Wildlife Inspired Awe; Benefits of Exposing Kids to the Natural World with Special Guest Jonathan Hicks

Hey welcome back no problem parents hey can you think of a time when nature just left you in absolute awe almost everyone has had a memorable encounter with wildlife and these experiences of wildlife inspired awe can help us form a deeper connection to nature as well as to yourself and and your relationship with your kiddo. So today, my special guest is going to talk with us about what wildlife-inspired awe is and how it can improve our mental health and our relationships, how we as parents can incorporate awe into our daily routine with our kiddos, and the benefits from exposing our kids to the natural world. Meet Dr. Jonathan Hicks.

Dr. Hicks is a professor of cultural and natural resource management in the Department of Recreation Parks and Leisure Services at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Much of his research in the last decade emphasizes the roles of wildlife in facilitating meaningful connections to the natural world. Prior to his arrival at Minnesota State, Dr. Hicks gained teaching experience in a variety of environmental education and summer camps. His involvement in outdoor recreation eventually led him to study and teach at the University of Illinois, where he served as a lecturer, and internship coordinator.

He focuses on incorporating experiential education into the classroom and utilizing applied research to bolster student knowledge and enhance environmental awareness. He's earned numerous commendations for his community-driven approach to teaching, and he considers his work as student mentor among his most significant contributions. This is just gonna be a fun, kind of peaceful, awe-inspiring show today, so stay tuned.

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And there's lots more specials to come. So if you haven't already, you're going to want to get on our newsletter at least for the month of November. You can always unsubscribe if it's not your thing. Go to noproblemparents.com and enter your name and email information, and we'll get you signed up for the newsletter and lots of other free resources. All right, let's get into today's show. All right, today I want to welcome my special guest, Dr. Jonathan Hicks. He is another member of the Mankato TEDx Talk. And I was so inspired by your TEDx and your talk that I reached out to you and asked if you'd be willing to come on the podcast so that today we can talk all things, the correlation or the connection between nature and animals and mental health. So welcome to the show, Dr. Jonathan. Thanks so much for having me,

Jackie. I really appreciate it. So let's begin by you kind of sharing with us maybe how and why you decided to study wildlife inspired awe. In your TEDx, you talk about awe and the awe in nature, the Ayan animals. And I of course have my own story that I share on episode 32 of the podcast, but how did you kind of decide to get into this? What inspired you? It wasn't a single event. It was lots of events over the course of time, undoubtedly dating back to my own childhood and feeling drawn to the outdoors, feeling drawn to green spaces and recognizing how fascinated I was just by the inhabitants of those spaces. This was never, and I never had the intention of having a career doing this. I actually studied journalism as an undergraduate,

but I got started working with kids in a environmental education center when I was in junior college and loved the idea of imparting what I knew about the natural world to other people. And what I found that was so gratifying and continues to be gratifying to this day is that my own relationship with the natural world and with wildlife is refined by the conversations and experiences that I have with young people. So it's an assemblage of experiences over the course of time, moments where I was so struck by the beauty, oftentimes beauty, of an animal that it forced me to pause something that you've talked about that that it's almost as though you have no say in it it's all of a sudden things kind of stop or slow down and you're fully engaged in that moment and when I went to graduate school I actually had no intention of pursuing a PhD I was going to get a master's degree go back and run a nature center and continue to work with kids and I found myself infatuated with trying to understand if other people experienced the same things that I did that seemingly mundane moments with wild animals could cement themselves in their psyche and so I think in some ways if I'm being truly honest about it it was a way of self-validation to to know that other people had similar experiences to my own. I can relate to that sometimes you think you just wonder if you're the only person that's experienced something so

that you just feel at your core and those moments when an animal or a landscape or something just totally stops you in your tracks and really causes you to pause and wonder um and i and that's what i love about your your tedx talk inspiring off your nature and animals so um yeah i totally relate to that. What are some, maybe I've seen obviously in person, your TEDx, and I've watched it again since, but some of the most memorable experiences that you had and what you did take away from those?

