A group of children run up through the orchard, they stop, we take a detour to look at some rabbit holes, they pick an apple from the tree and eat it, throwing the core into the hedge. We have a chat about what might eat the apple core, and what might eat the rabbit, they carry on running looking for the next thing. They have fun. 

Another day a child and parent come to a beautiful room on the farm venue, they have a therapy session with a child psychotherapist, the child is adopted and is struggling at school and with relationships. After the session the mother and child stop to feed the chickens.

Although these  two activities are at different ends of a spectrum of what we offer, there is an underlying foundation, or what we call "metaskills"  to the work at the centre.  We have been working with children for more than 10 years, both on the  farm, and in the therapeutic context. What we have noticed is that our core areas of work - growing food and therapeutic work -  overlap, and where these two strands crossover there is a rich seam of wellbeing connecting people and nature. We aim to expand this wellbeing work both in our projects in East Anglia and at the farm at Huxham’s Cross in South Devon. 

Mark O'Connell practices child and family psychotherapy having worked for  many years in with looked-after and adopted children in the NHS in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. His background is as a Process Orientated Psychologist further specialising in attachment and trauma work. Marina O'Connell runs an organic farm, weaving in Permaculture design and Biodynamic preparations on the soil. She has worked with children for many years in schools developing outdoor classrooms for kinaesthetic learning, and inviting them to the farm for food and creativity type workshops and experiences. 

Well-being work on Farms

Wellbeing is a bit of a buzz word at the moment. We use it as an encompassing term describing physical health and mental health, and a sense of "feeling good" whatever our objective state of health. We all  know that it is good for us to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, to take regular exercise and to have a sense of belonging. Combining these regularly helps people to feel happier. 

A visit to a farm for children ticks all of these things; they eat some fresh food, they take some exercise and they have fun, they leave buzzing. This was my observation many years ago whilst working at Darlington Hall and training unemployed adults in horticulture. One day one of my trainees turned to me and announced that we had cured him of his alcoholism. This surprised me as I didn't know that he was an alcoholic and I had not made any specific interventions to do this, apart from the general work on the farm and creating a positive sense of team work. As Mark was studying psychotherapy at the time this sent us on a path to find out why this work outside often makes people "feel better". 

We set up the  Apricot Centre in 2006 to deliver this work and have developed a set of ‘Metaskills’ or approaches and attitudes to working with people and children in particular on a farm. At its core we hold the idea that diversity and "following the feedback" is  key to any sustainable systems whether it is choosing a green manure or working with a child in a garden. In this article we aim to discuss what these "metaskills" are and how  we use them practically to our work with children on farms, and what we think the theoretical underpinning for this is.

The Apricot centre has been working for the last 10 years on its small 4 acre site in North Essex. We have just taken on the lease for the new Huxhams Cross farm in Dartington South Devon, with the Biodynamic Land Trust and as a part of the Dartington Hall Trust learning campus.  The Huxham’s Farm project is to create a small mixed farm on 35 acres, producing biodynamic fruit vegetables and eggs. We will have a rich strand of Wellbeing work woven through the farm for us to develop and deliver the work described below to all children. This work is across a spectrum as discussed below, but the setting and facilities to deliver it are woven into the fabric of the farm. 

Therapy and Attunement Work

It is known from research at Essex university that doing exercise outside improves the mental health lift, not only does the exercise give a mood lift but this is enhanced by being outside. Just walking into a park like environment is known to lift mood and this can be measured by the heart rate and blood pressure dropping, and measuring the hormones released into the brain. 

We deliver therapy to children and families that have suffered trauma, and we often do this in a farm environment. We believe that this might provide an extra lift and complements the therapeutic work.

Traumatised children often have raised stress levels and stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenalin.  Raised stress levels early in childhood causes the brain to develop differently often resulting in permanently raised stress levels throughout childhood.   As Louise Bomber describes it their "Stress tank is already full" so any small extra stressors can trigger the fight, flight or freeze reaction. This might be something as small as being hungry and then having a teacher give out complex instructions.  Once at this point, being children, they can only "act out" these hormones as they have not developed ability to self-regulate, or to exercise the "executive functioning" of the brain to override them, nor do they have the emotional intelligence to recognise what is happening to them.  Adults on the whole rarely recognise this behaviour as "stress" and label it as "naughty" often escalating the behaviours as the child becomes more stressed and the adult becomes more angry. There is a widely held belief that any trauma suffered by a child will be forgotten later on, however this is not the case, and in fact it becomes hardwired into the brain and is often pre-verbal. 

