A Profession Meant For This Moment

It is no accident that we find ourselves here, in a time when entire groups of adults display behavior that leaves us stunned.

Adults don’t suddenly become capable of callous abuse or brutality. They were once children, shaped over time by what our systems normalize, what communities tolerate, and how consistently children are unseen long before they are handed uniforms, bank accounts, weapons, and the authority to wield them. 

Life is a series of moments strung together over time. Small, everyday moments accumulate. They build connection, or disconnection. They build a love of life or they build anger and apathy. Moments shape moral or amoral behavior. What we are witnessing in society isn’t something that just happens overnight. It is constructed slowly, moment by moment.

Moments like this one easily overlooked moment from a schoolyard in California..

In this part of California, the hallways are outside walkways connecting classrooms. On the day it happened, it was raining. Rain is a rare event in this part of the state.

Children stood in line outside their classrooms at the start of the day. Adults shouted at them “Get under the eaves! Stay out of the rain!”

I walked across campus in my rain boots, remembering the joy of rain from my own childhood.

 “Oh, rain! YAY! I love the rain!” I exclaimed as I walked past lines of huddled children.

One child shouted in response, “Me too!”

Later that morning, on my way to a meeting, I came upon a girl of about seven. She stood in the rain, shoulders slumped, eyes drifting to the ground. A staff member stood in front of her with a stern voice:

“Young lady! How many times have I told you, no running?”

The girl’s eyes lifted toward me. They pleaded: Hello? Anyone? Are you there?

In my mind, I answered her. I’m here, little one. I’m here.

“Well?!” the adult pressed.

The child began to cry.

Startling the adult, I stepped up beside them. I turned toward the child.

“The rain is so exciting,” I offered. “And it’s really hard to walk when you’re in a body that wants to run and jump and move all the time, isn’t it?”

The girl held my gaze and nodded.

The staff member’s expression shifted. The lines on her face said, I am so tired.

“Okay. Back to class,” she said, releasing the child.

As the girl skipped off, the adult looked at me and said, “You know… I never thought about it that way. I forgot what that was like.”

For that moment, I’d been helpful to both the child and adult.

I cannot help myself. I can’t stand by, worried about being liked, when a child is suffering under misguided practices.

We have the evidence to know better. And to do better.

There is no such thing as “not my problem.” If children are not our concern now, they will be later.

Not every child treated harshly grows into a misguided or amoral adult. Many rise above adversity to become “the better person.” I like to think I am one of them. Which is why I understand the resentment that grows when a child feels unseen. And it’s why I speak.

What I see, over and over, is that children with the potential to become extraordinary creatives and leaders often arrive with highly sensitive nervous systems. These are the very children most deeply shaped by harshness, lack of agency, and relational disconnection.

The “shaping” isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it is subtle teasing and bullying. Sometimes neglect. Sometimes a school system still rooted in industrial-age underpinnings. Sometimes it is the ache of disconnection. 

Disconnection is everywhere. Have you ever noticed a baby in a grocery cart trying to make eye contact with anyone? Reaching for attunement in a sea of distractions?

When adults in our communities act with brutality or predation, we are witnessing the visible outcome of decades of reinforced disconnection. This does not excuse adult choices. Accountability matters.

But if we hope to reduce callous violence in the next generation, we must examine what shaped it. And make the changes within our daily capacity.

Few are born wired for dehumanization. Humans are inherently social. We require connection, meaning, and belonging.

So when behavior violates those instincts, we must ask: From what kind of absence did this emerge? And where did that absence begin?

How many times have you watched a colleague or parent treat behavior as the problem without asking how that behavior was shaped?

How many times have you stayed silent because you lacked the language, evidence, courage, or authority to interrupt the narrative?

How many times have you felt the pit in your stomach while deferring to someone with more “experience,” even when your clinical reasoning (or aching heart) told you otherwise?

Occupational therapists understand nervous system development at a depth few professions do.

We are trained in activity analysis.

 We identify underlying skills that give rise to participation.

 We see how behavior is shaped by environment, relationship, sensory input, and repeated experience over time.

And yet many of us are practicing within systems that ask us to look away from what we know.

To look away from evolved developmental needs and focus on behavior reduction.

 Look away from relational rupture and focus on compliance.

 Look away from environmental deprivation and focus on productivity.

To bypass all the core pieces of development that a child needs to have in place before they can write a sentence on paper — long before they become an adult making independent choices.

Over time, this erodes client outcomes, reduces our professional identity.

Therapists enter the field with purpose and conviction. With a belief that meaningful occupation restores dignity — which creates the conditions for health. And far sooner than expected, that conviction dulls.

How many therapists say they burned out after two years?

Burnout is real. When it happens, emotional flattening follows. Cynicism creeps in. The system feels too entrenched to influence. And therapists leave.

Up to one in three OTs report that they are considering leaving the field.

Research across allied health professions reflects chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. These are predictable responses to sustained toxic stress in systems misaligned with what actually restores health.

The Harvard Center on the Developing Child describes three types of stress: positive, tolerable, and toxic.

Positive stress builds capacity.

 Tolerable stress strains but can be buffered with support.

 Toxic stress overwhelms without protection or repair.

Toxic stress shapes entire systems. It narrows perception. It reduces empathy. It shifts responses from curiosity toward control.

Stress is contagious.

One dysregulated nervous system activates others. This is basic physiology. When adults operate under chronic strain, attunement erodes.

We are swimming in chronic stress.

And occupational therapy was born in response to this exact kind of world.

Our profession emerged before World War I and blossomed after the war amid collective trauma. Its roots trace to the Moral Treatment Movement, which insisted that people experiencing mental illness deserved dignity, routine, purpose, relationship, and engagement with the natural world.

Patients gardened, cooked, wove, walked outdoors, and participated in daily life because these experiences restored nervous systems, health, identity, and belonging. Meaningful activity was not an enhancement to life. It was the treatment.

Occupational therapy was founded by radicals who understood that healing happens at the intersection of occupation, environment, and relationship, especially during collective strain.

This moment is what our profession was built for.

This is the heart of NatureLed™ training and community.

If we want fewer adults who respond to stress with brutality, the work begins long before adulthood. It begins with noticing overwhelmed children and their caregivers. It begins with guiding rather than controlling. It begins with building skills rather than demanding compliance. It begins with restoring connection between people and the living world.

And it begins with therapists who refuse to look away and who have the courage of our founders to speak up. 

NatureLed™ training supports you in integrating nature-connection into everyday practice while restoring your own nervous system, building confidence and courage, and strengthening your clinical impact.

It helps you reclaim the authority of a radical profession.

And it offers a community of therapists who remember why they entered this field in the first place.

Exactly now is where occupational therapy shines.

With respect and a bit of fire,  

 Kathleen

Click here to learn more and register for our NEXT GENERATION OT Courses, offered by RxOutside, LLC AN APPROVED PROVIDER WITH THE AOTA!!!