How to Nurture Your Little Earthling

Why children need the earth and 3 types of bonding for infants

We all know the importance of nature connection for human growth and development, but it’s especially important for infants and young children.

Our connection to the earth is one of our foundational relationships, and it’s a connection that has major impacts on our health and wellbeing.

Research has shown that the frequency of the earth known as the Schumann Resonance, also called the heartbeat of Mother Earth, is directly correlated to our mental and physical wellbeing.

Not only that, but there is also overlap between our brain frequencies, including those most experienced by young children, and the frequency of the earth. König also speculated that this is possibly no coincidence, but a human adaptation to the electromagnetic environment over the long course of evolution.

What does this mean?

It means that children are prepped for earth connection, and that developmentally, they are designed to be spending their days outdoors, with their bare feet on the earth.

Have you come across the concept of Earthing before?

Earthing is the process by which we absorb the earth’s energy through our bare feet. When we come into contact with the earth, free electrons are taken up into the body. We could think of these electrons as nature’s biggest antioxidants, and they can have major impacts on our health and wellbeing. The earth is a conductor of free electrons, as are all living things on the planet, and we can absorb these life-giving electrons through direct skin contact.

Earthing has been shown to reduce inflammation, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, increase energy, lower stress, stabilise the body’s biological rhythms, improve blood pressure, relieve muscle tension, and the list goes on.

So this means that…

being barefoot outdoors is one of the best things we can do to promote children’s health and wellbeing.

How to Nurture Your Little Earthling

Pennie Brownlee from Dance with Me in the Heart is an author, advocate for children and parents, Early Childhood Expert, artist, and most importantly, a mother and grandmother. Her work centres around respectful and conscious care for the baby and young child.

She joined us on the Raising Wildlings podcast to talk about why kids need nature and the three most important bonds in a child’s life: Womb, Mother, and Earth Mother. You can listen to the full episode here.

‘First of all, this little baby is in the womb, that’s their first anchoring in the world. Then their second anchoring is the mother, and their third anchoring is the earth. And the earth provides every single thing that the mother will ever need, use or have, and the mother provides every single thing for the baby in the womb that the baby will need, use or have. It’s a nesting of bonding relationships, and it’s energetic.’

‘You have to bond with the mother because nurture is your first requirement,’ Pennie says. ‘Nurture is not a dominating thing, nurture is a partnership thing. And the better you do the nurture and the partnership, the better those kids’ outcomes for all the rest of their lives, particularly their mental health. So that’s the first great bonding.’

In this way, we can see how earth connection is not just essential for kids, but for adults as well – especially mothers. As our babies’ first anchor in the world, our wellbeing affects theirs.

We can positively impact our health by spending time outdoors in nature together connecting to the heartbeat of Mother Earth.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality for many of us, especially not our children. ‘What’s happening now for so many kids is they’re being kept in captivity. School keeps kids in captivity,’ Pennie says. ‘We go to school and it’s a dynamic of domination,’ she continues, and there’s a reason why more and more children are suffering in schools.

Spending time outdoors has a massive impact on children’s learning outcomes, especially for those who struggle with the dynamic of domination. ‘The research shows that if those children are outside in a natural environment, most of the behaviour that’s very challenging disappears.’

And the reason for this, Pennie says, is that we come back into resonating with the earth’s natural frequencies and our own innate state of harmony.

Being in nature allows us to coregulate with the earth.

‘Do you think that’s an accident that kids come with the same frequency in their consciousness? Of course not, because they’re earthlings and that’s what they’re expecting. They’re expecting to be on the earth and they’re expecting that interaction. That’s one of the reasons why the soles of the feet sweat, so it’s more conductive.’

Not only are they prepped for nature connection, but getting them outdoors at a young age allows them to build emotional and spiritual relationships with their environment.

‘Get those kids out there because only then can they make friends with the buttercups,’ Pennie says.

When kids are outdoors, they become friends with the trees, they get to know the bends in the creek, they experience a sense of belonging and they get to build meaningful relationships with their environment—all of which bode well for raising environmentally aware children who are ecoliterate.

Daniel Coleman defines ecoliteracy as ‘the ability to read our environment and understand the consequences of our actions.’

And with the challenges facing our world today, it’s more important than ever that we foster ecoliteracy and nature connection in our children.

So how can you nurture your little Earthling?

It’s simple – get them outside, let them run barefoot, let them roll on the grass and splash in the creek.

Encourage their curiosity by spending quality time with them outdoors, so you can both experience the healing benefits of Mother Earth.

If you’d like to hear more of what Pennie Brownlee has to say, listen to the full podcast episode on Raising Wildlings here, and share your thoughts with us on socials @wildlings_forestschool.