Being on a farm or a nature based place is ideal to help children to  regulate themselves, hopefully with the help of an adult. The "oxytocin" hormone, that makes us feel good, that we produce when we are in nature, helps reduce stress levels. Once the stress reaction is triggered Louise Bomber suggests four interventions to lower stress levels. Have a sensory break for 3-15 minutes, do some simple tasks,   noticing the state they are in, and connecting to someone /where  you feel safe with. She also suggest going to a place that you know in your mind that you feel safe in. 

Ecopsychology studies have shown that  being outdoors especially in green places, with trees calms the heart beat, lowers blood pressure, and hormones such as adrenalin can be worked-off through the physical exercise of farm work or just walking. Dentists have found they can use less pain killers if the patient looks at images of a natural place during the treatment. 

Our aim is to give children time in such an environment so that it can later be recalled as a resource in times of stress, or we can train them to regulate their state by walking or undertaking simple tasks on the farm. 

Metaskill; We observe the children and if they are stressed we take them outdoors for simple activity. We create a beautiful environment with trees and flowers for them to work in. 

Following the feedback

Where children have experienced difficult attachments in their early life, Mark O'Connell has developed "Attunement methods". Here the parent observes the child's behaviour and interacts with them based on the feedback that the child gives. In early years this is mostly non verbal so the parent or carer needs to be taught to recognise signals. Although this sounds simple, often parental expectations and social norms are so great that the parent does not focus on the child and respond to their feedback. Following the child's feedback helps to build secure attachment. This can be done in play sessions indoors to great effect. We aim to  offering a range of activities on the farm where positive attunement can happen in a "green setting". Activities such as picking food, cooking the food and eating it,  risk taking lighting a fire, taking time simply to "be" or interact with others. Once the parent starts to follow a child's feedback this builds a positive feedback loop allowing this relationship to build and flourish, and is also taken inside by the child as a positive relational experience. 

Mud pie corner

One of our more interesting experiences was working with some 8 year old boys in a school that  could not listen to nor take any instructions, but kept bashing the ground, in the wrong place damaging the soil structure. They were so persistent that we spent some time observing them with the presumption that something must be right about bashing the soil, while trying hard not to "tell them off". After a time it became apparent that  they were playing "mud pies" although developmentally  they should have done that at aged 2-3, and now they were 7-8 it just seemed naughty and irritating. Being urban kids they had missed out on playing mud pies. We realised that, as with adopted children, having missed a stage of early development they had to go back to make it up. So Mud Pie Corner was born, we turned over a bit of ground where we didn't want to grow anything, gave them trowels, watering cans, and containers, and let them go. What we found was that they would play mud pies for 20 minutes, and then "report for duty" coming back to ask for tasks, and they were then able to hear instructions and follow them. This was quite startling for their teachers as they quickly became some of the most talented and able gardeners we had in the group. The children were probably also regulating their stress levels with this behaviour as well. 

Metaskill; Follow the feedback of the child they tell us what they need and want. As adults we attune ourselves to the child. This aids attachment. 

Educational Work

Many children are kinesthetic learners, that is they learn by doing. The farm or outdoor classroom offers a wonderful learning experience for all children but in particular for those kinesetic learners as this is not a learning style that is provided as much in schools.  Children learn about plants and how they grow, food, and where it comes from, reproduction, animal care. This can be a vehicle for teaching maths, science or reading and writing, improving motor skills, working as a part of a team, following instructions and problem solving. It is also fun, the children are engaged and once a child in engaged they learn. They learn without realising they are learning.  

Our experience in working in some of the most deprived areas in the UK is that using these techniques with children has remarkable effects, generally increasing the learning outcomes, literacy or maths, it builds self esteem, and the children become more motivated and involved.

What we do is engage a child in an activity, use age appropriate language, have a story on hand, relate the activity to a fairy story, film or computer game. Ask them to tell you about their films/ games. Keep doing it. Keep chatting. Ask questions; How many broad beans have we sown now, how do you spell ‘broad bean’.  Make sure you revisit so the child receives the positive feedback from their work. This recycling of feedback is mirrored in how the broad beans are planted, grow, and ideally they later eat and enjoy them as well. What is important when working with plants (and children) is that if looked after well the plants grow, respond positively, they do not judge, bully, or take sides.

