“Most things start as a sensory experience in life.”
Not the kind of line most parents expect to hear when talking about anxiety, behaviour, or the daily pressures of raising children—but for occupational therapist and naturalist Kathleen Lockyer, it sits at the centre of how she understands childhood today.
“We don’t come automatically knowing how to behave appropriately to our culture or society,” she told Lianne Castelino during an interview for Where Parents Talk. “And we don’t even come with our senses already developed.”
Lockyer returns repeatedly to a simple but unsettling idea: many of the struggles children face now are not just emotional or behavioural—they are developmental, and deeply tied to how disconnected daily life has become from the natural world.
That framing quickly shifts the conversation away from discipline or diagnosis and toward something more foundational: how children are actually shaped by their environments.
A moment that reframed everything
For Lockyer, the origins of that perspective are not purely academic. They trace back to an early parenting moment with her infant daughter—one she still describes with striking clarity.
“She leaned into the wind, threw her arms up, and gasped,” Lockyer recalls. “She turned to me, I laughed, and she went back to the wind again. It became this beautiful dance.” At the time, it was simply a tender exchange between mother and child. But in hindsight, she saw something deeper at work.
“I thought, there’s something really important in that thing that’s happening right there. What is it?”
The question would eventually shape her work in developmental therapy and her writing on how nature supports mental health.
A growing sense that something is missing
Lockyer believes modern parenting is happening under a quiet but persistent strain—what she describes as a “race against time.” But beneath that pressure, she says, is something less visible and more consequential.
“I think there is a real lack of a feeling of belonging for most people, parents, and then obviously their children feel that as well,” she says. “And part of that comes from our disconnection from the natural world, which is what we’ve been connected to since the beginning of time.”
That disconnection, she argues, is increasingly reflected in rising rates of anxiety, attention challenges, and emotional dysregulation among children and teens.
Not a destination problem—but a daily one
When parents hear advice to “get outside more,” Lockyer acknowledges the reaction is often the same: I know I should, but how?
Her response is simple. “It’s not really about going super wild,” she said. “It’s about literally going right outside your door and just remembering that nature is everywhere.”
Even in dense urban environments, she points out, nature persists in small, often overlooked ways. “I visited my brother in New York City, and there was a dandelion growing in the middle of the sidewalk,” she says.
For Lockyer, that image captures the accessibility of what she is advocating—not escape from modern life, but re-entry into something already present. “It’s literally about just dropping in with nature through our senses right outside.”
Why 10 minutes matters more than most parents realize
Among the most compelling research Lockyer references is the impact of very short exposure to natural environments.
“One study showed that just 10 minutes outside really can shift so much within us, both physiologically and mentally,” she says.
She describes this as a “micro dose of nature,” a small but meaningful intervention that can support emotional regulation. “It can support mental health and actually reduce symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, and depression,” she said. “Some of the biggest issues that teens are dealing with today.”
In a parenting landscape often defined by complexity, the simplicity of that finding stands out.
When behaviour is not the problem
Much of Lockyer’s work as an occupational therapist involves rethinking how adults interpret children’s behaviour. “What we see as behaviour often has a sensory origin,” she says.
She challenges the assumption that children should simply know how to regulate themselves. “If they haven’t developed the underlying skills necessary to behave, then all behaviour can be sensory because it’s developmental,” she explains.
From this perspective, actions that look like defiance—avoiding eye contact, withdrawing, refusing engagement—may actually be attempts at self-regulation. These behaviours, she argues, are often misread rather than understood.
Development as a symphony, not isolated signals
To explain how children build sensory understanding, Lockyer uses a metaphor drawn from music. “Our senses are like instruments,” she said. “And they’re supposed to be played together like a symphony.” Nature, she argues, is one of the few environments that consistently supports this kind of integrated development. “When we are in nature, we are stimulated through all of our senses,” she said. “Our brain immediately tunes in.”
A bird call, for example, is not just sound—it becomes context, direction, and meaning all at once. “We might hear the sound of a bird, look to see it, notice movement, and suddenly everything becomes connected,” she said.
By contrast, many modern environments provide fragmented input that does not build the same coherence. “There’s a huge difference between random stimuli and the contextual stimuli of the natural world.”
The power of doing “nothing” together
One of Lockyer’s most practical suggestions for families is something she calls a “sit spot.” It is intentionally simple: a shared moment outdoors, with no agenda. “The best thing to do looks like nothing,” she says.
A sit spot can be a front step, a park bench, or a quiet corner outside. The goal is presence, not activity. “You can just sit and feel the wind, notice a bird, or simply be together,” she said. “It seems like it’s nothing, but if you do it consistently, you’ll likely start to notice your teen opening up in new ways.”
What changes over time, she suggests, is not the environment—but the relationship.
Ecoception: when connection becomes visible
Lockyer also describes a concept she developed called “ecoception,” which reflects the interaction between human senses and the natural world. It originates from that early moment with her daughter and the wind—but has since become a broader way of understanding development.
“She leaned into the wind, threw her arms up, and gasped,” Lockyer recalled. “And then she turned to me, and I laughed, and she went back to the wind again.”
That exchange, she says, mirrors what developmental science calls “serve and return”—a back-and-forth interaction that builds learning and emotional regulation. “It’s a serve and return between nature and our senses,” she said.
Why parents are central to the shift
While much of Lockyer’s message focuses on children, she emphasizes the role of parents in shaping emotional environments. “The first thing is to breathe,” she says. “Your child is giving you signals all the time.”
Children, she emphasizes, regulate in response to the emotional state of the adults around them. “If everything around them is stressed, they’re going to be stressed,” she explains.
Even small shifts—stepping outside, noticing wind or sound, pausing before reacting—can alter the emotional tone of a household.
A final reminder about belonging
At the heart of Lockyer’s message is a reframing of what nature offers children today. “I’d like parents to really remember how nature isn’t just a nice to have,” she says. “It’s a necessary, essential element of our being.”
For her, the outcome is not just reduced anxiety or improved attention. It is something more fundamental. “When children get to tap back in with that embodiment and with the natural world,” she said, “they begin to feel a sense of belonging in the world again.”
Her message to parents is not about adding another responsibility—but about noticing what has always been within reach. Just outside the door.
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