Our story
It began at our kitchen table
The Wise Owl Forest did not begin as a product idea. It began at home, when we saw our youngest child experience much more anxiety and tension around starting primary school than we had expected.
Looking for words
We looked for ways to talk together about anxiety, thoughts, tension, stomach aches, doubt, courage and trying. We wanted something that did not feel heavy or clinical, but that still helped make sense of what was happening inside.
Because we both work in helping professions and have training in approaches including ACT, mindfulness and systems theory, we began writing stories ourselves. At first, they were simply for him. Wise Owl, Hare, Mouse, Hedgehog, Fox, Squirrel and Woodpecker gradually appeared.
The animals came to life
We read the stories during quiet moments. Later, the animals returned in daytime conversations and drawings. They gave us words for talking about the inner world without treating every difficult experience as a problem that needed to be fixed immediately.
From our family to a woodland world
That experience grew into the idea of making the stories available to other children and the adults around them. At home, in the classroom, in professional support or alongside other help.
A child is not their anxiety, their difficult thought or their hard moment. Sometimes they mainly need words, images and someone nearby to help them understand what is happening.
Read our vision