Metaskill;  Creating positive feedback loops, between the child, the adults, the plants and the animals. Builds and reinforces self-esteem in children.  

Attachment to place

Of course these children might go home to something completely different but sowing the seed of a positive outdoor experience at a young age may have a profound effect. In my teaching and training career I ask most of the adults working in conservation and sustainability if they had a "magic moment" in nature as a child. There is normally a 90% plus show of hands for this. I believe that by providing these "magic moments" we reconnect children to the wilder world and motivate them to work in it as an adult. 

Jay Griffiths  explores this idea in his book "Kith"  Belonging to a place and knowing a place can give huge pleasure and sense of "contentment". Kith in this sense being a place where we belong and know intimately. If we are attached to a place and we care for it arguably then we will also take better care of it, making longer term and more sustainable choices for that piece of land or even the planet.

Recreational work 

Food is often a tricky subject for children who have suffered trauma, being neglected, withheld or used as a source of comfort. The wrong kind of food, high sugar, caffeine  can exacerbate raised adrenalin and cortisol levels making behaviour even more erratic. 

We ran a series of ‘SENSE’ workshops with "Looked after Children" where we picked, cooked and then ate lunch.  Firstly they ate a lot, they ate a huge range of fresh good quality  food that was brought in, just loving it. They cooked, they laughed, some of them ran away quite often across the fields.  They presented the food to all the other children on the workshops  and it was eaten, with great joy and gusto. Although there was nothing remarkable about this, it gave a huge amount of joy to a great deal of people, a high sense of achievement, and the broadening of taste buds. it was the normalising of food for some of them. 

Food is also about Nurturing and "Looked after Children" have suffered a lack of nurture at some point in their history. Eating and food brings huge pleasure to people, and these workshops we  aimed to model nurturing to the children.

Nurture rooms in schools are common now, providing a hot drink and toast as a basic tool to help children to focus in schools. How much more could you do to nurture children with a whole farm and kitchen on hand ? 

Metaskill; Model cooking and sharing food together, the majority of families do not sit and eat together at a table together anymore.  Eating together gives a social sense of occasion, and a sense of belonging. It also provides positive feedback for the children who have prepared the meal. We make sure they do the washing up, which can also be a fun and shared activity. We also start where the children are, and we dont make it too complicated, again following their feedback. 

And Just having fun

Richard Louv writes about "Natures Deficient Disorder" in children in modern times, that children simply don't have enough time outdoors "mucking about" taking risks, having time to explore and follow their own interests and nature. We aim to give children this time back as much as possible with a "Farm School" on our Farm. This will be run like a Forest school in its ethos. That is; following the child’s interests, giving them a range of activities and letting them explore. This is child-centred learning at its best. We will extend this to include the farm work as well, collecting the eggs, feeding the chickens, picking apples making apple juice, sowing seeds, planting lettuce, eating lettuce, sometimes lighting a fire and drinking hot chocolate and having a chat. Children love "poo" in all its forms so sometimes we go on a "poo" hunt to see how many different types we can find.  This makes them laugh and generally laughing is good it raises the oxytocin levels.  There is no specific outcome to this work or play with children on the farm and we describe it as "generally having a good time in nature" as that is what it is. 

"Magic moments" happen when we allow this time, and those are the times that we remember. Spending time in nature also allows a child to follow momentary interest existing half in dreams and half in the everyday mind. This natural curiosity creativity playfulness and nature oriented mindfulness is something which we gradually train out of ourselves seemingly to become more functional members of society. It is deeply refreshing for children to have time off of screens, instructions, deadlines, and targets and just to be for a while. We think it is healthy for children and adults to have time in the "dreaming space" as well as what we call "consensus reality". 

Personally I think this is the most important activity on the farm as it is really about attaching ourselves to a place and to nature and that can only be good for all of us.

Metaskill; Allow time for magic moment, allowing for enjoyment in nature.Don't make it too difficult for the children.   

References;

Richard Louv "Last Child in the Woods"

Jay Griffiths "Kith the Riddle of the Childscape"

Louise Bomber

other academic papers that I have