Secure, responsive educator-infant relationships to support mental health

Sara Richardson:
Hello everybody and welcome to the next Early Childhood Australia Be You webinar in our series this year on relationships and mental health. This webinar, secure, responsive, educated infant relationships to support mental health is something that I think a lot of you are very interested in and something that's really important to us as well. So thank you for joining us live or if you're watching the recording it's great to have you with us.
Today, as I said, the focus is on relationships between educators and very young children, particularly looking at secure, responsive educator-infant relationships. And I think probably a lot of us who are here today already know how important the first few years of the child's life are and how critical they are to development and how those early experiences really matter. And we're really going to dig into what that means and feels like and looks like for educators and for children.
But before we go any further, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm joining you from Kaurna country in the Adelaide region, and I would like to acknowledge Kaurna Elders past and present. And I would really encourage you to consider the best way you would like to acknowledge country from where you are joining us from today because we have people from all across Australia. So in the chat if you'd like to, or even if you're at a desk or wherever you're joining from, put your feet on the ground and acknowledge where you're from.
Also, want to note that our own emotional safety is really important as we have this conversation about mental health. We might want to think about and make a plan right now before we get into it for what you'll do if anything we discuss raises some uncomfortable feelings for you or some thoughts or some reminders. It's important to know that there's always someone you can talk to. So on the slide you'll see on the screen you'll see and also in the chat some support services, some places where you can go to seek some support, or you might want to just think about who you could have a chat with or just take some time away just to reground yourself and then join us back in again.
So as I said, today's webinar is part of a series and it's the second in the series of our In Focus webinars. And this year we're offering monthly webinars that are focused on relationships and mental health. And the theme, as I mentioned before, also the theme for the whole of the year is relationships and mental health. We hold these In Focus ones every second month.
And today we're going to have this facilitated discussion with some guest speakers. We're fortunate enough to have two who I'll introduce you to in a second and you can see on the screen. In the second month, there's a follow up to the In Focus, which is on the same topic, but it's really looking at revisiting the key messages that we've learned when we hear about today, but also really translating those ideas into
practical ways that you can make plans for change in your in your context. So as you listen to today's conversation, we really encourage you to have a think about your own service context, your unique priorities, the challenges that you have, and start beginning to reflect on what your next steps might be for change.
So to help do this, we are going to ask you to join us for a poll. So on screen, this is an invitation for you to consider your service's current approach to how you support educator and infant relationships. Now, if you're watching live, you can respond to the poll. If you're watching a recording, you might want to pause right now and have a conversation with whoever you're watching with about where you land or where you fit here. So currently, do you have things in place? You have a service approach or strategy in place to support educator-infant relationships? Or are you kind of getting there making progress or are you in the first steps or is it early days maybe you haven't really even started yet but you want to do something maybe which is perhaps why you've come to this webinar and you're at the beginning. So I'll give you a little bit longer to fill in your responses and then Kat will close the poll and we'll have a look and see.
So lots of people, nearly half of you have got things in place already, which is fantastic. And so hopefully what you're going to find today is some more things to help you keep moving along the way. There are some people who haven't started yet, and that's fine and I think everybody's going to be at a different place, and I think anytime we're planning and looking at change, it's. And it's an ever evolving, continuously improving kind of idea. So it's great to have you all here, regardless of where you're up to, and hopefully you'll have opportunity to think about what your next steps might be, regardless of where you are. So let's get into the conversation today, and I'm really excited to introduce our guest speakers for today.
So we have joining us from Secure Beginnings, Dr. Robyn Dolby and Dr.
Belinda Friezer. And as we get into the questions, I'm going to actually get them to introduce themselves. So I think, Robyn, maybe if you would like to introduce yourself and then we'll hand over to Belinda.
Robyn Dolby:
Thanks, Sara. It's good to be with everyone today. Yes, I'm Robyn. Lindy and I are both from Sydney. We're on Gadigal land. I'm a psychologist. I've been a psychologist for over maybe 45 years and the first half of my professional life has really been working with infants, naught to one month can you believe, so mainly in a NICU setting. And then after that, really from the 1980s onwards, people began to be curious about could you see secure relationships in a group environment. I had the opportunity to spend two years sitting in early education and care settings, observing the interactions between families and children and educators. And I've just stayed put because I believe that educators are one of the pillars of the community in being able to value relationships with young children. So that's a little bit about me.
Sara Richardson:
Thanks, Robyn. And Belinda?
