Being Present for Your Nursery Age Child

Observing, Understanding, and Helping Children

Jeanne Magagna, Patrizia Pasquini, Jeanne Magagna, Patrizia Pasquini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429911286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

This book represents an innovative project in which parents, teachers and other professionals work collaboratively to observe children, understand them at a deep emotional level through their play and interaction with others, and facilitate their relationships with themselves as individuals and with others. The work described has been particularly important in nurturing children's creativity and fostering effective relationships between teachers, parents and children. The innovative nursery described has been an important preventative facility in promoting the wellbeing of young children. The Italian government has supported this highly esteemed project.

PART I

ON LEARNING TO OBSERVE

CHAPTER ONE

The Tempo Lineare project

Patrizia Pasquini

The government-funded project, “Tempo Lineare for children aged 0–3 and their families”, is available to interested families in the centre of Rome. Established in 1999, it offers a meeting place where parents and grandparents can play with their children and receive support from psychotherapists and nursery teachers who understand the developmental needs of young children. Parents of young children (from birth to three years) are provided the opportunity to meet each other, to exchange experiences, doubts, and points of view in relation to the growth and education of their children. It is, therefore, a service in which the Tempo Lineare staff work collaboratively “with”, and not only “for”, the users. The family does not delegate responsibility to the facility, but, rather, is actively involved in the work of the Tempo Lineare service.

Tempo Lineare is situated in an ancient house in Testaccio, a lively working-class neighbourhood in the heart of Rome. Since 1999, when it was founded, Tempo Lineare has become the physical space, the containing space, where this experience, open to twenty-four families each year, has come to life. Since then, over 280 families have turned to Tempo Lineare: 180 regularly attended the service, a hundred more could benefit from the weekly listening space. The creation of a social network sustains this group of parents, children, and professionals through an observational programme that appreciative parents established after the children left Tempo Lineare at age five. Donations by parents were used to rent a facility to support the former Tempo Lineare parents to continue developing alongside their children. Parent discussion groups and children’s activity and discussion groups are held there.

Facilities within Tempo Lineare

There are four sections within Tempo Lineare: a space for 0–3-year-olds, another for 4–6-year-olds, one for parents and grandparents, and the consultation area.

0–3 years facility

This facility is similar to a house, to enable the children to identify with a familiar and intimate place. The space is organised with furniture and décor suited to the age of the children, with games and materials to stimulate their curiosity and encourage the fostering of good relationships between the children and adults. The Tempo Lineare service for 0–3-year-olds is open every year to twenty-six families, so that mothers and fathers can spend time together with their young children and babies for two to three mornings each week. Of these twenty-six places, six are for families who are experiencing particular interpersonal or social difficulties. Children aged from one week to twenty months come with their families to the nursery twice a week for three hours, while the group of children from twenty to thirty-six months attend the facility three days a week for three hours per day.

Mothers and fathers spend some time together with their children in the nursery two or three mornings a week. Here, children play, experience their first moments of socialisation, and learn their first competences as they move to and away from their parents. This service has reached families with all sorts of incomes and from varied professions who need support and social contact. In fact, Tempo Lineare has increasingly become a way of getting together socially to work as part of a multi-cultural community in the historic centre of Rome. Tempo Lineare offers families of small children a shared place that enables children and parents, in collaboration with staff, to create the opportunity to think through their various experiences together.

Tempo Lineare for 0–3-year-olds encourages small doses of new experiences in the child’s life. It is a place where parents can share the early phases of first-time parenting as well as the fundamental stages of their young children’s growth. The mothers and fathers are given dependable support and encouragement to open themselves up mentally and emotionally to the experience of motherhood and fatherhood. It is a service orientated towards socialisation between family groups. It does this by working alongside parents to think together about paying attention to the adult–child relationship and, thus, helps parents to understand their own development as parents as well as that of their child.

When a child moves into the part of Tempo Lineare for children over three years of age, a parents’ association is available to continue supporting the development of the parents’ ability to listen receptively and to accept a deepening responsibility for their children’s emotional development. The role of the psychoanalytically trained staff member within the service involves observing the daily life of the child and parents and listening receptively. The Tempo Lineare staff member is a person whose ability to listen and observe facilitates learning about and meeting the developmental needs of the child and family.

