A letter to the people who write the bills about children they’ve never met
This essay is part of why Living Nature exists.
Not the whole story. But a thread that runs through everything we are building — the wellness clubs, the learning hub, the community spaces, the belief that children learn best when they feel safe, seen, and free to be themselves.
I wrote it as a former teacher, a psychotherapist, and a mother. It began as a response to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill currently moving through parliament. It became something larger — a witness statement from inside classrooms, therapy rooms, and my own long unlearning of what education is supposed to mean.
At Living Nature we believe that you cannot learn in an environment that doesn’t support you. Not just academically. Emotionally. Physically. In your body. In your sense of self.
We believe children are not numbers. Not data. Not problems to be managed or gaps to be filled.
We believe learning should feel like life — slow, unfolding, seasonal. Rooted in curiosity, relationship, and genuine trust in who a child already is.
This essay is where those beliefs come from. The children who shaped them. The moments that made them impossible to ignore.
I don’t think about Eli often. But when I do, I know why he stayed with me.
He is six years old, sitting at a table with the other children who find writing hard. Thirty children, thirty sets of needs, and I am one person trying to meet all of them.
That’s when I see him. Face red, tears streaming, barely able to catch a breath. His whole small body in it. And then, looking up at me, mouthing words he can’t quite get out —
I just. Can’t. Do it.
He is six years old and he is already a number that needs to go up.
This is an excerpt. The full essay — including the children I couldn’t forget, what I tried to build from inside the system, and why I am choosing something different for my daughter — is published in full on Substack.
Read the full essay here → https://open.substack.com/pub/echoesofwildwithin/p/did-you?r=4zhzfe&utm_medium=ios
If this resonates with you — as a parent, educator, or someone who simply cares about children — we’d love you to share it. These conversations need more voices in them.
And if you’d like to know more about what Living Nature is building — for children, families, and communities — you’re in the right place.
🌿 Living Nature is a community wellbeing and education initiative founded by Josie Lynch, supporting children, families and communities to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the natural world.