Dr. Cowan | Why is healthynest trying to bring parents and babies back to nature?

Dr. Cowan’s Tips for Parents:

1. You don’t have to know everything
2. Be open to learning as you go
3. Cultivate a spirit of inquiry

Transcript

One of the things I'm really interested in doing with parents is bringing this back to sort of a common sense way of raising children, because I think we've all gotten a little too much in our heads in the project of raising kids.

But there is no right and that scares people because it's a wide open field because nature favors diversity. I'm going to say that again, nature favors diversity.
But in our society there is this quality conformity that we call normal and that becomes handcuffs to a lot of people. The idea for us is to open up to the diverse ways that people, that children grow, that there are different styles of development that different kids go through at different points in their life.

So one of the aspects of this environmental enrichment, this engaged self, that we're trying to manifest in our children-- their highest self-- is about relationships, about what healthy relationships mean, what the word being related means. And when you think about it, we are nature. We're not other than nature. We're not like something standing outside of nature. We are nature, endlessly wired into nature. We evolved that way.

Why are babies drawn to nature? Why? What is it about the natural surroundings that intrigues us, that attracts us, that soothes us? Part of it is spontaneity. Okay? So the quality of spontaneity, that aliveness, which is the root. Babies can see it.
 
I've had babies where I'll give them a plastic toy, right? Or a plant and, and they get intrigued with the plant, right? Because there's something asymmetric,  spontaneous about it, curious about it, mysterious about it, that's not all played out already.

Whereas when you have a toy that you press a button and it does that, press a button and it does that, press the button. It's kind of 'alright I got it, next!'. It's a little dead, and so our immune resilience is built into what is natural and we're attracted to that. We resonate with it.