Tempo Lineare facility for 3–6-year-olds

Tempo Lineare 3–6 years is the continuation of the 0–3 years Tempo Lineare project. This project opened in 2003 as a result of the parents’ enthusiasm for continuing with the work of the 0–3’s Tempo Lineare project. The facility is similar to a house, as described above. An area of the house is fitted out as a workshop, where the children have access to an immense range of materials, including those for play, art, woodwork, and cooking, and an environment with spaces sufficiently large to encourage creative expression.

This service is open to two class-groups, each comprising fourteen children, from Monday to Friday, from 8.00 to 14.00, including lunch. (It is customary that many Italian children do not attend school beyond lunchtime.) The project promotes a “different” way of being for the children because they are enabled gradually to be apart from their parents for a large portion of time. However, the project considers both the needs of the children and their emotional development and the desire of their parents to be welcomed, listened to, and understood. Once a month, the parents meet in a group with a Tempo Lineare facilitator to discuss the emotional development of their children and their relationships with them.

Although physically adjacent to one another, the two Tempo Lineare facilities are very different: in the 0–3 years facility, there are areas for the children and the parents to be together as well as a space for the parents’ group, whereas in the 3–6 years service, there is a space where the older children can be together in a large group of twenty-six, or in smaller groups, or in a space alone. There is also a separate space for the parents. In both services, however, there is a space where the child can develop his desire to know himself and his group of peers and to develop his growth potential.

Through providing a service for a longer period, from 0–6 years, the learning path can continue, children can experience true and meaningful, more lasting relationships, and they use their resources without giving up the group’s potential for assisting their growth and development. The aim of providing this longer duration service for the children is to help them achieve inner stability and optimism in relationships and to promote access to richer social interactions between children and adults. The lengthier group experience is designed to give greater depth to the emotional experience of meeting the other, which, in turn, fosters vitality and emotional health, inducing change that leads to the creation of a better world for children and families.

All this is also designed to facilitate the children’s acquisition of knowledge and the development of their capabilities. In addition, the school programme works to stimulate their curiosity, creativity, and intellectual interest. The children’s experience within Tempo Lineare favours introspection as well as the introjection of positive experiences that are essential elements not only of emotional development, but also of mental life and learning. The project recognises and interprets the complexity of the children’s life experiences in such a way as to perform the function of filtering, enriching, and giving emotional meaning to the children’s experiences with learning and with each other and the adults relating to them. The project involves the parents in the life of the school.

As in the school for younger children, the educational model offered is always that of “participant observation”, according to the Tavistock parent–child observation model. “Participant observation” is used to monitor the child’s development and the parent–child interaction, and, as such, it is the essential instrument for verifying the validity of the Tempo Lineare educational project. The observation work forms the basis of the training of teachers. It helps the teachers to build a working model useful for the staff and children’s groups and for the aims of the Tempo Lineare project. It is further described in Chapter Two.

Interviews with parents and the children’s first contact with the school

Before a child is integrated into the Tempo Lineare project, a group meeting is held with the parents to reflect upon the transition from the Tempo Lineare 0–3 years’ service to the Tempo Lineare school for older children. This meeting with the parents enables the teachers to get to know the families of the children entrusted to them. Particular attention is paid to the way in which each child integrates into the school, and this is a central point of observation and discussion in the staff work group. The child’s reception, therefore, involves discussion between children, parents, and teachers which enables the sharing of experiences of the transition to the service for older children. It is also the first moment of acquaintance between the children and some new adults in their life. The integration of the children into the new school is facilitated by the presence of some familiar teachers who have shared with the parents the children’s fundamental growth stages up until three years of age. It is believed that this style of reception of the children is a very important moment, for it helps all of the parties involved—children, parents, and teachers—to get to know each other with the aim of gaining confidence in the experience that lies ahead.

Reception method

Reception takes place in the presence of the parents, with gradually increasing and personalised times of attendance. This working approach helps to increase the degree of responsiveness of all the parties involved. It also enables better observation and subsequent understanding of the needs and requirements of the children and their families. During the period of integrating the child and getting to know his/her family, it is considered important to carry out observations and video recordings of those moments. At this time, a first meeting with the parents’ group, composed of new and old members, takes place to think about this new experience. Also, a discussion group is organised with the teachers to reflect on the methods of integrating the children into the already existing group of children. It is thought that paying particular attention to the children’s different personalities enables the teachers to get to know the group with which they will be actively participating in co-operation with the children’s families. In this way, full importance is given to the significance and value of a child’s infancy and ongoing development. The child’s voice represents the shared belief that the child has the right to make his voice heard in this very important transitional phase of entry into the new situation.

