[LaurenClay]

Was nice to meet you Linh, I don’t think we’d met before today x

[LaurenClay]

Have loved chatting with you Chloe.

Next time we all get together I’ll have my Portfolio ready and we can all have a little peek at each other’s progress (if you don’t want to share that’s ok, but it might help to understand where abouts we all are)

[LaurenClay]

Brilliant, thanks Chloe I love a good insta page x

[LaurenClay]

Thanks Nicky! Looking forward to it! Hope it’s a good turn out otherwise you’ll have to listen to me ranting 😂 x

[LaurenClay]

I did a lovely activity with my children today. We counted their eyes! Was brilliant because they stayed focussed on my during circle time too because they all wanted to show me their two eyes (haha)

We also watched numberblocks today and the children were very excited. We set up a cinema and sat and enjoyed the movie (it’s only 5 minutes)

I’ve spoken to staff about yesterday’s zoom lecture too, discussed the things we do in Pre-school which prep the children for school (building those mastery skills) to raise awareness really, so that was interesting.

Thanks for yesterday it was insightful

[LaurenClay]

Thanks Nicky.

I did an interesting activity with my staff during a staff meeting once when I first started managing their setting. They had the same sort of thing… cloud to sunshine type of thing.
I got everyone together and I wrote a scale on a whiteboard. I then wrote their names on the scale top to bottom and told everyone about the things that had happened this week: for example “Tayla, well done this week, you cleaned the rabbit out with the children and did a lovely activity on that, really good, and thank you for listening to me when I asked you to do this”… “Sarah, you’re at the bottom here, why do you think that is?” She smiled sheepishly and said she didn’t know. “Well because when I asked you if you could wash up after lunch time you did it really slowly” (I was literally clutching at straws because my staff were an amazing team)

Then we discussed how that made everyone feel. We had a good giggle about it but I reminded them that public humiliation is actually mortifying, and for some children even being moved to a sunshine and making a song and dance about it can be so embarrassing. We discussed ways to praise the children without embarrassing them the way that I did with them. It was interesting. We found that praising the children in front of their parent was lovely, and the children started asking us when they did something lovely “are you going to tell mummy?” like they were proud. The parents loved it too. Sometimes parents feel that the only time we need to “have a word” is when their children haven’t behaved to our expectations, and when the parents picks up and the fist thing that child receives from their parents is a disappointing look or feeling ashamed and embarrassed it must feel so awful for that child when they have so looked forward to seeing their family all session.

[LaurenClay]

Your trainer sounds very much on my thinking level. Yes please if you could share it that would be fabulous 🙂 thank you

[LaurenClay]

Love this advice! Thank you x

[LaurenClay]

Thanks Nicky that’s much clearer 🙂

[LaurenClay]

Please find attached our UTW and EAD peer review. I am awaiting my colleague’s write up of her observation for me which was an activity involving taking the children out in the local environment and looking at the natural changes. We then used a collection of goodies to make some Autumn pictures. I will upload this as soon as I have it 🙂

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[LaurenClay]

Thank you Nicky ❤️

[LaurenClay]

Loved it!

I’ve now got a great list of things to work on especially for the Change Project!

We’ve already made a start on it and plan to buy our resources for this around February time to give us time to see the children’s response to our new equipment.

[LaurenClay]

I love this from The Ark Childminding Facebook page

“So, we currently have mostly toddlers at our setting (ages from 1-2years). They love nothing more than to rough and tumble! Run, scream & shout!

They are exhausting, gorgeous and lots of fun!

Standard Toddler rules apply in regards to EVERYTHING: “If I see it, it’s mine! If I have touched it, it’s mine! If I want it, it’s mine! If you want it, it’s mine!” (you get the picture)…which can obviously result in lots of conflict and high emotions.

We now affectionately term this period as our ‘Toddler wars’. 😆

During these moments of conflict some little ones will hit out, others push and bite and we also have a silent & slow ‘head butter’ (we think this could be to do with a high interest and regular visits to the rhinos 🦏🙊…so our fault really 😬).

So, how do we deal with this phase?

Firstly, we DO NOT enforce apologies. They are meaningless for our young children and can often cause more problems if you insist on getting one! I have backed myself into a corner more than once in my old stance of enforcing an apology with a toddler who point blank refuses! (We live and learn🤷‍♀️)

If a child hurts another child here we will immediately respond to the hurt child and will apologise to them on the other child’s behalf. So for example, “I’m sorry xxxx has hurt you. Are you okay?” (We really big this part up)

After making a big fuss of the child who has been affected we will then quietly respond to the other child. We do this by acknowledging they may have been trying to communicate something but it is not okay to hurt each other.

Then together we check if the hurt child is okay and depending on the level of communication skills we ask If there is anything they need. Sometimes it’s just a rub and a ‘awhhhh’ from our younger friends, but it’s a moment of empathy and acknowledgement. And then it’s over…..until the next time of course.

The child who has hit out is not made to share their play either. If a child wants to play alone, the other children must wait and we will ask them to let their friends know they are waiting for their turn rather than to just take.

Sometimes however this approach is just not enough if a child is persistently hitting out. Toddlers, like us, have good days and not so good days 🤷‍♀️ On a not so good day we may help a child to regulate their emotions by removing them from play for a moment. This is not a punishment, we don’t agree with ‘Time out’.

There is no anger directed to the child. This is an exercise in co-regulation. The removing from play could be simply holding our hands for a moment, sitting with us for a story, being picked up, or sitting in their high chair with a drink/snack whilst they have time to ‘reboot’ (regulate) before starting afresh in play.

We acknowledge that they may be feeling ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘frustrated’ and reassure them that it’s okay to feel this way…. even though they don’t fully understand yet what these feelings are. We want them to be familiar with the words, we want to give them the tools to be able to regulate these feeling independently….eventually!

We understand that ‘Toddler wars’ is completely developmental and mostly stems from lack of communication and having not yet developed feelings of empathy. It’s so much easier just to bop someone on the head than to force out words when you are only just at the cusp of learning to speak 🤷‍♀️

It’s a really difficult stage to observe and manage, and don’t get me wrong, on occasion we still find ourselves bellowing “NOoooooooo!” across the room in a moment of pre-incident panic. But that’s okay too, as long as we can explain “I’m sorry for shouting, I panicked and I wanted to make sure xxxx was safe”

The main point to be made is that an approach of understanding and tolerance for ALL involved is the only way to deal with ‘toddler wars!’

Wish us luck 😬

“If it’s mine, it’s mine, if it’s not mine, it’s still mine and if it’s yours, it’s also mine!”

[LaurenClay]

Thank you 🙂 my external mentor suggested it today so I will be grabbing some screen shots x

[LaurenClay]

I will be developing my staff’s knowledge by presenting a power point presentation during a staff meeting 🙂

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