In 2015 my book ‘De eigenwijze kikker — Het geheim van lesgeven en opvoeden’ was published by Paris Books, under the guidance of author and publisher Geert Kimpen. Now, ten years later, we are celebrating a special anniversary. In this interview, Geert and I talk about the importance of ‘learning to be present’, the heart of good teaching and parenting. Because true presence not only changes pupils’ behaviour and learning outcomes, it also opens new doors to approach all kinds of challenges in education more effectively. This book offers inspiration to teachers, educators, school leaders and anyone involved in education.
In the book you will find:
- Real-life cases from everyday practice in education.
- Practical exercises (‘frog leaps’) to strengthen yourself and your pupils energetically.
- References to systemic educational constellations.
- The use of the Wheel of BEING as a transformative tool.
Watch the video or read the full interview below.
Leap into this candid conversation in which Hilde Van Bulck shows how one headstrong frog is still sending out sparks in education after ten years. With nothing more than a conscious breath and a brave leap, she invites teachers and parents to make learning fizz again. Do you dare to land in the here and now too? Click play and breathe along for a moment, or read it below.
Geert: I’m sitting here with Hilde van Bulck, the author of De Eigenwijze Kikker. It’s one of the very first books we published at Paris Books. It’s an everseller, a book that after 10 years is still winning lots of fans and is still widely read. To celebrate that 10th anniversary, I’m having a little chat with Hilde. Welcome!
Hilde: Thank you.
Geert: Hilde, this book is about raising children. Judging by the title, it is a plea for ‘headstrong wisdom’.
Hilde: Absolutely. In fact, it already starts with the cover, you see. As you can see, it looks like a children’s book, which makes adults say: ‘Oh, but that’s not a book for me.’ But that’s actually a radical mistake. That’s where the headstrong wisdom already lies, because the book is intended for adults. They can then pass it on to the children.
Geert: Lovely.
Hilde: That’s where the headstrong wisdom already lies. That headstrong wisdom then works on two different levels. On the one hand you have your own wisdom, which is when you follow your inner wisdom. The frog in the book, for instance, follows its own path, its inner voice. It follows its own feeling and is also willing to question systems. That own wisdom, the source of it, is something we all possess. The pupils, the children, possess it, and so do the adults, the parents and the teachers.
Geert: Yes.
Hilde: A second level of ‘headstrong wisdom’ is ‘being headstrong’. You need a dose of headstrongness to put your own wisdom out into the world. But your own wisdom, being headstrong, is at the same time vulnerable and very powerful. It’s also important for those children who are struggling a bit at school, so that they get the chance to follow their own path, their own way of learning, their own way of perceiving things, and so on. So it works on two levels here. It isn’t about the kind of headstrongness that says ‘I’m going to dig my heels in’ or something like that. Quite the opposite. It’s about not swimming against the current, but finding your own unique current. That applies to children and adults alike. But with this book I’m addressing adults first and foremost, so that they can pass it on to the children.
It’s about finding your own unique current.
Geert: Lovely. Yes, of course you’re a very idealistic educator, with centuries of experience in education, I’d almost say.
Hilde: I think it’s true, those centuries of experience.
Geert: But even so, these days a great many children and young people are dropping out and no longer want to go to school. After the COVID period, a lot of children have also ended up isolated. Do you have solutions, both for the parents and for the children and young people who simply can’t cope in education any more?
Hilde: I’d first like to refer back to the adults, because look at what’s happening in schools. It’s not only pupils who are dropping out, school leaders are dropping out too, teachers are dropping out. That’s an enormous problem. Now, I don’t believe in the one solution. But what I do believe is that if we start to look in a different way, a movement is created. And where there is movement, something is already changing. For those children who are supposedly dropping out, we often long for instant solutions. But they’re not coffee. They’re not instant coffee. So what’s actually needed is a process of awareness. Processes of awareness go step by step. But if we start to look differently, that process of becoming aware is already set in motion. So that’s already very important to know.
On the other hand, I’d also like to say this: children don’t drop out. I really want to say that very clearly. They don’t drop out. They are pushed out.
Geert: Out of education?
Hilde: Yes, they are pushed out.
Hilde: And the same thing happens with adults too. So I always draw this parallel. Because the system doesn’t connect with what children need deep down inside. I’d even dare to say: need at soul level. Yes. There is so little space, breathing space, room to move. Many children feel as though they’re in a straitjacket. Be honest: if you were in a straitjacket, would you feel like learning? No, you’d feel like stepping out of that straitjacket. So pupils are actually pushed out by the school, because the system isn’t attuned to the pupil; instead the pupil is expected to attune to the system. That’s an outdated way of thinking. It may have worked once, but it doesn’t work any more.
How are you supposed to keep the connection with your natural being if you sit in a classroom all day?