Belinda Friezer:
Yes, so I'm also a psychologist like Robyn and an art therapist. And like Robyn, I started out working with, actually I started out working with families who were expecting a baby and I had the wonderful opportunity to be able to work closely with them for the first five years of that child's life. And what happened in my work was that I was always looking for other people who could really help support the family and the child in the care of the child and was really looking at early childhood education and care as a place that involved committed people who were really there to think about the child's needs. And it was wonderful because that's actually how I met Robyn and in a childcare centre. So and that started off our connection and working together for the last 20 something years or more. So that's how we got together and that's how we've, the way we've been working.
Sara Richardson:
I was thinking we were having conversation about dogs while we were waiting and it feels like you come as a bonded pair and it's a love, it's going to be lovely the dynamic between you. So and the other thing that I'm really looking forward to as well is so the conversation that we can spend today talking about, and it won't be long enough, but it's fantastic to just be talking about infant mental health. So, you know, let's start off with that question and really let's start exploring what are we talking about here? What is infant mental health and why does it matter?
Robyn Dolby:
Sara, I'll start off if that's okay?
Sara Richardson:
Yeah, please.
Robyn Dolby:
I think one of the things to clear up is that when you talk about, have the word mental in there, infant mental health, people may think that you're talking about a diagnosis. But really, infant mental health refers to the capacity for infants and children to grow well and to love well. So it's looking at their capacities for emotional and social development. When I think about that, I can come up with four facets for what it looks like for growing well and loving well. And the first is to be able to express and regulate the full range of emotions. So if you think of someone climbing stairs in a steady rhythm, optimally this is how you want children to experience moving through their feelings. They do it very steadily and in flow. Because when they can move through their feelings steadily, you know that they're more in control of them.
So that's one of the things about living and growing well. And it also includes when they are dysregulated and have a big feeling that they're able to recover from that. So to find, just for all of us, to get your balance back when thrown.
So another part of infant mental health that involves growing well and loving well is the way that we establish relationships. So to be able to establish trusting relationships and repair conflict. All of you will be familiar with attachment and security and you may use the word secure attachment to talk about security. But equally you could use two other words which are relationship repair because security sits on a foundation of the infants learning how to repair interactions when things go wrong or there's been a rupture. And of course, they do all of this learning within the interactions of the people that they know well, starting from their family. So that's the two facets.
You'll see me from time to time. Everyone look over to my notes because I don't want to miss anything.
I just want to say that whatever I say really arises from the work that I've had and the fortunate experience I've had of being with educators for 30 years. So there are two other facets. One is to be a confident explorer and a confident learner. The educators in the baby's room will be so familiar with that. We have a granddaughter and when she doesn't want to talk to me anymore, she pushes me away and asks for grandpa. They can really, really rely on themselves and they enjoy that increasing ability. So to be a confident explorer and also to tolerate frustration so that they can get through a moment if they're disappointed or if they're blocked in some way.
And then the fourth facet is to have enough practice engaging with peers so that they can form close personal bonds and develop a sense of belonging. So all those are the different sides of living well and growing well, which is what we mean by infant mental health.
Sara Richardson:
Robyn, I was just thinking it's really helpful to be reminded again and I think you alluded to this because we know this is the work and we know it's important but to have some more different, that's not very good English, more words and some different words to help explain not just the importance of this work but you know how we do it and you know I think really looking forward to hearing some more but you've already started beautifully.
Robyn Dolby:
Is it all right to say then that, you know, all of those developments that I've been talking about with children, they really develop within the cradle of emotional engagement between an infant and their caregiver. And caregivers include educators. So just like the family, educators give children the sense that they matter, that they are significant in someone else's eyes. And the other thing I want to say is, this mattering to someone, it flourishes when educators experience that they matter and when they feel valued and they feel that their presence and their contribution truly counts to the people around them.
So I'd just like to take a moment to acknowledge the emotional work of educators, the emotional work that you put in, and that is necessary in order to form a relationship with an infant. And at this time to do that, it's at a time when childcare, there's a public concern about it and public discussion. So I really wanted to endorse the fact that the appreciation we have for the emotional care that you put into your work.
And the other thing which will come up today when we're talking about infants and their peers is that educators know a thing or two about peer relationships. So you really have a deep professional knowledge in group formation and peer relationships also contributes to children's and infants’, infant mental health because when an educator can set the scene for infants to feel like they're able to show their best efforts and enter play and sustain that play and leave it in a predictable way, then they get the sense just like they have from their educator that they're valued and their efforts are valued by their peers.