Well, the one that I talk about most acutely in the TED talk, as you well know, is an experience that I had with an opossum. Which is so random where you live too. So completely random. Did any, I mean, I know that was your first experience seeing an opossum, but did anybody see an opossum?

I mean, or was it just? No, it was, this would have been a major headline in our household for all of us. My parents included. We grew up in the middle of Rockford, Illinois, which, and on the west side of Rockford as well, which was a rough neighborhood at times. And And so to see an animal like that was truly a transcendent moment.

There are countless experiences along the way. I think some are ones that you would anticipate. A bald eagle soaring or a humpback whale breaching. A bear slowly moving through the forest in the shadows.

These are moments, a moose feeding in a pond. These are things that are perhaps more conventional. But the thing that's always so encouraging to me is finding that pause in the seemingly mundane. I think it's the core of what I talk about in the TED Talk, that it's easy to be awed by a whale, right?

There's issues of scale and a feeling of insignificance that comes with seeing an animal of that scale. But what I found both in my own experiences and in talking to other people and hearing their stories is that the people that tend to be the healthiest and happiest are the ones who can get lost in a butterfly landing on their wrist. That can see a caterpillar crawling through the grass and stop and take stock of that moment, even if it is only for a moment.

um so i've been i consider myself truly fortunate to have been in a situation so many times over the course of my existence where i see something for me it's oftentimes wildlife though not exclusively um but see something that encourages me to to take stock to reflect to recognize that despite all of life's other challenges and distractions that there are good things occurring around us if we just stop to notice them. Yeah, I think it's very important. And I really was oblivious to that, to really paying attention to the signs too. When you do have those moments of awe when you're in nature or an animal, like I mentioned about the goldfinch landing on my window and that really being this aha, but it was a friend of mine that, you know,

said, Hey, we need to look that up. There's a spiritual meaning behind that. And I was, I was, that was not on my radar at all. I mean, I had been inspired, you know, taking walks in the woods.

I love to cut wood. We used to burn wood as a, our heating source growing up. And so we, you know, being in nature was, was what we did. And there, and it was, there was always like, you know, something that would catch our eye or that we would notice that.

But I didn't really, it wasn't until, you know, 12 years ago that I really started to pay attention to and pause and take in kind of the message sometimes that we receive with the animals. I think you speak to something really valuable there, though, which is that experiences and research supports this, that experiences by themselves don't have meaning, that ultimately meaning is something that we get to assign. And so I think it's worthy of remembering that, especially in difficult times where we get to decide what something actually means and how it's going to inform our subsequent behavior and how it's going to inform our worldview. There are elements of choice in that.

It's not as simple as to say that we can choose to experience awe, but we can choose to stop and recognize it and to recognize that there are positive, there are potentially positive ripple effects to that experience. Yeah. And I appreciate that. I really, I love that because sometimes we're so busy in our daily routine or our tasks or things that I don't know if it's taking it for granted or, or what, but taking a minute to just pause and reflect and wonder whether you're looking up a spiritual meaning or not, but just pausing and thinking, what is this animal representing? Even if it's just to slow us down for a minute. Exactly. You know, it's the cool thing. How can parents really incorporate awe into their daily routine? You mentioned working with kids and I'm sure that that's part of what you've done with children. So what are some ideas that we can give parents to help incorporate awe into their daily routine and with their,

with their kiddos. So I think there's two ways to approach this, and one of which is facilitating that sense of awe and wonder in your children. And some of it is also doing the same for yourself while in the presence of your children. I think there's an easy narrative to suggest that when you're parenting, when you're with kids that you care about, that your focus is always going to be exclusively on them. And I would argue that you can still take value from those moments as well.

