteers and I essentially was running it by myself with some helpers.
And by the end of the three weeks I was exhausted. It felt like I was putting on a giant birthday party every day.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Angela Hanscom: So by the end of it I was like, I’m never doing this again. That was like [00:24:00] crazy and I was exhausted, but what, you know, something told me to like to just see what happens. And what happened was those four volunteers went back to university.
And I had 14 volunteers the next year.
Speaker 3: Oh man. And had
Angela Hanscom: an an OT reach out and a physical therapist asking, could, can we replicate your program? This is unique for our profession. No one’s doing this. And that’s when I realized this had nothing to do with me. It was really a gift I was supposed to share.
And so, and I had no business experience. So I went to, uh, seek out a business mentor. I got ended up getting two that really were higher level business people. And they really helped me, um, to license a program. And we created Timber Nook. And Timber. Nook represents timber is within the trees, and a nook is like a nook or crannies, a hidden place away from the adult world and the fears of the adult world where kids can be kids.
And so that’s where the name came from.
Speaker 3: Love, and
Angela Hanscom: yeah. And then, yeah, my plan was just to market in New England because that’s, we’re [00:25:00] in New Hampshire. And what happened was we wrote an article called Why Kids Fidget. And that went incredibly viral. And then it got picked up by the Washington Post and that’s how I started writing for the Washington Post.
And those started exploding. Okay. And it TED Talks and the book, and that’s how Timnick went to Australia and UK and Canada and throughout the US.
Rusty Keeler Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, suddenly it, you know, you hit a nerve Yeah. Yes. Of worldwide, right. Where this is, this is an issue where children, their mobility or how they’re growing up or where, you know, compared to the old days or how we were naturally made, right.
To grow up in, in nature or outsource or in groups or with other kids and all this. Gosh, okay, so yeah, you were like. Putting it out there right at the time when people are like, what do we, what do we do? And how, how can we help this? You know, we’re recognizing it.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. It’s clearly a need out there. Yes.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. I mean, just this year through some of my, my travels, I had all these timber nook, I didn’t [00:26:00] quite grasp the concept at first ’cause I was like, oh, you’re from TimberNook and I’m in North Carolina, or I was in Nook, I can’t remember, it was Oregon or somewhere else. It was like Timber, timber nook. And I was like, well wait a second.
What? It’s all over. Yeah. Well, okay, so what is it that, a timber nook experience? Yeah, the sensational experience.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. Yeah. So basically what it is, is it’s a, it’s different play experiences. Yeah. So an example might be they might hear the story three little pigs, the, and this is little kids like we do all the way up to teenagers.
Right? Okay. But little kids might, and mixed ages, so be, might be ages four to nine out there. For this one, they might hear the story, three little pigs. And then out there would be, you know, real bales of hay, real sticks, bricks. There might be wolf masks. Milk, crate, pulleys, ropes, and then they have the opportunity to create their own three little pig homes.
And whether they do that or not is their choice, but the environment is, we call it staging. So it’s a little different. It’s specific to TimberNook, [00:27:00] but there’s an art form of staging the environment to inspire play. And so the adults can’t say anything. We can’t be like, this is for this, like it’s. It’s staged.
And so whether they do that or not, they might create wolf clans. It’s up to them, but it’s inspiration because a lot of kids don’t have practice, so they don’t know, they don’t have any springboard to start with, so it’s really helpful for that. Another one might be they might have, um, the opportunity to create a giant ball run.
So there might be gutters out there, corrugated tubing, balls of different sizes, ropes, pulleys, and then it might be a field trip coming out doing that and the environment is staged. There might be a story and then it’s, they’re left to design. And again, there’s like at least two hours where they, they dive into it.
It might be rocks, a boxing, they hear the story rocka, boxing. There might be like flags out there, stuff that has anything to do with face paint, like stuff. And then you see clan play happen because you know. That’s very natural out there. Yeah.
Rusty Keeler So what are the [00:28:00] sites like? What was the, the first site that you went to for the, the summer camp, and then how did that expand?
And then where are other people’s timber nook sites? What are they using and, and. How are, who’s coming to it? It’s more group, group work or versus Yeah,
Angela Hanscom: yeah. Um, so it’s pro, it’s a program, it’s a licensed program and so even schools or it can get certified in Timber Burk, we have about 10 schools that do it.
They’re all mostly private schools and. The original site is in Barrington, and that’s where we train people. They come out to our location to train, but it’s about, we have about 12 acres here and there’s two acres of woodland that they actually span on. So it’s big giant boulder. Uh, new England is known for its boulders.
Speaker 3: There’s boulders out there. Yeah.