Sara Richardson:
Thanks, Robyn. And I think I really want to acknowledge what you're saying as well. And that whole notion that all of this matters, this whole conversation matters and the work of educators really matters here. And so that notion of mattering is very critical here, right?
Robyn Dolby:
Yeah. And we were reading just this week, really, an article that talked about mattering places, which I actually like the idea. And I've got the quote here. It's from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard, if people wanted to look it up. But they say “that places that are predictable, welcoming and responsive, like a childcare centre or a grandparent's kitchen table, can become mattering spaces where children reliably experience safety, recognition and opportunities to contribute”. I love the introduction of mattering spaces. And I'd really like to add to the quote because I think that at the heart of these places are the relationships inside them.
If I could give an example, this was when we were doing our last lot of research in a babies room. So I was a regular visitor every Tuesday to this room and I always sat in the same place. And this little boy, Jamie, James, rather, he just gave me insight into how infants and young children see and organise the world according to relationship, because infant mental health for infants is all about relationship. So here's a scenario that I'd been visiting his room for a month. And when I opened the door, he came up to me and he looked at me and he pointed to where I would be sitting, as if he was saying, “If you sit there, this is where I'll find you”. And more importantly, “this is where you'll see me from”. His educator, Sally, had left the room to go and get something from the storeroom, and perhaps her pace was quick because he came over to me, he was an 18 month old, and in that room, when the 18 month olds had big news, they would always begin with “uh oh”.
So he told me his big news, which was “Uh oh, Sally run away”. Can you imagine his educator, Sally run away? I could see that he was seeing and organising the world according to relationship. So if he could have put it all together to Sally, he might have said something like, “Hey, Sally, we were in contact. When you leave without saying anything, I can't prepare for your leaving and feel respected. And when you leave without saying that you're coming back, I can't enjoy the good feeling of reconnecting with you.”
So, I really got a very deep sense that James was operating from a particular landscape. The comings and goings of his educators informed his geography of the room, which, you know, that geography of the room was where he felt safe to play or not. So it made me wonder, you know, there's room for educators to be given more permission and more support to sit still and find their own stillness to give themselves room to fully experience the comingand goings of the children. And when you sit down and you give yourself the space to do that, you're struck by two things. You see how approachable you are, you've made yourself so approachable to the children, and you profoundly realise how important you are to the children who are in your care. So maybe a long answer, but it's coming up all the time to relationships being important.
Sara Richardson:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think maybe, I mean, I think we've clearly established the mattering element of this and that there's so much that matters here. I guess I'm just wondering now if we might shift slightly, like why might infant mental health and how is infant mental health different from maybe mental health conversations or thoughts or ideas or than for older children, for example?
Robyn Dolby:
Yeah. So just before I say that, I'll just, can I just stay on matter a bit? I mean, you might think, why does it matter? Because actually in the first few years we often can't remember anything. But the thing is that we feel things and you know, the things we learn before words stay with us. So really what it matters because we're learning how to relate to people and manage the stresses that we're going to encounter all of our life. And so research with infants and children has found that if you have a secure start, you learn to expect well, you have a sense of value in yourself and you feel that you can bring things to a good end when things don't look promising, for example.
Sara Richardson:
Yeah, and those things stay with you in a way that's not cognitive. It's part, you know, part of who you are because it's planted in a different part of your brain, isn't it? So yeah, really, it's very not just important. It's necessary almost to live well and love well, like you were saying before. Yeah. So if we shift a little bit to the differences between infant mental health and older, maybe different ages of children or older children.
Robyn Dolby:
Yeah. So when you're talking about infants and toddlers, relationships are paramount because it's within the context of relationships that they develop a sense of safety for themselves and also how to manage themselves, manage their emotions. Whereas with an older child, a six year old, they're more or less able to give you an account verbally of what a problem might be and an emotional problem might be. So relationships is one difference.
The other is co-regulation because infants and young children, they can't manage big emotions on their own. So when a child has a big emotion and an adult can stay in close and feel what the child feels, but not get upset themselves, then the child's able to borrow from the adult's calmness. And then from that the children learn to move through their feelings and they need lots and lots of practice at this co-regulation with the adult being there as a calm presence and being with them as the children learn to move through their feelings. Whereas with older children, it used to be said by the time the children can tie their shoelaces, no one has shoelaces these days, but that was when you would expect children to be able to do self-regulation because of the history that they've had of co-regulation.
