One of the things I have found myself reflecting on increasingly over recent years is how strangely fragmented our conversations about children can sometimes become.
We discuss behaviour, attendance, wellbeing, academic attainment, anxiety, concentration and social development as though these exist as separate categories, neatly organised and easily isolated from one another. Yet human beings do not experience life in such compartmentalised ways, and children certainly do not.
Children experience school emotionally. They experience friendships emotionally. They experience success, embarrassment, belonging, comparison and failure emotionally. Learning itself is deeply shaped by emotional context; by whether a child feels safe enough to participate, curious enough to engage and confident enough to take intellectual risks.
Once you begin seeing children through this lens, it becomes difficult to unsee. Learning is happening constantly, including when formal teaching is not.
Children absorb information through relationships, observation, routines, emotional atmospheres and social interactions. They learn from how adults respond to stress, disagreement and uncertainty. They notice what is encouraged, what is dismissed and what feels emotionally safe to express. Long before children fully understand academic theory, they are already forming understandings about themselves, other people and the world around them.
Sometimes they also absorb things we never consciously intended to teach.
Most adults have probably experienced the slightly humbling moment of hearing a child repeat a phrase back to them and realising, with some alarm:
“That sounded very familiar.”
This is part of what makes learning so profoundly relational and environmental in nature.
InclusiveEd emerged from reflecting on this interconnectedness; not simply academic learning, but the relationship between emotional safety, behaviour, participation, confidence, wellbeing and meaningful engagement.
Increasingly, many children appear overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted or quietly disconnected from learning altogether. Schools are being asked to manage increasingly complex emotional, social and educational realities within highly pressured systems, often whilst teachers themselves have limited time, resources or space to create everything they would ideally like to.
Alongside this, anxiety amongst children and young people has risen significantly over the last decade, alongside growing concern regarding social media, excessive screen use and the emotional pressures associated with modern childhood. Researchers are increasingly exploring links between heavy recreational screen use and difficulties relating to sleep, attention, mood, emotional regulation and wellbeing, particularly amongst adolescents.
This does not mean technology is inherently harmful, nor does it require panic every time a child watches YouTube whilst eating toast. Modern family life is rarely that simple. Technology can educate, connect and inspire creativity in extraordinary ways, however, I do think many children are now spending less time engaged in the kinds of experiences human beings have historically learned through most naturally:
conversation,
movement,
play,
reflection,
storytelling,
face-to-face interaction and unstructured exploration.
In many ways, modern childhood has become increasingly sedentary, screen-based and performance-oriented. Yet human beings did not evolve primarily through passive consumption. We learned socially, experientially and relationally; through participation, imitation, movement, contribution and belonging.
Children learn through experience. Through experimenting, creating, moving, building, questioning and participating in the world around them. Most adults understand this intuitively. Very few people learn to ride a bicycle by reading about one.
Educational thinkers such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori argued that meaningful learning is rooted not simply in passive instruction, but in active participation, reflection and lived experience. Contemporary research continues to support the importance of engagement, autonomy and emotional safety within learning environments.
Research into outdoor learning and nature connection has also increasingly linked time spent in natural environments with improvements in attention, stress reduction, emotional wellbeing and social connection. Many educators are beginning to reconsider the role of movement, environment, creativity and slower forms of attention within modern learning.
This is one of the reasons InclusiveEd places importance on experiential, reflective and curiosity-led approaches to learning. Not because structure, schools or boundaries do not matter. They do. Children need guidance, routine and emotional containment. Child-led learning is not the absence of adult responsibility, despite how some social media discussions occasionally present it after somebody has read half a quote from a 1970s educational philosopher and decided timetables are oppressive.
More often, thoughtful child-led learning simply means recognising where genuine engagement already exists and using that as a bridge into wider learning.
A child fascinated by photography may begin noticing light, observation, storytelling and perspective differently. A child absorbed in football statistics may simultaneously be engaging with mathematics, memory, geography and analytical thinking without necessarily experiencing it as formal academic work at all. The interest itself is often only the doorway and perhaps this matters because emotionally meaningful learning tends to stay with us longest. Most adults can recall obscure facts about hobbies they became briefly obsessed with years ago, whilst remembering surprisingly little from lessons learned purely through pressure and repetition. Human beings remember what connects emotionally.
This is not about romanticising education or pretending emotionally safe learning environments remove all challenge or discomfort. Growth often requires frustration, uncertainty and perseverance. However, there is an important difference between meaningful challenge and chronic overwhelm. One gradually stretches children forwards; the other quietly narrows them. I suspect many children are spending too much time emotionally braced which is why emotionally safe environments matter so much. Not perfect environments; those do not exist. But environments where curiosity is encouraged, mistakes feel natural and can be learned from, discussion feels safe and children feel emotionally secure enough to participate authentically rather than simply perform compliance.
This thinking increasingly shapes the direction of InclusiveEd resources.
Many of the activities, discussion prompts and reflective materials are designed not simply to “deliver content,” but to help children:
- think critically
- communicate respectfully
- understand different perspectives
- reflect safely
- recognise vulnerability and risk
- build emotional literacy
- connect learning to real life
This is particularly relevant within areas such as PSHE, SEL, safeguarding, online safety and citizenship education, where children are often navigating highly complex emotional and social realities alongside academic learning. Increasingly, schools are not simply teaching subjects. They are helping young people navigate identity, relationships, digital life, emotional regulation, belonging and participation within an increasingly fast-moving and often overwhelming world. That requires more than information alone.
It requires opportunities for discussion, reflection, respectful disagreement, restorative thinking and emotionally safe participation. It requires recognising children not simply as outcomes, behaviours or data points, but as whole human beings.
Ultimately, education is about far more than information retention or outcomes on paper. It is about helping young people understand themselves, other people and the world around them with greater confidence, empathy, curiosity and care.
That, ultimately, is the thinking behind InclusiveEd.
About the Author
Jennifer Darch is the founder of InclusiveEd, creating emotionally safe, reflective and discussion-based educational resources focused on wellbeing, emotional literacy, PSHE, safeguarding and meaningful learning experiences.
Her work draws upon lived experience, public engagement, EDI training and a long-standing interest in how human beings learn through relationships, participation and connection.
If this resonates with you you can find out more please do comment with your thoughts. You can also find my resources on TPT, TES and Etsy as well as here on Payhip.
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