Another thing is that schools devote a lot of attention to the cognitive. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. But what about everything else? What happens? Where is the attention for the body? Where is the attention for the world of feelings? Where is the attention for intuition? For movement? For the connection with nature? How are you supposed to keep the connection with your natural being if you sit in a classroom all day? It’s impossible. Last but not least, because that’s always where I really want to end up: where is the space for energetic and spiritual awareness in children? Because children are hugely open to it and are in touch with it. I don’t see that space in schools.
Geert: No, no. But still, for now the system is what it is, and children are dropping out. My own daughter is someone who completely came to grief in education. A very strong-willed child. What can we do with those children? You have some wonderful little figures here. I take it that’s one of your tools?
Hilde: Yes. I’ll show you something with the figures in a moment. But first I’d like to say a little more about the book: when it comes to solutions, the book invites you to be much more present with yourself. I’ve developed a tool for that. It’s the Wheel of Being. The Wheel of Being is actually a compass for teachers, for adults, for parents, to learn to be more present in who they are. It consists of eight axes. When you practise with it, you break free from the purely cognitive and come into contact with the greater field of yourself. So that source of inner wisdom is called upon. When teachers have integrated this and bring it into the classroom, the pupils will go along with them just like that. But be careful, there’s a pitfall here. Because they may think: ‘Ah, I’ll just master that knowledge, the knowledge of the Wheel of Being, and then it’ll work in the classroom too.’ That’s not how it works. Because pupils have incredibly sensitive antennae. They sense immediately whether it’s just knowledge for you or something you’ve truly lived.
Geert: Yes.
Hilde: If it hasn’t been truly lived, they won’t accept it. They’ll push it away. Yes. So that being present is one pillar, so to speak, of how I would approach it. The other way of looking at these problems is systemic educational constellations.
Children are the most finely tuned barometers you can imagine. They detect every cloud, every raindrop, every storm, every area of high or low pressure in the emotional weather of their teachers, as individuals and as a team.
As I said, these children have very fine antennae and they always perceive whether something in adults is in balance or out of balance. Whether something in the system is in balance or out of balance. They perceive it unerringly. So they are actually walking around with backpacks full of untold stories from their own family system, but also with backpacks full of untold stories from the history of the school. Schools don’t stop to think about that. They bring those backpacks with them to school. When they start behaving in difficult ways, or skip school, no longer want to come to school, fall ill, and so on, that is actually a signal for the whole system. Because in essence these children aren’t being difficult or genuinely ill. They simply want to deliver a message. But that happens at an unconscious level. They can’t — if you ask these children: ‘Why are you behaving like this?’ or ‘Why are you ill?’ — they won’t be able to give you an answer. But it has to do with underlying dynamics in the family system on the one hand and in the school system on the other. Schools don’t look at that. They look at the surface, but with systemic constellations we look beneath the surface and see what’s really going on. Shall I give an example here with the figures?
Geert: Please do.
Pupils and teachers walk around with backpacks full of the school’s untold stories.
Hilde: I’ve already set it up a little, but not completely. When we did one such educational constellation, there was a teacher from the fifth year of secondary school. For years she’d had no problems at all with discipline or anything like that. Everything just went smoothly. Then at a certain point, in the fifth year, she had a class she couldn’t do anything with. There was one pupil who triggered her enormously, whom she couldn’t cope with, and the other pupils regularly laughed at her. So this woman, who was already of a certain age, was a bit in shock that this was suddenly happening. She wanted to explore how it had come about. Because adults go through the same processes as children. They often forget that. So what did we set up? Here you see lots of little figures. They’re actually representatives of the pupils. They aren’t all the pupils, but one figure represents several pupils. Now, in reality I do this live, not with figures. It’s possible, but I do it live with a number of people who have gathered around it. So this is her class group. This is the teacher who has the question. This is the pupil she has such a problem with. There are little eyes on them. Can you see? That’s the direction they’re looking in. I ask her to place that pupil in the class the way she sees it. She does that intuitively. People do try to reason it out, but that reasoning doesn’t work. It just happens intuitively. She places her with her gaze directed over there. While all the other pupils are facing over there. Then I say: ‘OK, that’s fine. Now place yourself.’ You see the little eyes here again. She places herself with her back to the class.
Geert: That doesn’t seem very healthy.