That's one difference. Another difference. Oh, another one is a developmental stage. So over the first several years, brain development is exponential. So everything is being laid down there. So environmental stress can have a profound impact during that period. And then the way in infant mental health, the way infants express their distress is through their crying or their behaviour or their posture. So they're all the things that we have to think about and use as cues to think, what is the infant trying to communicate to me with an older child that they more or less can be more in partnership with you in the sense of telling you what they need or asking for what they need.
Sara Richardson:
And thank you, Robyn. I think that maybe helps us move into this next question in thinking about what does a mentally healthy young child look like? And you've been talking a little bit about some of the things that young children can, how they tell us what's going on. But if we were thinking about specifically what would we be looking for when a child was mentally, a very young child was mentally healthy?
Robyn Dolby:
Yeah because when you first meet infants, you are doing some history making and your history making is towards that you and the infant will trust each other. And so the interactions that we would look for, Lindy and I would talk about them using you as a secure base. So it's really things to look for along the way when you're building this history to see the progress that you're making for the infant to start to trust you. So one of the things that we would encourage you to look for is the smooth transitions in and out to you so that the infants, first of all, they might do it by looking, but when they're mobile, you'll see them crawl into you. It might be usually for comfort or a sense of protection. Once there, they get the feeling that everything is safe again. So then you see a smooth movement out to play. So you're really looking for these smooth movements in and smooth movements out. If you see that, then
you know that the baby has a sense of you as a relational resource. We talk about, let's see if the infants are making direct routes in and out to you.
It's the same with their feelings that babies will show their feelings directly to you because they trust you, you know, once they feel that they have got to know you in that way. So they can approach you directly as opposed to being more indirect. So I would encouraging educators to look at how directly the children express their feelings to them.
And then the other thing that, this is something you feel, it's really, you would feel that you know this infant and you have a relationship with them by the way that they receive care. When an infant can soothe with an educator, that's a big deal. It's a really big accomplishment and educators are now on a different footing after this because both they and the infant have a foundation for managing anything else that might be difficult in the infant's day. So it's really that when you experience that the infant can reliably soothe with you, that is a marker that you now trust each other and the educators would be able to tell you that they not only trust themselves to soothe the infant, but they also trust in the infant's capacity more to be able to get through and come back to a settled state. So those would be the kinds of things that I'd be looking for.
Lindy, is there something else that we could think about?
Belinda Friezer:
Oh, it's interesting because as you were both talking, I've just been thinking. And I know at the beginning, Sara, you had those slides up about what are these key points that you might be looking at at your next webinar or next focus group. And as you were talking, I was thinking, it really is about that from the infant's experience, which is needing you to stay in close around periods of distress, but also you finding something within yourself to stay in close to the child around their distress. And as Robyn said much earlier on that key point, isn't it, that for children to love and grow well, they really need to be able to experience the full range of emotions. And when they have an adult who they trust, who receives them and who accepts those full range of emotions is not bowled over by them and actually can stay in close to help the child move through them until they feel settled on the other side. Really that's a key element there for developing really healthy social and emotional mental health from those really beginning stages it matters how that happens in those early years really does impact on how you deal with stress later on in life and how you manage your relationships as well.
So I think for educators, especially in the infants and babies rooms or the nursery, really when you think about what is my job, my job is to come in and to stay in close and to be with these babies to help them have this experience of what we call co-regulation with you as an educator.
It's about co-regulation, co-regulation, co-regulation, until eventually as the child grows, it starts to become ah a moment of self-regulation, ah a moment of self-regulation. And I think that is what matters.
Sara Richardson:
And I think that's, it just sounded that's what was coming across when the two of you were chatting together. Yeah, it's very powerful. And I'm really conscious, we're actually running behind time, which is, I'm not surprised.
So what are we going to do is, I think what we'll do, and this kind of really follows on from what you're talking about there, Belinda, is moving into that conversation about relationships and attachments, which are the key to infant mental health, and I think, you know, just also picking up on what you've said, there is children experience a full range of emotions doesn't mean they're mentally unhealthy. Actually, that's what they should be doing and need to be doing.
And it's about how we provide support to co-regulate and help them experience that in that safe and trusting way. So and that really leads into this conversation, I guess we can have now about relationships and attachments being that key element. And what though, and I guess maybe adding on to that in particular, what does it look like when educators are responsive to infants? Which we've started to touch on already.
You've talked a lot, Robyn, about infants giving us those cues and us responding to the cues that infants are giving us, sometimes not so subtly, sometimes very clearly, but sometimes also subtly. But knowing a child really well helps you be able to be responsive in the right way for children. So I guess that's what we want to have a little bit of a conversation about now.