Angela Hanscom: And trees, you know, like woodland. It’s very much New England like, but yeah, we have some. In Australia, uk. We just launched one in Hawaii this past year, which is super cool. Their [00:29:00] trees are, are closer to the ground so they can climb, you know, build their forts in the trees, which is really cool.
But yeah, it’s, you still see ’em play TimberNook, um, and, you know, very similar play schemes out there. It’s just the, um, environments are a little bit different depending on where, where in the world you’re at. So,
Rusty Keeler yeah. Yeah. So are are, is this like after school? Times. Oh,
Angela Hanscom: it’s, um, so it comes in the form of summer camps.
We have night experiences. We just did one for teenagers where it was a glow in the dark warrior, um, night where they like had a battle out there. We have toddlers that come with parents. They have two hours of TimberNook play experience, inspire, play out there. We’re really trying to teach the adults to step back a lot.
It’s a very. Non-traditional, especially field trips. We have field trips, schools come out where we’re really pulling the teachers back and trying to train them on the importance of play and you know, not being so close to the kids. ’cause it [00:30:00] really, when the adults are too close to children, it interferes with the play significantly and they start seeking constant adult reassurance.
And yeah, we do homeschool programming year round. It could be under the umbrella of four school, but it’s a very specific approach and method. You know, every TIC site follows the same recipe and flow of the day, reduce transitions, you know, all that stuff. Very mini, minimal intervention from an adult, I guess.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. You, uh, you use the word un.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah,
Rusty Keeler that. So what, tell me about that, that,
Angela Hanscom: yeah, so unrestricted was, um, a term that we came up with, especially for the book means like not saying unstructured because like children will structure their own plan, come up with their own rules, but it’s like. Less boundaries from adults like, don’t do this or be careful about that type thing.
But what I’m kind of talking about is we use the phrase a lot of step back, but tune in out there. So like the adults [00:31:00] will like step back at least 10, 20 feet and actually find a seat like we have cushions out there because. We have to reduce adult presence in order to empower the children to play on their own.
We want independent play. Like that’s pretty much the goal of Tim Ook is we want independent creative play. And in order for that to happen, the adults have to get out of the way. Now there’s times where adults actually do need to go in, and it’s really important that they go in and it’s usually has to do with safety, like, you know, something incredibly unsafe or unreasonable, or.
Like, so we’re constantly assessing, and this, this is part of our training is like when do you go in and when do you not go in and when do you just like say a phrase or Yeah. That kind of thing.
Rusty Keeler Love it. Okay. So the timber nook staff is, you know, well versed in all that. How, so you’re also teaching the adults?
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Rusty Keeler Who come with the kids?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Rusty Keeler By the action or step back and tune in.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. So for, especially for for [00:32:00] schools, this is like really key of having them step back right away. And you can know which teacher I’m usually going after. The teachers that go right in, like, so, you know, like they’re billing for, and you see those teachers running after them.
Like we do talk to them ahead of time too, but it’s. It’s one thing to say, we want you to step back and we, we are not allowed to give ideas to the kids. Like that’s our number one rule, that you cannot give them an idea of how to play out there. They’re, they’re not allowed to and they’re not allowed to play with children.
That might be a little different than some other play work is. We we’re not allowed to play with the children. We can go like quickly look and stuff, but we are really trying to empower them to play with each other. And so we, we actually won’t have any influence over that. So we do have to go in and pull the teachers back and try to get them to observe, like, okay, what are we looking at here?
What are they, what are some of the benefits of the play that we’re seeing out in the woods right now? Um, and how does this relate to the classroom? Because, you know, a lot of times teachers will be looking at it through an academic [00:33:00] lens, and so we’re trying to get them to think a little bit deeper on what they’re actually.
Seeing and as an occupational therapist, we are skilled at, we do these things called act an activity analysis so we can take any activity and analyze it for its therapeutic benefit. So that’s what like, so I’m trying to explain like, look at how that child is picking up that heavy log that’s, you know, helping with this and you know, he’s now listening to someone else’s idea.
He, he’s, he didn’t get what he wanted, but let’s see how he was. Bonds, like, so we’re, we’re talking about all aspects of de development from social skills to, you know, regulation of emotions and all that stuff. So there’s a lot of stuff going on out there.
Rusty Keeler Yeah, right. It’s all happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. I mean, amazing to think like, okay, you’ve created this space, this container where they can be in nature, full sensory experiences, but then also with.
Other children, which is, [00:34:00] you know, uh, both collaboration and communication. But then also there can be conflict, but then a conflict resolution or, you know, this, this opportunity for it where if versus, and in the woods, but versus school and sitting and the upright or you said in the, in the cars to home or home to screens or, gosh, yeah.