I did a study a number of years ago where I looked at how adults that were in the presence of kids, typically that they cared about, they're not exclusively, sometimes it was camp leaders and things like that, but how kids were what I called an emotional amplifier to an experience. And I used white-tailed deer as kind of the case study animal, an animal that in many situations, especially suburban spaces, is one that we take for granted, that in some spaces now is increasingly seen as a pest, right? That maybe in a previous generation, the white-tailed deer was the symbol of majesty and beauty, and then increasingly it's seen as a pest that will eat our hostas and get in our way on the golf course, right? But one of the fascinating things that came out of that study for that I thought was fascinating at least was that these animals that for many adults as individuals, these animals had come mundane, um, uninteresting that if they saw a deer run in front of them while hiking or paddling, they wouldn't think anything of it.

But when they were in the presence of kids that would experience genuine elation over these moments of seeing a deer run in front of them, that it renewed that sense of awe for the adults that were there. That, that it's, you know, it's, it's quite literally that cliche of seeing things through children's eyes, right? But it renewed that species and in some ways renewed the connectivity to the natural world that adults in many situations had ultimately lost, but being there with their kids actually reignited some of them. So I think there's value in remembering that as part of facilitating these processes for your kids, that can also be something that you work into your self-care routine. It can be something that has benefits for you as well. Now, in terms of facilitating it for your kids, I know it's overly simplistic. Get outside. It starts there.

It really does. As much as we can facilitate experiences in the outdoors, there's value in doing that. And that can include conventional natural park settings. It can include zoos, especially for young children. Zoos are frequently a source of awe and wonder.

And what that does, particularly when it comes to wildlife, is you're very likely, you're almost guaranteed to have those experiences, right? And what I would encourage you to pay attention to as a parent is just what excites them. Something that you do already, right? For some kids, it's going to be otters.

For other kids, it's going to be fish. For other kids, it's going to be elephants. But really paying attention to and nurturing that thing that inspires wonder in them. Kids generally, they don't necessarily express awe the same way that adults do, right?

Like kids aren't necessarily taking, aren't cognitively aware of taking a moment to pause and reflect. But there is that face. And you see that look of wonder when they've identified that species that is going to be one they carry with them potentially forever. That could inform their leisure and recreation choices.

That could inform their fashion choices. That could inform any number of other. Yeah, their career choices, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, these are things that can stick with kids in really profound ways. And so there's something to be said for nurturing that. And knowing that wonder will fade over time. There are elements with awe and wonder of novelty, that when things are new and fresh, that's when we are most likely to experience those sorts of factors.

Um, but there's just as much value in establishing relationships with, if not those individual animals, the species. And so, uh, you know, again, I recognize how incredibly cliche it is, but start by going outside the, the natural world will reveal, uh, to your, to your kids, uh, or to those that you're caring for what they want to see. Yeah. It's really important.

And I mean, doctors are prescribing for kids and people to go outside, right? Go get your vitamin D, going for a walk, finding a place. There's a place almost anyone can find in nature, right? Somewhere close that you can get out.

And we know that there are correlations with kids that spend more or less time outside. We know that kids that don't get outside that are attached to screens are much more likely to experience obesity. They're much more likely to have chronic respiratory issues. oftentimes it's associated with hyperactivity and difficulty paying attention or tuning in in classroom settings. So we know that those things certainly occur when kids don't have access to those natural resources. Kids that do, of course, tend to be a little bit better physically fit. They tend to have greater social bonds, both with those who take care of them as well as their peers. So there's enhanced socialization that occurs in there. We know that they experience a deeper connectivity to the natural world itself, which doesn't necessarily manifest with obvious benefits in the moment, but it's the kind of coping strategies that we often will use as adults.

There's no way that I, as an adult, would recognize the value in going out for a 30 or 40 minute hike in the middle of the day if I hadn't had those experiences as a young person. And so we have to be very thoughtful about not just hoping for these kind of immediate responses or reactions, but recognizing that this is part of a lifelong learning process where kids are ultimately going to be both physically healthier and mentally happier, healthier, well on a basic level.

So, yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think anxiety is higher when we're cooped up in the house and we're just on screens and we're not getting that either socialization or just that, you know, being in the outdoors, being grounded, walking barefoot on the grass, you know, or or on the rocks, you know, just just really being connected to nature in that way. So some of the benefits that we, uh, behaviorally, even for kids of being out in nature, um, those are important, but also for the parents to just really, because I mean, us parents, we're, we're just kind of going through the motions sometimes.

And we're on screens a lot all day or we're, you know, we're not really able or taking the time we're tired, we're exhausted. And instead of sitting on the couch and, you know, binge watching a show at night just to disconnect, even 30 minutes out in nature does a world of good for our own mental health. And look, it's hard. I mean, it's, you know, parents nowadays are being pulled in countless different directions and have countless variables that have the potential to negatively impact their kids than ever before.

You talk about the role that screens play for all of us now. And so that's pretty significant to overcome. We know that screens, whether small or large, historically provided escapism. It's the same reason that people went to movies 70 years ago, because it gives you a little bit of time to get out of your head, so to speak, where you don't have to think about the issues of the day.

And that is always going to have value. But what the natural world can provide is that quiet space to let your mind wander. And it's difficult to overstate the significance of just allowing your brain to go where it wants to go, to not be directed, to not seek escape, but to just be present for all the good and the bad that that entails. Yeah, that is really important. I'm glad you said that. You also published a journal article entitled Learning from Wildlife Inspired Awe. Tell us a little bit about that. What was the reason for publishing that article or what was the inspiration for that?

That's a great question. So this was actually the topic of my doctoral dissertation as well. And the manuscript, the journal article is a much more concise to the point version of it. And I would definitely recommend that far and away over the dissertation itself. But I asked questions about, I knew I wanted to study wildlife. I recognized that I wanted to understand awe and to better understand where I fit in the world relative to that. And my doctoral dissertation committee challenged me and essentially said, so what? Great. People feel awe. Sometimes it's inspired by wildlife. Who cares? What do we do with it? And so it forced me to kind of take a step back and assess, all right, what's the measurable? What's the thing that I think is going to be most likely to have a positive correlation or relationship with this experience?

And so it led me down a path of first surveying people and then subsequently interviewing a subgroup of them to identify everything from where wildlife-inspired awe was most likely to occur. And by the way, it's your backyard or your local park, believe it or not. Certainly national parks and grander landscapes offer that, but most frequently it was places close to home. What species were most likely to elicit it?

And unsurprisingly, it's species like whales, bald eagles, bears, et cetera. So that was kind of helped us establish the what, right? Like what creates this all? What does this all look like?

Where the why came into place was through those interviews. And that's where I was ultimately able to start to identify some themes, some patterns in people's responses related to what, how their life had changed as a result of these experiences in their own view. So I didn't assign any meaning to these. This was them saying, I had this awe-filled experience, and now as a result, I think this, feel this, do this.

One of the main takeaways from that piece, and I've talked to educators about this at length, it's the idea that awe occurs before the learning. that most that and learning is not going to be the thing that triggers the awe as much as we would like it to be as educators that's typically not the sequence that people aren't going to be wowed or amazed by a list of facts what is much more likely to happen is that they are going to have a moment that that stops them in their tracks and makes them want to learn more about that species, that ecosystem, that park, that whatever. And so the fact that Wildlife Inspired All has the potential to create learning is a pretty significant finding, I think.

In terms of the details of what folks learned, it was everything from recognizing that they were in the wrong career to recognizing that they would be happier with different or additional friend groups, that they would want to get involved in different nonprofits and find ways to demonstrate their connectivity to the landscape. And they generally express an overall greater awareness of self, that they express a greater aptitude or ability to take stock, much the way that we've been talking about that basically having an experience or two or three made you more predisposed to having more experiences like that, that it was a tipping point of sorts where if you could have these significant experiences, you knew that they existed all of a sudden and you could start to subsequently look for them even more. Yeah. I love this story in your TEDx about the woman who who has some awe moments, right, in nature. And then she says that it caused her to go back to church. And you were like, wow, that's so great that, you know, that connection.

