Insights into Child Capacities
Honoring Nature's wisdom
When I first discovered the work of Joseph Chilton Pearce a few decades ago, I felt I was like reading forbidden material (like a fundamentalist Christian reading non-Biblical material or a US CEO reading about the benefits of communist economics). Pearce’s work is not rooted in the narrow western science notion of legitimate knowledge: recent experimental evidence, a form of scientism: the only way to know anything is to do a proper experiment. Rather, he was a transdisciplinarian (like myself), drawing insights from multiple disciplines, human biopsychology, as well as personal experience.
Pearce’s insights correspond with Indigenous Intelligence, garnered from millennia of human partnership with a living planet. These capacities and the knowhow for their development are largely ignored or lost in modern societies where those raised with the dominant worldview pooh-pooh their veridicality or possibility. Because of inexperience or fear, adults often dismiss or punish these species-normal abilities in children.
The dominant worldview is forced on children from undercare (lack of the full evolved nest) which leads to self-doubt and easily triggered brain responses. Unnestedness stresses developing systems, pressing children towards relying on innate primate survival systems instead of growing their human potential.
Pearce’s wisdom is being preserved by Kindred World and by Michael Mendizza at Touch the Future. Many of Pearce’s insights have been confirmed by cross-cultural social sciences.
With permission, I quote Mendizza, who has preserved some of Pearce’s insights in the book, The Life and Insights of Joseph Chilton Pearce: Astonishing Capacities and Self-Inflicted Limitations.
[beginning of quote]:
“In 1977 Joseph Chilton Pearce published Magical Child, challenging conventional views on education, parenting, and the innate capacities of children. The book quickly became a national bestseller and a seminal platform for alternative approaches to child development. “Magical thinking implies that some connection exists between thought and reality, that thinking enters into and can influence the actual world.” Pearce described “magical capacities” as the innate, expansive potentials of human development—especially in children—that are often suppressed by cultural conditioning, such as:
Spontaneous Healing and Telepathy: He referenced cases where children demonstrated instantaneous healing or telepathic awareness, especially in emotionally coherent, bonded environments. Not presented as supernatural, rather as expressions of latent biological and spiritual capacities.
Altered States of Consciousness: Pearce believed children could enter unconflicted states—akin to mystical or transcendent experiences—through play, trust, and emotional safety. These states often included heightened perception, intuitive knowing, and even what he called “communion” beyond verbal language.
Creative Genius and “Supernormal” Intelligence: He saw genius not as rare, but as the baseline of human potential—stifled by fear-based systems. Children raised in nurturing, imaginative environments could access extraordinary insight, memory, and problem-solving abilities.
Pearce’s framing was radical: what we call “miracles” are not exceptions, but mirrors of what is possible when development unfolds without trauma or suppression. He never claimed these phenomena were guaranteed, but argued they were biologically innate potentials and historically documented—especially in indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions. He emphasized:
Innate Intelligence and Neuroplasticity: Children are born with extraordinary neural potential, capable of rapid learning and adaptation. Pearce argued that early bonding and nurturing environments unlock this intelligence, while fear-based systems shut it down.
Imaginative Play and Symbolic Thinking: He saw imaginative play as the gateway to creativity, emotional regulation, and mastery of reality. Symbolic thinking—using metaphor, story, and image—is a uniquely human capacity that shapes cognition and culture.
Heart-Brain Coherence: Pearce proposed that the heart functions as a brain, influencing intuition, empathy, and higher states of consciousness. He believed that coherent emotional states (like love and trust) activate latent capacities for insight and transcendence.
Transcendent States and Unconflicted Behavior: Children naturally access altered states of awareness—what Pearce called “unconflicted behavior”—when not constrained by fear or rigid expectations. These states include spontaneous healing, telepathic communion, and heightened perception.
Bonding and Bio-Emotional Development: Joe emphasized mother-infant bonding as foundational to emotional and cognitive development. Disruptions in early attachment (e.g. clinical birth practices, lack of breastfeeding) were seen as barriers to unfolding magical capacities.
Pearce’s work invites a radical rethinking of what we consider “normal” development. He saw the magical child not as a fantasy, but as a biological and spiritual reality expecting to be modeled, opened, and developed through nurturing.