So you’re, you’re like creating this. This opportunity that maybe children just used to roam around or in, you know, in the streets or vacant lots and you know, and in the woods and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Is there still occupational therapy going on, or is this like, you’re like, oh no, actually we are creating something so that there doesn’t need to be.
Formal, like, like, uh, what we think of as occupational therapy?
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. Well, it’s kind of a controversial, uh, like topic actually, because
Rusty Keeler Okay, okay. I think
Angela Hanscom: that depending on who you talk to, some will say this is a [00:35:00] form of occupational therapy. Some say it’s not. Um, I would. It’s kind of like one of those things, to me, this is authentic occupation, and so it’s kind of like the holy grail of occupational therapy.
So it’s like you’re bringing in authentic occupation, like you said, a container. Into school environments, into communities, and you’re creating a safe place for them and permission to do things that they wouldn’t normally be able to do on their own. And so to me, it’s incredibly therapeutic and rich. So whether you call it occupational therapy, it’s just not traditional occupational therapy to me.
But I do believe it fell falls within the realm of the role of occupational therapy. Sure. It’s
Rusty Keeler like.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah,
Rusty Keeler the goals, like you’re, like, you’re reaching those, the goals of any occupational therapist?
Angela Hanscom: Yes, it’s, it’s working on all things that other occupational therapists, let’s say. So we do have a lot of kids out there that go and get [00:36:00] occupational therapy and work on specific goals, but then they come to ook and it’s working on some of those areas that they probably can’t get in a clinic setting.
You know, like, especially like regulation of emotions like you have that’s best done through play, you know, like. It’s very hard to treat that in a clinic setting. Like you can try to frustrate them, but there’s nothing like the real thing when someone takes your, takes your supply that you’re using or you know, like you have to, you have to experience it in the real world for it to actually improve going barefoot in giant mud puddles.
Like I’ve seen kids like not wanna go barefoot. I had a kid say I’m, I know we’re going to the mud pedals, but I’m not taking my boots off. So I remember this one particular kid. I said, sure, okay. So we went down and other kids were catching frogs and he was like clearly wanting to go in. So he, he went in and got mud in his welly boots, which, you know, he had socks on, which feels gross.
So he came back out and he’s like. This is disgusting. Can I take this off? And I’m like, [00:37:00] sure. So we took them off, went back in and caught frogs and we showed the mom video from it. I didn’t realize this, but he had been seeing a, a therapist for two years trying to get him to go barefoot, unsuccessful. And here he was in giant mud puddles, barefoot.
You know, and what was really interesting is it was a real environment that play trumped his fear. So it was his choice, because if I had said, no, I think you should try to take your shoes off. You know, you, he’d probably be
Speaker 3: right. Yeah, yeah. That
Angela Hanscom: control piece. But because it was a choice. True play is a choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Angela Hanscom: You know, he was able to decide that for himself and then he started going barefoot camping, so it was a real environment, and then he started translating that to other real environments versus in a clinic setting, if you walk on a plastic balance beam with. Pickies on it. Like doesn’t necessarily mean you’re all of a sudden gonna go barefoot in a, a rug, nevermind the dirt.
It’s a fabricated [00:38:00] sensory experience. Yeah. Right, right. It’s not real life. Yeah. Right. So it’s not gonna generalize over, but because it was meaningful in his choice, he was able to overcome that fear. Wow.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. Because in that case, you wanna be barefoot, you wanna be in it, you’re, you’re, the play is leading you there.
I was thinking like the flow, the flow of the play. Yes. And to have that time and the space and, and just to Yeah. Want to do it versus adult led or adult wishing things would happen and But from the inside. When it comes from the inside. Yeah. Which is how we always, you know, the history of humans. Like they were in it or they were having conflicts or, yeah.
Yeah. Cities or country, I guess.
Angela Hanscom: And that piece is really key too rusty. So like when kids have sensory issues, there’s often anxiety tied to that. So if you have this preconceived, we’re gonna walk in this balance beam right now. Yeah, that can actually rise. Anxiety level, no child. But when you have, what’s a choice and you, you could just watch other [00:39:00] kids do it and be happy.
Like that’s where they, that anxiety piece comes in. If they can help overcome it. Easy.
Rusty Keeler Right, right. I could see that. Where, yeah, it’s like, oh, this, this adult wants me to do this thing, and I, it makes you me, you know, you’re already nervous. And then, and then I have to get on this balance beam versus just, oh, we’re, we’re running through the woods and around trees and everyone else is barefoot and I want, I’m barefoot too.