Well, it was a moment of, she said, well, I'm more likely to go to church now. And my initial response is like, yes, this is the thing that researchers look for, right? Like you saw a wild animal and you found God. Yeah. Right. And, and, and that wasn't it. Um, but, but church and, and worship was a way to connect with other people in a way, uh, as an older adult to share stories that otherwise she wouldn't have an audience for. Yeah. She found community again and a place to feel heard and a place to share her experiences and socialize and connect. And I mean, it's just, it's a really cool story. One of the things that I didn't talk about in the TEDx was the, was the idea of what some of what prompted that, which was that a lot of her friends were gone.

And she talked in particular about the impact of losing her mother. And for the better part of her life, her mom had been the person that when she had these wonderful, awe-inspiring moments that stopped her in her tracks, she would call her mom. And when she no longer had that, it's, that was one of the things that started to shift that behavior that she recognized she still found value in that outlet and that she's that the experience has meant even more to her when she could share them with somebody else yeah that's so cool the power of you know us as as parents setting that example and exposing our children to nature and to and to animals there is a lot they can teach us you know out of the mosa babes so i just love it when i hear from parents now as I share my story, they start to pay attention more and have those conversations with their kids.

I think that's just beautiful. It's harder than ever to have those shared experiences, right? Like as parents, there's competition with countless screens and access to people and the pitfalls of culture, right? And so when you have those things that can be shared, that you can experience along with them. You know, as someone who teaches college students now, and I get to hear their stories about how they came to study what they do and how they came to care about the natural world, more than, far more than not, talk about experiences they had with people they loved when they were younger and how formative those were, not only in fostering their desire to be outside, but in fostering their desire to stay connected to their parents on a basic level,

That they were always, no matter what changed, no matter how the world evolved, no matter how people aged, that they were always going to have that experience. Yeah, I think it's awesome. I think it's really cool. And I hope more parents get out into nature with their kids and just walk and be bored.

You know, we've talked to this about with other guests on the podcast, being bored is actually a good thing. It causes you to be able to just be open to your surroundings and to notice things you otherwise wouldn't notice. And then lots of times, it's like windshield time when you're driving in the car with your kids. It's a great time to have conversations, less distractions, but really a good walk in nature or through the park can really open the doors for a lot of conversations that you otherwise wouldn't make the time for.

Absolutely. Any parting words for us today, Dr. Jonathan? You know, at the end of semesters, when I'm talking to students about not just thinking about their careers, but thinking about the sometimes lengthy paths to arrive in those places, we talk about self-care.

We talk about the importance that basically that if you put all of your emphasis on this outcome, you're going to lose parts of the process that are critical ingredients. And so the thing that I tell them and try to remind them of regularly throughout their time at university is to go out and play. Play is something that by definition, you don't you're not particularly invested in the outcome. You just get to go and be there and be present. And as we get older, it gets harder and harder to do that. There are so many demands on our time and our energy and our resources that we don't often allow ourselves to play. It doesn't feel productive enough.

And so if I were to say anything, it would be go out and play with your kids, without your kids, go out and play. Yeah. Super important. Sometimes it's the simplest things. We can make things so much harder than they need to be. Let's get back to the basics or some of the most simplest those things. And, and, and we'll learn so much and just boost our spirits and decrease our stress and our anxiety, calm down our central nervous system, just enough to, to enjoy all things nature. So, and relationship and how that coincides. So, well, I thank you so much, Dr.

Jonathan, for being with us today, sharing your story. We're going to have links in the show notes for your resources and how people can watch your TEDx. And I just appreciate you being with me today. Thanks so much, Jackie. I really appreciate it. You do a wonderful job and I appreciate being a tiny little part of this. So thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome.

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