Robyn Dolby:
Well, I think that when you're looking at relationships, when we're talking with educators, we quite like to ask the question the other way round in the sense of what experiences can you imagine that the infants are looking for from you to feel this security? And, Daniel Siegel and a person called Tina Payne Bryson have actually written a lot about this and they've made it very easy for us to think about because they say, “oh, the experiences are four things starting with S”. So the four S's of the experiences the children are looking for, the infants are looking for from you are to feel safe, to feel seen, feel soothed, all of which helps them to feel secure and free to learn.
Just one thing I'd like to tease out about their four S's is the safety one because they talk about three kinds of safety. So there's the physical safety, so to protect the child from harm. But there's also emotional safety where you want the children looking for experiences that they're not too big for their educator emotionally. They're looking for the experience that their educator is comfortable to take charge when needed. And then the third kind of safety is relational safety, which it's when I think it's the thing when educators consistently can welcome the children when they come into them, whether whatever the child's emotional state, whether the infant is upset or happy or frustrated, because each time you welcome the child in, it becomes like a personal signature. And this is how the infants feel like, you know me, because the way you welcome me is a little bit different to the other person. So relational safety is so important and it ties into that principle in infant mental health of mattering that you know you're a value in someone else's eyes.
The other thing that I'll start to talk a bit about but Lindy will pick up on is that early childhood education and care is a different environment to at home and most of the work on relationships has really been done in the home environment. It's only been quite recently that there's been a focus on how do you make secure relationships in a group environment because in early education and care there are multiple adult caregivers who are not the child's parents and many peers of the same age. So this is an environment that's different to what you might see at home. And in group environments, the research is showing that we need to think differently. It's not the same as at home. And instead of focusing on the one-to-one relationships like you might focus on at home, it's really having the idea of responding to the need of one child while other infants look on. So you're responding to the need of one child while keeping the group close together. And it's those experiences that the most recent research has found that leads all children to feel safe with the educator.
So I'm going to hand over to Lindy from now on, who will talk a little bit more about that through your questions, Sara.
Sara Richardson:
No, and that's a perfect segue 'cause I was gonna say, I think this is going to be one of the things that I think was certainly really new and really powerful for me. And I think you're right, often we hear about this, we know relationships are really important. We know that that's where we spend all our time. But often it's about the parent-child interaction and it's about what happens at home.
So this piece of research, I think, and Belinda, if you want to talk a little bit about it and then we can probably move into that next question around those opportunities for educators to do this work in that group context.
Belinda Freizer:
Okay, thanks, Sara. Thanks, Robyn. Yes, look, I think it's a good time now to actually start thinking about, you know, what is the latest research that's coming out.
And certainly, for Robyn and I, we've been really influenced by a body of research that's actually come from Vienna, from a psychologist called Lieselotte Ahnert who actually did this finding where she found the greater predictor of security was when an educator responded to the need of a child whilst keeping a group in close and managing them as a whole. Early childhood education and care is a group environment. It's just so different. And we really need to start thinking about making this shift from this one-to-one type interaction, whilst it's really critical and really important, we just can't always apply exactly the same principles to a group environment.
And I just wanted to explain a little bit about why that piece of research is important. I think that when an educator responds to the need of a child, say a child's distressed, and the other children who are close by are observing that interaction, there's two learning components there for the child. One is that they get to see that their educator has got this. I can take charge and I can manage this need and respond to
this child in a way that perhaps the educator can just respond to in me. So already that helps the child to feel settled or just relaxed knowing that the person or the adult in their life has got this. They don't have to worry about it, basically. The other thing is they actually get to learn from observing the relationship. That's actually how we learn to be in a group. And so when we observe relationships between others, we learn about the nature of the relationship, we learn about the intentions behind it, and we take that information with us all the way through school to the rest of our lives. How do we know to enter into interactions within groups, all those sorts of things.
So we really want to give young children the opportunity to have that experience. So I think that's the shift that we're making. One other just critical point there is that, you know, I think for the educator, making that shift will be an enormous relief, because I think that when you're in a centre and you're really busy trying to focus on five children's different needs, on different areas. Some might be needing you for comfort security, others are needing you to go out and explore. I think that can actually be incredibly overwhelming trying to meet five different individual demands. But when you make this shift in thinking, okay, I'm thinking about the child in most need, I'm responding to that need, but I'm keeping other children in close and they're observing how I can meet that need. Well, I think that changes everything. And it reduces that feeling of being overwhelmed and burnt out. And I think it links into what Robyn was talking about is the emotional demands of the work that educators have to engage with on a daily basis all day.