Or I wanna get in the creek, or, mm-hmm. Yeah. All that, the natural play. Gosh, it’s funny that we have to create it. Thank goodness we are creating it and, and doing it and, and bringing it back. And, you know, it’s funny, like talking to Peter Gray, you know, he, he’s interested because he’s fascinated by like all the, all the changes in childhood and then how children like find their way, even like through screens to still have social connection and, and that kind of play and autonomy and that stuff.
And more like fascinated like, oh, it’s, it’s very, very different. But then I feel like we are kinda [00:40:00] like, yes, but kids need to be in the dirt. They still need, we know we, we need this stuff and, and how to provide that. And yes. And even I think I’ve heard you hint at like, this is also like. The deep connection soul and the, and the earth and the beauty, the beauty of life, really.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And you find your sense of purpose, you know,
Rusty Keeler but yeah. How about that, what also you’re providing that, I mean like that sense of wonder for children or the, the deeper connection that you provide. Yeah, yeah. How do you look at that?
Angela Hanscom: I mean, I think of it as God’s creation. And so like, being out there as like really important and like, just even being able to think, I one time was volunteering at my kids’ school to be, you know, like some health person, like some health class for them.
And I remember giving them assignment of like, no, no phones, no electronics for a day. And a, a girl said to me, this was middle school. And she’s like, I’m [00:41:00] afraid to be alone with my own thoughts for a day. I was like, what? Like, so that was a pretty profound statement is like, I’m afraid to be alone with my own thoughts.
And like for me, like, and for the children, like there’s times where their play can look very different. There’s some, a lot of like adventure play and you know, conflict play. They get thrilling play out there. But there’s times where kids are just sitting there watching other people Totally content, you know, or wandering around and like that just being.
You know, present is really, I think, really fundamental and we, we forget. We forget about that. We always want them doing something.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. Right, right. Mm-hmm. Huh. Yeah. I think of like being, yeah, idea of just letting children be.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, exactly.
Rusty Keeler And then what happens?
Angela Hanscom: Another quick story is my daughter, who’s 20, grew up doing TimberNook and she’s been, she wrote a piece for a children nature network and then, um, was on a thousand hours outside podcast [00:42:00] and she was really noticing differences when she got to high school of growing up.
The timber like and creating societies out there and having wars and having to defend territories and how it really made her like strong sense of self, you know, and confident and being like, I’m not like, and setting boundaries with other children. Like, no, that’s not okay. Like, you know, we’re not, you know, and not being afraid to do so.
That really helped her in high school to not be. Part of the crowd or always doing what everyone else was doing. And I think that’s really important too, is like really knowing a strong sense of who you are as a person. A lot of times happens through play and you develop that through different play schemes and what you like and what you don’t like.
And a lot of these kids nowadays, like she, she’ll talk to about them as being like almost clones of each other. Like there’s not a lot of. And a lot of them are lonely or bored, or they don’t have very adventurous lives, and so, so I think that’s also something to pay attention to.
Rusty Keeler Gosh. Yeah. Like you [00:43:00] develop a sense of self
Angela Hanscom: Yeah.
Rusty Keeler Through that. Oh, who am, who am I? What do I like to do? What do I, where are my lines? Where are my boundaries?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Rusty Keeler I like that. Adventurous. Yeah. Adventurous. Yeah. Childhood.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Rusty Keeler Did you have an adventurous childhood?
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, I think probably not as much as my own kids.
Rusty Keeler Yeah.
Angela Hanscom: But yeah, I mean, I was played outside at all hours, went biking and you know, had a lot of autonomy.
I had a lot of autonomy and, and mm-hmm. There was a lot of trust back then too.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. Unrestricted.
Angela Hanscom: Yeah. Yeah, unrestricted. That’s right.
Rusty Keeler Yeah. I mean that’s, that’s the funny thing about the, you know, the changes over the decade, like I grew up that way, like. Rome, wherever I had fields behind my house, but I could also get on a bike and go into town and mess around and yeah.
And that just, that was normal. Everybody. That’s what kids did. Like mostly. You saw kids outside. Yeah. Maybe more than adults or [00:44:00] you know, it was, it was like their town. And it’s just a funny thing, seeing that change. And I think for me, I haven’t wanted to believe it. Over, over years and years. Like, ah, it’s, you know, but, you know, even in places, you know, in, in Ithaca where it’s very child friendly and pedestrian friendly, bike friendly and all that, but still, you know, you don’t, kids aren’t out and about for all those different reasons, but we need it.
Right. As, as humans, as, as you know.
