How Nature Protects Your Child's Mental Health and Restores Yours is an insightful, necessary guide for parents raising sensitive, spirited, or struggling children. Drawing on thirty years of practice as a licensed occupational therapist and deeply personal memoir, author Kathleen Lockyer offers a powerful re-framing of how children develop and how adults heal alongside them. Wild Inside refuses to pathologize struggle, asserting the vital truth: “we are not broken. We are human. We are nature's intelligence.” Lockyer argues that many modern childhoods suffer from a form of developmental deprivation, leading to struggles that often show up as anxiety, trouble focusing, or "misbehavior as a message". Wild Inside is about remembering what helps us feel whole. She introduces the NatureLed™ approach and her term ‘relational-regulation,’ which acts as antidotes, reminding us that nature is the foundation, the "original source code," for regulation, relationship, and learning. The path back to wholeness lies in weaving together three vital threads for resilience and restoration: Interoception (a sense of ourselves). Ecoception (Lockyer’s term for our innate, embodied connection to nature's signals). Alloception (Lockyer’s term for a sense of each other, crucial for relational regulation). You will discover why simple sensory experiences—from listening to birdsong and feeling wind on skin to engaging in “risky free play”—are the practice opportunities children need to build their nervous systems. Lockyer shares stories of navigating the legacy of toxic stress (ACEs) and the journeys of children whose challenging behavior dissolved when they were given permission to reconnect with the wild world. Wild Inside is not a traditional parenting manual, but a compassionate companion, filled with interactive Try This and Wild Reflection sections to help you integrate these concepts into your family life. This is your invitation to remember that your instincts matter and that “healing happens in small, steady moments of connection”—for your child, and for you. Find your way back to the wild places, both around, between, and inside us.