Robyn Dolby:
In our work, part of our contribution has been about what you can say to the infants. And some people feel like, you know, you should say not too much because they won't understand. But we're really more using, wanting you to talk about what you're doing because this makes you predictable for the infants. And okay, they mightn't understand everything, but what they will pick up is your tone of voice, which will be very reassuring for them. If you had several children with you, and as Lindy says, they all have different needs. The one whose need will take priority is the upset child. So to be able to say to that child that you can see they're upset, you might guess “maybe you're missing your Mummy, and the good news is I'm going to stay with you till you feel okay.” At the same time, you might have other children ready to play and go out to show you something, then you can use your words to say to them, “I haven't forgotten you, but you can see that Helen's upset and I'm thinking she's missing her Mummy and I'm going to stay with her just like I stay with you when you're feeling upset.”
And we find that just contributes to the learning, the peer learning that Lindy was talking about, that you're able to say what you're doing makes yourself predictable to everyone. And when you can make a link between how you're caring for Helen, it's so much like just how I care for you. The children then are able to put themselves in Helen's shoes. And the overall effect is that the educators will find that the peers who are in close give more space for you to be able to support Helen and her upset.
Sara Richardson:
Yeah. I was wondering, and again, we're running fast out of time and hoping to cover everything, but I know you did want to talk about, and it's really important, those transition points in the day and those maybe stress points. So, you know, there's often times that you can leverage as an educator to really, you know, make the best, have the best opportunity to do this with the individual children, but the group, which is that point you're trying to make that shift.
Belinda Friezer:
Absolutely. I think I just wanted to quickly add there as well is that often when we think of building relationships, as Robyn says, it's a history of repeated interactions. We often think that they occur around positive moments, that we're having fun together, this is enjoyable, we're really building up something really positive here. But when we're thinking about this in terms of co-regulation, we're really trying to build close connections around painful moments. So a lot of the work that we do actually focuses on building connection around the stress points of the day, which are usually the transitions. For example, when a mum or a dad is saying goodbye to their child at the start of the day, or it could even just be where an educator has to go on a break and say goodbye, do a handover of care with another educator, especially if the child's very close to that educator and it's unsettling in saying goodbye.
So we do have there's a series of things that we can, we often suggest to educators that they can do to help them to stay in close at these stress points. And I'm sort of going into the next question here, Sara. So is this okay? Because I'm.
Sara Richardson:
Yes, please do. No, yes, absolutely.
Belinda Freizer:
Yeah. So, okay, so the first thing is we're thinking that educators can invest in these stress points, which are the transitions. And they can actually make them relational, which is by sitting down and being still, which is what Robyn had mentioned earlier, taking that time to be still, to be present, to be available with a calm mind. When the educator does this, it just makes it a lot easier for the educator to track how the child is going. We did have a case example here. Do we have time to go through that?
Sara Richardson:
I think what we need to decide is if we do that or we talk about the service level. So you decide, I think both will be valuable and helpful and we will be able to provide some of this information kind of maybe, you know, in some of the handouts, but yeah.
Robyn Dolby:
I was thinking, oh, is it okay if I was thinking of that. Maybe if we did the transition handover, we were just going to do a little role play, Sara. What we want educators to think about is that a handover of care where a baby actually he's a parent and an
educator getting on well together and negotiating a plan for the child for the infant's care and safety. We call that a handover of care and that is very important in making infants and all children feel safe. So we can go through what we do and what we share with educators so that they get a sense of it. So it's like a little, it's like a little ceremony.
So Lindy was going to play the educator and I was going to play the educator.
Sara Richardson:
Great, sounds fantastic.
Robyn Dolby:
We've arrived with a baby called Carol.This is right, isn't it?
Belinda Friezer:
Yeah, Carol.
Robyn Dolby:
I have Carol.
Belinda Friezer:
Yes, okay. Yes, you've got Carol. So just to set the scene with this, we call this the Negotiated Goodbye / Reunion and we do this with all the services that we train. And the idea is, there's a couple of ideas behind it. One is that we want to create as many opportunities for everyone to observe relationships between others because we're in a group environment. So that's a really big thing.
The other is that we stay in close around this painful moment. So these are the two sorts of things that we're looking for. And what we look at is there's four stepping stones and what they do is they actually act as backup, but they help the educator to guide the family through the goodbye in a very deliberate way to help encourage both those two aspects, staying in close and creating these opportunities to observe relationships.