The children’s groups

The project is made up of two different age groups, each comprising fourteen children. Each group has its own room and a workshop area in which to share some of the time in the day. Particular attention is paid to observation of the group in order to help the children to regulate their emotions thoughtfully, especially those children with interpersonal, emotional, or physical difficulties.

Recurring daily activities

The project centres its work on play activities and observation of the games of both individual children and the group, and involves games and activities that help the children in their development and growth. The two groups jointly manage a reading area, which consists of a corner used as a library where the children can freely choose their books. Each child has a personally labelled drawer containing paper, coloured pens, scissors, modelling dough, and other play equipment that he/she uses at the start of the morning. In the rooms, toys kept in boxes and on shelves are available to the children, who are also responsible for putting them back. Through playing, the children manage and share the areas of the school: they set the tables for lunch, and help the adults to clean and reorganise the room and objects within the room. Thus, they experience the school facility not simply as “cared-for children”, but also as active participants holding responsibility commensurate with their developmental levels. This generally helps the children to feel capable and expert in all activities that are possible at their age.

Every day, after I describe a fairy tale or story, the children create an imaginative picture inspired by the story that they have just heard. Each child can, therefore, identify within him/herself the emotions that the story has stimulated. Each child’s imaginative phantasies inspire the creation of a new story that is expressed symbolically on a large sheet of white paper.

Once a week, the children play in a group with the “school–family box”. This game is used to allow me a moment of observation of the children’s “work through play”. Through watching the children’s play, the teachers and parents understand the children’s experiences of the present moment in the nursery. This method is described in greater detail in Part III, “Compassionately comprehending children playing”.

The school workshop

In the workshop, the intention is to create the conditions necessary for the child to gain confidence in his communication and expressive abilities. Here, tasks consist of helping the child to express his emotions creatively. The project has two workshops:

• the linguistic and musical workshop;

• the colours and materials workshop.

Linguistic and musical workshop

Through getting to know books, fairy tales, stories told by adults, conversations, nursery rhymes, and plays on words, and through inventing stories, the children are helped to exchange linguistic meanings and usages, enabling them to acquire forms of narrative thought and, in time, to build a personal way of expressing themselves. For children aged three to six, talking to each other and to adults during the various moments of the day is a fundamental tool in the development of thought and learning. The reading corner is also considered as the conversation corner, in the sense of listening, exchanging, having a dialogue, or remaining silent. The children become very confident in talking to each other and adults through this experience. The musical workshop consists of two groups led by an external music teacher with specific expertise in facilitating musicality in the children.

Colours and materials workshop

The workshop is equipped with a single water trough and several taps designed to allow the children to use the water to mix different materials. Water is felt to be an important element in the nursery. It makes it possible for the children to play together around a washbasin and to use sponges, small and large containers, and spoons. Observation of play using water provides an in-depth view of the “oral and anal desires and phantasies” that the children have at this age. Moreover, play using water and the containers helps the children work through methods of containing their emotions. The spontaneous play with water, dough, clay, salt, paste, maize flour, and many other materials also allows the children to satisfy their exploratory needs and maximise their manipulative abilities. They work with their hands, either alone or in a group, with materials such as water, flour, sand, and wax. They also carry out culinary activities such as making bread, pizza, puddings, ice cream, fruit salad, jam, or engage in activities of organic interest such as planting seeds, and growing and caring for plants.

The colours workshop takes place in an area equipped for drawing and painting activities. Available to the children are felt tipped pens, crayons, watercolours, pastels, and poster paints. They can paint on different materials: paper, cardboard, fabric, recycled materials, outlines, glass, wood, and polystyrene. In time, the children express their curiosity, give shape to their feelings, and find increasingly creative ways of showing their thoughts intermingled with their emotions. The colour workshop area is organised by a teacher with specific expertise in i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: ON LEARNING TO OBSERVE
• PART II: HOW THE YOUNG MIND IS BUILT
• PART III: COMPASSIONATELY COMPREHENDING CHILDREN PLAYING
• PART IV: FROM ONE TALE ANOTHER TALE IS BORN
• PART V: THE COUPLE, THE FAMILY, THE GROUP, AND SOCIETY
• PART VI: PARENTS CREATING AND COLLABORATING
• GLOSSARY
• INDEX