Angela Hanscom: Oh yeah. And, you know, the other human aspect of this is that community out there helps shape the individual. You know, like, so that, that’s huge. Like, so having those connections in person. Is very different than just the online stuff, you know, and we saw that my last week at camp, there was a kid that does a lot, a lot of gaming and is not usually put in situations where you’re play, you’re, it’s play, but it’s feels really real.
And then he, he almost like, he couldn’t make. It was like too much [00:45:00] for him. It was really interesting. So like I feel like we’re doing a disservice by not allowing them, like in-person opportunities to play too. Does that make sense?
Rusty Keeler Yeah. Because it’s full, you know, however realistic the game can be. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s not full body, full sensory. Yeah. Gosh. But yeah, that could be overwhelming if you’re just used to, I mean, very manageable. There it is. In your lap. Yeah. Looking at the screen and yeah, you wanna
Angela Hanscom: turn the game off.
Rusty Keeler Right, right. I’m done. Wanna deal with this
Angela Hanscom: character.
Rusty Keeler The interactions are a certain way, right?
They come at you, even if you, if you’re talking and stuff, but
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. But
Rusty Keeler real life. But real life isn’t that. Like real, I mean, or, or is it, are we heading in that direction? And, you know, oh gosh. Did, did you see that movie? Uh, Wali The Robot in the Future and he’s picking stuff up.
Angela Hanscom: I heard garbage heard about it, but I didn’t watch it.
Rusty Keeler Well, it, it’s good. It’s interesting, but it has this like humans in the [00:46:00] future, like they’ve left Earth ’cause it was too much. Garbage and stuff. So, but they now are like floating around in these like hover chairs on their spaceship and they have screens and everything and they’re all kind of flubby bubby.
And that’s, that’s just how they interact. Everything is through the screen and they don’t move their bodies and, but they didn’t have timber nook.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Rusty Keeler And, and people that want this and, and that care about this stuff. And, and, and I think also the beauty of what, like what you’re doing is that, that it’s.
One way, it’s simple. Mm-hmm. Like we’re program children are programmed to, you know, they might need a little coaxing if they haven’t done it, but ultimately, like there’s frogs and there’s leaves and there’s bugs under there and there’s, you wanna build that for it, or you want ’em, you know, be the clan and you know, that’s, it’s like beautiful and playful and natural.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, okay, so what would your final thought of like, well, advice now [00:47:00] it’s great when people can get to. Timber nook and be a part of the awesome stuff happening there. But what could just parents and educators do to early childhood people? Like yeah, what? What is some of your top advice?
Angela Hanscom: Yeah, so I think really just making sure to allow for plenty of time for outdoor play and like just. Doing a little bit more, you know, reading about it, whether that be my book or your book or, you know, like just, you know, understanding the importance is really key. But, and allowing them enough time, like, so my kids, when they were little, they would have friends over for the entire day.
So we didn’t do play dates for an hour. Like, it just, it is hard to get into those advanced play schemes with a short period of time. So longer periods of time having kids come over, really kick ’em out, like just. I use like electronics as a special treat once in a while. Like, it’s like they watch a movie.
Friday nights was what my kids had. They had no phone till high school, like [00:48:00]
Speaker 3: mm-hmm.
Angela Hanscom: And, but they, like, they really were able to develop properly and have those experiences and have no regrets. Like, um, and they learn that quickly later, you know, and then. As far as school goes, like I do think that we need to like play should be more a part of the way we educate children.
I actually think it should be not just recess, but we should carve out time where they’re really getting into some deep play to work on all those life skills, the stuff that they really are desperately needing now. So it’s a more holistic approach.
Rusty Keeler I agree. Yay. Yes. Lots more. I don’t, but I don’t wanna keep you forever.
But it’s so, so great chat, chatting about all this stuff and really inspiring and, and how you’ve, like Timber Nook itself is this natural thing that’s like growing and expanding Yeah. And touching so many people. So. Thanks so much for doing what you’re doing. Yeah. Thank you for
Angela Hanscom: having me Rusty. It was a [00:49:00] pleasure.
Rusty Keeler Alright, thanks for listening. Do you have a comment or a question? Email me at playanturepodcast@gmail.com. You know, I like talking about this stuff. And maybe we could use your question on a future podcast episode. As always, I have some free goodies for you in the show notes, including my outdoor loose parts guide, fun stuff in there.
And so I wish you the best in your outdoor play adventures, and when it comes to adding nature to your yard or loose parts or saying yes to risky play. My favorite motto is dream big, start small, and never stop. Oh [00:50:00] yeah. Woo, woo, woo. Let’s do it. All right. Have fun out there.