So now the first one is the goodbye ceremony. And so I'm the educator and I'm going to say to Robyn who's coming with Carol and I'm going to say, “Robyn, are you ready for me to take charge and keep Carol safe till you come back and pick her up this afternoon?”
Robyn Dolby:
And I'm going to, I could say, “Yes, I'm ready”, but I'm going to say, Lindy, “Yes, I'm ready for you to take charge of Carol and keep her safe until I come back this afternoon.”
And we didn't give you the picture in that when the parents come in, we have the educators sitting down ready and waiting with a chair for the parent and to sit beside them. And if it's an older child, the child tucked in between. This is a whole process in itself. You can't just do that overnight. You really have to be able to understand why it's important. But when everyone is sitting down, you can track much more how the infant is feeling and it gives everyone practice at supporting the child to land and settle. You know, the child's got to land and settle with their parent to say goodbye and land and settle with the educator who's now going to look after them.
So, when Lindy says that to me, “Are you ready, Robyn, for me to take charge of Carol and keep her safe?” As a parent, I feel a sense of relief. I feel like I'm in safe hands and I feel like, well, I would actually like to, I wouldn't have thought to say that dialogue, that line of dialogue out loud, but it's the exact thing I would want my child to hear. So that's this first stepping stone.
Belinda Friezer:
And so what it creates as well is that Carol gets to see her educator and her mum in close together, negotiating about her care and safety. So we've already got Carol there observing and hearing the relationship between two others and it's a positive one and it's one of taking responsibility. We often use the word charge and often we have people come back and say to us that that's a hard word to say, it's a strong word to say, but what we're actually meaning behind that word is that you are taking responsibility for the care and safety of that child. And I think for the parent, that feels enormously reassuring that someone is in there wholeheartedly. So that's our first part or our first stepping stone.
Now, the next stepping stone is I'm going to talk to Carol and Robyn can be Carol now. And I'll say, “Carol, Carol, the good news is that it's my job to take charge and keep you safe until mum comes back and picks you up this afternoon”. So I'm now in relationship with Carol and that gives mum an opportunity to see Carol and I close together. So we've already got that set up.
And we also create another sequence there where Carol gets to experience her mum and her educator looking in on her, so with tender concern. So she really has this experience of the two important adults in her life at that moment really thinking about her and keeping her in mind.
So now we've got the next stepping stone, which is the one that's saying goodbye. And this one can be a little bit tricky because this is where I say to Carol and Robyn, “Now you've got a job to do and that's to say goodbye to each other.” So with that line of dialogue, now what you're going to get is what you're going to get. And that's just going to be the family dynamic. And sometimes it's going to be smooth and sometimes it's not going to be so smooth. But it's an opportunity for you as an educator to witness something that's actually deeply personal and private and to be close to that moment. And it can be the moment of distress. And that's really where you are, just staying with that family as they move through this moment. Sometimes you might be worried that it's going to be very long and protracted. Other times you might think that it's just very, very quick.
But it's just a really vital in part where they get that opportunity to say goodbye to each other. Did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
Robyn Dolby:
I think what parents say is the fact that you're all sitting together, we have this idea of you're all each in your rowing boat. They say that that feels very anchoring. So if the goodbye goes awry on a particular morning, they feel like, oh, thank goodness you're just sitting here as my anchor. So that's that anchoring notion I'd add.
Belinda Friezer:
And look, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I saw a little question flash up and say, is this for older children as well? And I'm going to say, absolutely. Every day, all day, as often as possible, right up till even when they go to school. And even if the parent says to you, my child's old enough, he's fine. And he's to be independent and go to school, we would be saying, keep on at it. The more you do that, the more you building a foundation for that child to walk into school and manage transitions on their own. So I hope that answers that.
Sara Richardson:
Yeah, it's fantastic. And it's those repeated opportunities to practice and to continue to learn those things.
Now, we've run out of time and the last question we wanted to ask, and I think we'll pose this as a question to everybody else and not answer it, is how do you create an environment that allows for this to happen or that doesn't just allow but actually is planned for educators to have time to sit, to be there, available, to have these conversations with children and with their families? Because in some places you jump up and you greet the parent and you walk over to them and actually what you're saying, is let's not do that, let's do something different. And so you need to think about that as a service level. If you're the leader or if you're other people in the room, you need to think about how you're going to create that environment that enables that to happen and plan for it as well.