Hilde: You see. You react immediately. You know straight away: something’s going on here. That teacher knows something’s going on too, but she can’t put her finger on it. She can’t reason her way through it and say: ‘Ah, that’s the problem and that’s how it should be solved.’ So what did we see in the constellation? That she — look at the same colour here too — she and that pupil are both doing the same thing. That pupil is looking away from the class; she doesn’t want to follow the lesson. But the teacher doesn’t want to teach. Do you see that? That pupil is absent from what’s happening in the group and her gaze is actually directed at themes playing out in the family system. But the teacher, in this case, also has themes playing out in her family system. That is a very important insight. When there are themes in the family system that haven’t been processed, haven’t been resolved emotionally, a child can’t focus on the subject matter. Let me give a more concrete example that many people will recognise. Suppose one of the parents, or brothers or sisters, or another family member has no zest for life, doesn’t feel like doing anything any more, finds everything heavy and difficult and actually has no life energy left; the child will perceive that at an unconscious level. So at an unconscious level — yes, I always have to add that it’s unconscious — it will care for that family member out of a great deal of love. And then when he has to go to school, he says: ‘Subject matter? Matter? No, life comes first.’ When life is disturbed somewhere, you can’t learn. Once teachers or schools understand that and can pay attention to the process of living, you’ll see that they win the pupils back. Very quickly, in fact. It doesn’t have to take months. They don’t need to go into therapy for months. By learning that presence with yourself, as described in De Eigenwijze Kikker, with the Wheel of Being. So by anchoring that presence, you can also teach it to your pupils. They’ll be able, even when things are difficult at home, to still be present at other times in what is called the ‘here and now’, you know, in the place where they are, at school for example.
Geert: Yes.
When life is disturbed somewhere, you can’t learn.
Hilde: So life always comes first. If that isn’t the case, the pupil — and the adult too, so the teacher too — will turn away from the job or from the learning process.
Geert: Lovely. And lovely to hear that it can be solved relatively simply and quickly.
Hilde: Yes, if you’re willing to turn your gaze inwards and actually look at your wider energy field. So at your inner source. Yes, I’m already closing my eyes, because I can feel that inner source doing its work too. Children can also connect with it very easily, but not if they’re judged on it, not if they’re rejected for it. So it’s important to be a headstrong teacher who dares to put this kind of thing in place in a school first, who pays attention to it first and takes the pupils along. You’ll win your pupils over too. I guarantee it. Because I’ve experienced all of this myself. I didn’t make it up. It all emerged by itself in my own classes. I then worked it out in that book.
Geert: Yes, lovely.
Hilde: And then I saw that the behaviour changes and the results change too.
Hilde: I’d like to say one more thing about that systemic perspective. When a pupil shows that kind of behaviour, or other behaviour — it can take all sorts of forms — that pupil isn’t just working for themselves. They’re giving a signal about themselves. They’re saying to the school: ‘I’m not doing well.’ They’re also saying something else to the school. Namely: ‘In this class there’s another pupil who is doing even worse (than me) and who isn’t being seen. But that pupil won’t make a fuss. Shall I make a fuss instead?’
Geert: OK.
Hilde: They’re saying something else too. They’re also saying: ‘In the school as well, there’s an imbalance at a certain level. Either with the teachers, or with the teaching team, or with the school leadership, or in the school system.’ So they’re giving more than one signal. And that’s not to mention everything that’s happening in society right now. That plays out in schools too, in adults as well as in children. It really isn’t a children’s book. It’s a book for adults, to learn to make these things their own. To take on a different radiance, a radiance of life, and from there to set learning in motion.
Geert: Lovely, and very important. I think our children in education would benefit enormously if this book were taken to heart, because teachers with the talent to treat children so carefully and lovingly are still rare birds in education. Your book has already touched so many hearts and set so much in motion over those 10 years. What’s the most beautiful response you remember?
For the first time I see that my son isn’t a problem child, but that he’s showing something I myself had forgotten.
Hilde: Yes, I find it hard to pick out one response, because there have already been so many lovely responses, both in person and by email, and so on. What gives me a lot of joy is that there are teachers who are working with the exercises from the book, who have also taken a training in it, or who make their own teaching materials to work with the children. Because at the beginning I talk about a frog of decisiveness and a frog of the heart. So they make materials to go leaping around the classroom as frogs with decisiveness and with heart. You need decisiveness to want to learn your lesson. But you also need the heart to be able to learn or to teach.
Something else that has certainly touched me are the people who work with the Wheel of Being. There’s even a head teacher who had the Wheel of Being enlarged, framed and hung on a wall in his office, so that — and he said it was so that he’d always be reminded to stay properly present, because that gave him a different contact with his staff. So the field of that book lives on much further. That really does me good.
And then something very intimate too, I find: a father who said to me: ‘For the first time I see that my son isn’t a problem child, but that he’s showing something I myself had forgotten.’ How important is that? To see your child not as a problem child, but simply as a child. The child immediately starts behaving differently. Yes, so that’s a small selection of the responses I’ve received.
Geert: Yes, wonderful. Hilde, we are very proud to have published this book, and proud that you are still bringing it into this world with such verve. We’re already on the fourth printing of this book. I’m sure that over the next 10 years at least four more printings will follow.
Hilde: That’s what we’re aiming for.
Geert: Ladies and gentlemen, this one comes highly recommended: De Eigenwijze Kikker by Hilde Van Bulck.
Hilde Van Bulck
Hilde is a soul-driven trainer in systemic and energetic work with years of experience in education, constellation work and presence awareness. She helps leaders and their teams turn problem situations into opportunities for growth. She runs training courses, supports programmes, guides people in their personal and professional development and writes about the richness of life, including its paradoxes.
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