Say hello to….

This has been a week of sitting with dark days and heavy feelings, both in work and with family. Several of the children I work with are finding the run-up to Christmas incredibly challenging and our niece has Sepsis.

This week I have found myself needing to sit with the feelings of darkness. I don’t have an easy answer or solution to help the children and their staff. I don’t have any answer or solutions as comfort for my sister in law or niece.

Recently I have been reading a book by Padraig O Tauma he uses the phrase Say hello, to acknowledge the feelings and emotions and situations we are in. He uses this phrase to recognise throughout the day what you are experiencing. I know this idea of noticing how you feel is an integral part of mindful practice, the phrase say hello to, I found helpful. It feels quite a gentle phrase and it’s a helpful way to acknowledge what is happening right now.

In my role as a nurture consultant, I support the children and the staff. My job is as much about supporting staff as it is working directly with children. Sometimes I can have ideas and suggestions for ways forward, how we might support the child in the class. However, this week I mostly found myself not having any new suggestions, at one point in one school I sat and listened, we sat with hard descriptions and the hard feelings we were seeing and feeling. I didn’t have any words, I just acknowledged it was very tough. I am aware as I write this that doesn’t sound very advisory or consultant like! but that is how it is. Sometimes the best we can do and be is to sit with dark feelings. To turn up, to say hello to the feeling of uncertainty or fear or anger or despair. That is ok. The turning up is what matters.

Recognising feelings and emotions

 

This week it is world mental health day on Thursday 10th October, a day when many organisations, nurseries, and schools will be focusing on promoting positive mental health and wellbeing. Raising awareness is so important, however, one day a year or one wellbeing week a year in a nursery or school is not enough to embed practice. One area that I have been thinking a lot about recently is how we enable children to have a wide emotional vocabulary and understanding. If we can help children from a young age to understand the feelings they have, to be able to interpret what is going on in their bodies, then we are setting them for a good foundation of emotional wellbeing.  

Along with this is helping children to understand we all have a wide range of emotions and that is ok, we don’t have to be happy all the time. Over the last few years I have worked with a few children who have a fixed smile on their face, at first it is easy to think they are happy, but once you spend time with them, you realise it is a smile that comes out of a place of feeling uneasy, unsure, a bit scared, and they don’t know how to express these feelings. We need to help children to understand it is ok that they are not happy all the time, they can be sad or angry or jealous or scared, these feelings are normal. The problem is when we think happiness is a state we should aim to be in all the time, this can set us up to feel like a failure. As adults we need to model and show children that we all have wide range of feelings and emotions and to be able to name them, part of this is by regular acknowledging how we feel and noticing how the children are feeling- ‘ Lily I can see you are feeling tired and a bit sad today, that’s ok, would it help to spend some time sitting quietly together and looking at a book?’ or children I am feeling a bit worried this morning, I have lost my keys, I keep looking for them, do you think you could help me find them. A rich emotional vocabulary needs to be what we constantly hear in our early year’s settings.

If we can help children to have an emotional understanding and vocabulary from a young age, we are equipping them with a tool for life. I often come across adults who have a really limited emotional vocabulary, they find it so hard to express appropriately how they feel, or they feel guilty about not always feeling happy with their life. This is an unnecessary burden to carry through life, as early years workers we can help to change this. 

I am being interviewed about emotional literacies by Kathy Brodie on her Early Years summit if you want to hear this and many fantastic interviews a link is here

There is a growing range of resources we can use to help children understand feelings and emotions and to support mental wellbeing. A few books I have written are:

Mummy’s Got Bipolar 

Can I tell you about Bipolar disorder- ( for children aged 7 plus)

Promoting Young Children’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing: A Practical Guide for Professionals and Parents

Sitting with sadness and sorrow

 

This last week has been a roller coaster of highs and lows. I have been reflecting the last few days on the need to sit with sadness and sorrow and how hard that can sometimes be. This week my parents have both been ill, with my dad having a heart operation which didn’t go to plan. I have also been working with children who have been deeply sad. Sometimes in life, you can’t fix things, I can’t fix my dad’s heart or my mum’s depression and sometimes I can not make it ok for the children I work with.

There are times when all I can do is sit with the pain and the sadness, there are times when there are no words to be said, there is no easy fix, we just need to sit and be. Being present, being there in body and mind.

But I can find that really hard, I am certainly a person who will suggest, offer ideas, in my work I spend my time offering thoughts and ideas to staff to support the children. I don’t fix things but I journey with the children and staff and find a way through. However sometimes there are no suggestions to make, sometimes you need to just be, to hold someone and let them cry, to show them you are there, at that moment, with them.

Sitting with sadness and sorrow can be tiring and hard. I have been very mindful of that, and very intentional to care for myself, my main way has been spending lots of time outside this week; walking in woods, walking alongside water, noticing flowers and birds.