So we do need to finish this part of the conversation and wrap it up. And there's so much more to say than we could be talking for so much more longer. But I really want to thank you both so much the information you've provided, I think really grounding it in how important this work is and that conversation we had before about mattering just matters on so many different levels for so many different elements of this, for us, for children, for all of us really. So I really want to thank you both so very much for today's conversation.
And we're going to move now into a poll to ask you, people what they're going to do with this information now. So your next steps, one, now that you've heard this and started thinking about these things, what are the things you're going to do? So if you're joining live, you can have a go at answering the poll. If you're watching a recording, you might want to pause this. And this is a time where I imagine there's lots of conversations in the service about what you're going to do and take that
question about what are we going to do, not just what am I going to do as an individual educator, but how are we going to make this work in our service?
And some of you at the beginning in the poll said that you had, you're already planning for this and I wonder how you're going to incorporate some of these ideas into your plans or what also might be happening for you and maybe this is true is that this will validate some of the decisions you've already made or some of the things you already have in place and are already working towards.
So you know, any of these steps or anything that you're going to do next is as a result of what you've learned today is useful and you might come to the next webinar to hear some some ideas from others. So thanks so much for your contributions there and for your ideas.
But what we might do now is just I'll just I'm going to hand back to Robyn and Belinda and we need to really quickly because we are running out of time just to summarise these key messages from today's like if you could both find a way to pick up the threads and summarise in a couple of minutes that'd be fantastic.
Robyn Dolby:
Well I’ll start Lindy. I think just picking up that relationship is everything and to be able to stay in close to the infants and the toddlers around painful times as well as around when times are going well because this really supports co-regulation.
We would really endorse that you have that these handovers of care where the children feel that the adults, the educator to educator or parent to educator, get on well with each other and conduct a little ceremony negotiating so the children can listen in and see and experience that these two adults are thinking about me and my care and safety.
So perhaps I'll just say those two things. I noticed that someone had said about talking about trauma and we didn't get to cover a little bit about some of the things we were going to say about that. But if you could all keep in mind when a child has an infant mental health problem, you'll know because they're so upset and so withdrawn. But the other thing I want you to keep in mind is notice if they are not using the adult for support, because that will tell you that they're putting
too much effort in trying to look after themselves and that's really what creates an infant mental health problem.
If you see a situation like that, you all need to work together because this child needs are desperate, you can't be subtle. You need as a team to be able to show this child that you're in the business of taking responsibility and keeping them safe and doing everything you can to help that child learn to make more direct routes into you.
Belinda Friezer:
And just building on that, it's really about looking at the emotional meaning behind the behaviour. So, the child might appear, like say, throwing things or hitting other children or anything like that as they get older. But you really got to look at what's
happening underneath for that child because really that child's quite distressed and that's when they need you to come in.
Robyn Dolby:
Yeah. Thank you. That's where we finish.
Sara Richardson:
Yeah, great. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much for that. And once again, I really want to thank you. And there's been some thanks coming through in the chat as well. And I knew this would happen. I knew that we would have so much more to talk about and we wouldn't have time to get through it all.
So again, we really appreciate and as people have been told there will be some resources coming and I'm sure that they can find you in other ways as well. And just as we finish, we also would really like to hear from all of you who've been who've joined us today. We really would like your feedback and any thoughts about this event and this really helps us improve our offerings for the future. And so you've got an opportunity to complete the questionnaire there before you leave. I also want to just let you know too that Be You have some resources and there'll be some links in the chat for you to find out as well so you can find out a little bit more about some of our information. So we have a webinar recording there and also some fact sheets.
And the other thing I also would like to and remind you of, and I mentioned this at the beginning, is that our next webinar will follow on from this and pick up some of these ideas. And while we won't have Belinda and Robyn with us, we will be thinking about how we can take some of the ideas that you've presented for us today and particularly I think picking up that research about the group and how we can make change for individuals, but also at a service level, I think will be really important conversations that we'll be able to have there too as well. So I really encourage you to register for that and come along.
And with that, now we've scraped five minutes back and we could have spent a little bit more, a little bit longer talking, but yeah, thank you again so very much. And we really look forward to hearing how people have been going with this work and applying it and what other things they're thinking about as well. Yes, thank you all for coming.
And again, a great big thank you to you, Robyn, and to you, Belinda, as well. It's been a wonderful conversation.
Belinda Friezer:
Thank you for inviting us.
Robyn Dolby:
Yeah, thank you. We enjoyed it. I wish we had longer.
So thank you so much.
Belinda Friezer:
I know, I feel like we need part two.
Sara Richardson:
Your feedback matters as well.