In Magical Child Pearce introduced “The Model Imperative,” referring to the biological necessity for children to learn through modeling—not instruction, coercion, or abstract reasoning, but by observing and emulating the behavior of those around them.
Pearce argued that the human brain is wired to learn by imitation, especially in early development. This imperative is not optional—it’s a genetically programmed drive. In the same way children absorb language they absorb actions, emotional states, attitudes, and even unconscious beliefs from their caregivers and environment.
For Joe, the Model Imperative is a developmental mandate: children must witness and emotionally resonate with behaviors in their environment to activate latent capacities. It’s not just imitation—it’s biological necessity for unfolding human potential. He emphasized:
Learning through emotionally coherent modeling, not instruction.
· Bonding and trust are prerequisites for activating higher brain functions.
Unmodeled capacities may never develop, even if genetically possible.
Pearce argued that entire human potentials—like empathy, intuition, or even telepathy—can be lost in a single generation if not modeled. He saw culture as both the trigger and the limiter of development. The Model Imperative implies:
Learning through direct experience and observation: Children internalize what they see modeled, not what they’re told.
Emotional resonance matters: The model must be emotionally coherent—fear, anxiety, or contradiction in the adult disrupts the child’s ability to integrate the behavior.
Cultural conditioning overrides natural modeling: When society imposes rigid systems (e.g. schooling, discipline), it often replaces authentic modeling with artificial authority, which Pearce saw as damaging.
The imperative is strongest in early childhood but continues through adolescence. If children lack access to healthy, coherent models, their development can be stunted or distorted. Pearce linked this to the rise in psychological disorders and the suppression of “magical” capacities.
In essence, Pearce saw modeling as the primary mechanism of human learning and bonding, and warned that when we ignore this imperative—by substituting it with abstract instruction, fear-based control and technology—we risk severing children from their natural genius.
[end of quote]
First, you are wondering why modern science has not documented children’s capacities as described by Pearce. Two reasons. One, modern science is guided by the left-brain’s individualism, it's separating and categorizing orientation, plus its dismissal of the unmanifest. The capacities described are relational, contextual and immeasurable.
Second, as noted earlier, in industrialized nations, children are undercared for (missing full evolved nestedness) and so not only are the capacities not cultivated, but they are missed by adults without them.
Notice the importance of models for child development. The dominant culture’s view of child raising is telling, instructing with words, even though this is not how children learn their skills or ways of being. Rather, they follow what those around them are doing.
Ethnopsychologist Barbara Rogoff has studied peasant indigenous children and noted how, under species-normal conditions, toddlers and young children observe the behaviors around them and readily pitch in. This occurs throughout childhood and adolescence though there is a sensitive period in early childhood for children to orient to community membership through shared activities.
The modeling the USA provides young children today is centered around screens and two-dimensional images of real and imaginary lives. The modeling in these media is often antisocial rather than attuned cooperation.
Rather than being provided natural and virtuous role models, children are surrounded by Madison Avenue’s inventions and Hollywood’s vicious models (for profit).
Throughout childhood, instead of providing ongoing modeling by older children and by adults, children are placed in same-age groups and classrooms, promoting competition instead.
Modeling is vital in babyhood too. It is provided by the bodies of mother and others through in-arms carrying, which trains up physiological systems, co-regulating respiration and heartrate (cardiac vagal tone), digestion and microbiome function.
The results of ignoring the wisdom that Pearce summarized is evident in the modern world where capitalist industrialized countries are increasingly unwell and destructive to ecological systems at all levels. This contrasts with the remaining Indigenous cultures who follow the evolved nest and live in a manner that promotes health and wellbeing, even of the nonhuman.
These are matters of ethics. Returning to the nested pathway means we learn again the ways of being that attune us to the wisdom of Earth and our ancestors. We model partnership relations with the rest of Nature.
When we listen to children and the rest of our kin, we learn to love and live fully.
Go outside and spend some time listening to Nature where you are, or here.
References to check out:
Narvaez, D., & Bradshaw, G.A. (2023). The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way Of Raising Children And Creating Connected Communities. North Atlantic Books.
Topa, Wahinkpe (Four Arrows), & Narvaez, D. (2022). Restoring the kinship worldview: Indigenous voices introduce 28 precepts for rebalancing life on planet earth