In The Woods OT

08/04/2025

The community was strong at the AOTA conference. 💪

This was my first conference, and I was so grateful to collect a pack of friends, old and new, to learn with for the day. 🤓

Grateful for an ever expanding community of like minded OT’s, those pictured and those who are not 💖



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02/04/2025

A quick moment of gratitude for this little practice I started just over 2 years ago. 🥺

At the same time, attending the training retreat for nature based OT’s was very much a life changing experience for me.

These past 2 years have been full of learning, failing, trying again, showing up, and allowing myself to be authentically and deeply engaged in my work. 💪

Proud and grateful during this OT month for mentors, friends, and especially the kids and families who trust me with their care and well-being.

Never would I ever have guessed I’d be a practice owner, but here we are. 🌿

Lots of ideas brewing in my head (always), and I’m excited to continue on here in year 3.

Thanks for being here 💕

02/05/2024

Truth.

28/02/2024

It’s amazing what children will show us through their play. 🤍
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19/12/2023

This is so beautifully said.

One of the mysteries of life for me is why we have designed school in such a way that it requires children to do so many things which are very hard for them - and which become much easier in adulthood.

We require them to sit still when they are desperate to move. To stay in their seats when they want to crawl under the table. To keep quiet and listen when their body wants to play and shout.

We tell them to walk not run, when every part of their body longs to move fast. We put them into nylon trousers when they’d prefer soft leggings. We make a big deal out of things they can’t do yet, but which almost everyone learns as they grow up. Shapes, colours, telling the time. We teach them to read before they have the desire for themselves, and make them do maths which they find incomprehensibly difficult, but that a few years later will feel so simple as to be trivial. No matter whether you go to school or not.

We’ve designed school so that it’s hard for immature brains and bodies, and then we blame children and parents when they can’t follow the rules. We tell them they aren’t school-ready, or they need to try harder. We point out all the many ways in which they fall short. Too noisy, too active, too impulsive, too….childish.

By the time those children reach adolescence, the urge to roll on the floor or hang off the chair is fading, but the years of being told they have to sit still and listen have taken their toll. They’ve lost the raw energy of childhood, but it’s more than that. They’ve lost their joy in learning, because school wasn’t built for the child they were, any more than it is for the teenager they’ve become.

And then again, it’s them who are blamed. Disruptive, rude, bad attitudes. It would be so much better if they simply did what they were told.

But what we’re telling them to do in school is squashing our children. Children aren’t built to sit still and absorb information. They are built to keep moving and playing. To hang upside down and climb on the roof. To dream and shout and talk all the time.

But when our children tell us so, we’re not listening. We tell them that the problem is them.
Who are the slow learners? Not them.

06/10/2023

Delight 💚

Connection before anything else. 🥰

25/09/2023

While it may challenge “how things are done” I’d invite you to consider this perspective.

Our kids are putting in basically a full adult work week at school. They DESERVE decompression, rest, play, family and friend time in their few precious after school hours.

In fact- giving them this time may even improve academic performance. 🤔🤩✨

We have the science. It’s our job to do better, when we know better. 🤍

Homework: Unnecessary Overtime in Childhood

I want to start by stating an inconvenient truth. There is NO evidence of any academic benefit of homework in elementary school.

There is also no support that homework promotes good work habits or self-discipline. When those reasons fall short, adults may turn to “it prepares them for the future”. However, there is no need to “prepare” them for that. We do a lot of “preparing”: Preparing for kindergarten, preparing for middle school, preparing for the cruel adult world. Instead, we should be focusing on the child’s current developmental level and building skills appropriate for that level, not “preparing them” for a future developmental level.

To the best of my knowledge, homework has traditionally been meant to be a review of what was learned during the school day. It has evolved into hours of additional work after a child has already put in a 6 hour workday; or worthless counting, tracing or matching worksheets that could easily be done during their time in school. I remember in kindergarten my son brought home a worksheet to count the number of socks on a page. We did laundry together instead. That’s counting AND matching. “Let’s count all the socks that don’t have a match! Oh, look! 3 socks don’t have a match (again)!

The myth about homework is well documented in the research and summarized beautifully in Alfie Kohn’s work: https://alfiekohn.org/teaching/htips.htm

Another truth about homework is the amount of stress and power struggles it creates at home, with parents dealing with the challenge of trying to get an unwilling or spent child to pick themselves up again after spending so much energy earlier in the day in school. For our neurodivergent kids, this is especially true. There are many, many kids who hold it together in school in order to meet the expectations. When they get home, they are done! There are also many kids who don’t understand WHY they have to do “more work” when they already worked in school. Their mentality is simple and valid: Work is for school, not for home. Do adults take work home? Sometimes. Does that mean kids should? Absolutely not! Kids are not adults. Again, it’s a different developmental level and one we do not have to “prepare” them for.

So, even though there is no evidence to prove the value of homework for young children, parents are put in a difficult situation. Do I force the homework? Do I do it for them? Do I “opt out”? I am seeing more and more teachers limit the amount of homework going home (progress, but still not supported by the literature). However, I also hear horror stories of endless homework, meltdowns and power struggles to get the worksheets or ‘spelling words 10x each’ done.

My suggestion? Communication is key. I don’t agree with homework in elementary school, but I’ve always kept the mindset that the point of the pointless homework is to make sure the child understands the content. When my kids were either too busy with afterschool activities, family events or were just running on empty, I would do a ‘check-in’ with them to see where their energy level was. At any time, if it became clear that homework would not be a positive learning experience and more of a stressor than a help, I would alter the way we completed it. Could they just tell me the answers? Could we do it another way that brought the questions off the worksheet and into real life? Could I get it started for them and just have them finish? There was never one set way to attempt it, but whatever I did, I communicated the situation with the teacher. I didn’t try to write in my kids handwriting. I didn’t do the homework for them and just put it in their folder. I assessed my child’s ability to participate and communicated honestly with the teacher. That communication was always appreciated. If my child lost points for not completing the homework or received a consequence, that situation was addressed immediately and my decision was backed up with not only the literature but a more thorough explanation of the state of regulation my child was in and an explanation that the homework wasn’t worth dysregulating my kid at the end of their day.

Teachers need to stop giving homework in elementary school. Full stop. The research doesn’t support it. We know more now, so the “it’s what we’ve always done” argument doesn’t hold water anymore. If an administrator insists on it, that’s a great conversation for a staff meeting…with literature to back you up. That being said, I trust that parents and teachers can work together to assure that THE CHILD, the most important factor in this discussion, is understanding the content being taught in class, with or without the homework.

The majority of elementary school kids I have spoken to, and I’m willing to bet kids in general, think homework is “dumb”, “boring”, “annoying” or “not fair”. The research supports their desire to have less, if any. So, with this new knowledge that homework in elementary school does not improve academic achievement or study habits, and the understanding that homework is an additional stressor at home, the question becomes: What are we doing?

It's time to re-think homework.

What's your homework situation this year? Share your story in the comments!



Image description: Mom with hand on forehead looking frustrated sitting next to her child, who is wearing glasses, and has her arms folded and head down on the table. The child is lying on top of papers with a computer screen in front of her.

20/09/2023

It’s never “just play”. 🤍
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07/09/2023

This. 💚

If everyone understood the way the brain works and the nature of child development, I don’t think anyone would use the word ‘naughty’ to describe a child ever again.

07/09/2023

15 years with you 🤍

We were just a couple of kids in love 🥰

Now, 3 kids, a few houses and a cross country adventure later, we both are venturing into entrepreneurship. At the same time. 😳

Thank you for being my biggest supporter in all my wild ideas. No one I’d rather do life with 😘
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29/08/2023

First, third, and sixth. (Yes, my youngest is in a reindeer dress. The heart wants what it wants, k? 😆)

Ready for the routine and safety that comes with the school year, but I apparently was not ready to let them go this morning. 🥹

Unexpected mama tears after drop off this morning.

Allowed myself to feel sad AND be excited for the year ahead. (Two opposing feelings can co-exist)

They are safe.
They are well.
They are loved.

Happy school year, all. 💚
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28/08/2023

Reminder as we start the school year. Not a race. 💕

Magda Ge**er was so wise!