Supporting Children with Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs in the Early Years

Practical Solutions and Strategies for Every Setting

Sonia Mainstone-Cotton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000398922
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This accessible book offers essential guidance and practical ideas for Early Years staff to support children with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs. It draws upon a wealth of experiences and insights to explore what SEMH is, why children may have SEMH needs, and what this can look like, giving practitioners the confidence they need to understand early signals and signs.

Chapters share practical tools, activities and strategies, exploring topics that include:

• environment
• routines and transitions
• sensory experiences
• feelings and emotions
• the role of the adult.

A range of case studies and resource suggestions are woven throughout, bringing the theory alive with first-hand advice from a variety of professionals, including educational psychologists, play therapists and Forest School specialists. This book is a refreshing and practical guide, and an essential read for all Early Years practitioners looking to cultivate a supportive and compassionate environment.

SECTION II

CHAPTERS

• Environment
• Routines and transitions
• Recognising feelings and emotions
• Sensory experiences
• Outdoors
• Mindfulness
• Working with parents
• Wellbeing of adults

5 Environment

In Section I, I looked at some experiences that children with additional social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs may encounter. I also considered the role of the adult and how vital it is that adults be caring, supportive and regulated when working with children. Section II is going to explore some practical ways to support children, with ideas and suggestions for resources and activities for us to do and spaces we can create. All of these ideas are based on the daily work my colleagues and I carry out with the children we support. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming, and difficult to know what will help and support children who experience additional SEMH needs. I hope the practical ideas given in this section will prove helpful.

This chapter focuses on the environment. From my experience of working in schools and nurseries, I have observed that often the environment can be a trigger or place of agitation, or a difficult space for children with SEMH needs to be in. I wrote about Dan Siegel’s (2020) idea of a window of tolerance in Chapter 1. Sometimes, when a child’s window of tolerance is very narrow, the environment can become a trigger for them being outside of their window, and this causes overwhelming feelings or fear. When settings have a child who is not coping, I encourage staff to relook at the environment and try to see it through the eyes of a distressed child, and to be curious about what might be triggering them to feel unsafe or unsettled.

The environment as the third teacher

Some early years practitioners describe the environment as the third teacher, including those in Reggio Emilia, for whom it is a key part of their ethos. Reggio Emilia is a town in northern Italy and since the 1940s early years practitioners have been developing a unique way of educating pre-school children. Their method was originally started by a group of mothers who were unhappy with the education system, and it was then developed by educationist Loris Malaguzzi. The town developed its own ‘Reggio approach’ to education, which embeds creativity and the recognition that children express themselves through ‘a hundred different languages’. It also believed that the environment has a vital role to play in educating and supporting the child (Edwards et al. 1998). If you visit the Reggio pre-schools, you will notice they pay huge attention to how the space looks and feels. I have been fortunate enough to take part in a study tour in Reggio. On my visit, one of the first observations I made was how uncluttered the spaces were, and also how light they were. These may sound like small additions, but they can have a huge impact on how a child responds in a space.

If you are unfamiliar with Reggio spaces, I would encourage you to stop reading for a moment and Google ‘Reggio Emilia spaces’ in ‘Images’, as this will show you what a wide range of the spaces look like. If the early years work in Reggio Emilia is new to you, see ‘Further information and references’.

Natural resources

As well as uncluttered spaces, another key feature in Reggio pre-schools is the use of natural resources. You will often find wooden toys and equipment made from natural materials, but it is also common to see elements of the outside world brought to the inside environment – such as fresh flowers on the dining tables, sticks, feathers, pebbles, shells – which are used as part of loose parts play or as creative resources for children to use. Using natural resources is also a key element in Montessori practice and is also a common element in many Scandinavian settings. I have seen some fantastic examples of this in Denmark and Sweden. The main words I used to describe the spaces, when I first saw them, were ‘beautiful’, ‘inviting’ and ‘calming’. They had created a space I wanted to stay in, an environment I wanted to explore and play in, but somewhere I felt I could sit in peacefully. I have to be honest, there are many times when those are the opposite feelings I have in some of the early years spaces I go into in the United Kingdom. I feel a little unfair writing that sentence, as I know many early years settings are working extremely hard to rethink their spaces. I know many settings that have managed to purchase beautiful wooden equipment and playthings – and there are spaces I go into in the United Kingdom which bring about similar feelings to those I experienced in Reggio and Scandinavia. However, you may have beautiful wooden objects and playthings, but it can still look and feel cluttered and overwhelming. So it’s not just about the resources, but more about the underpinning ethos.

How the environment can be a sensory overload

We are all very sensitive to the environments we spend time in and it’s no surprise that during the Covid-19 lockdown many people started to redecorate, declutter, even think about moving house. When we are in one environment all the time, it can have a great impact on our emotional and mental wellbeing. Of course, we all have different tastes and preferences: some people love the stripped-back minimalist approach, while others embrace cosiness and comforting things around them. For many people, especially if they have sensory or processing difficulties (which many children with SEMH challenges do), then clutter and too many things in an environment can be distressing.

I am now going to look at a few areas that can cause difficulties in the environment for some children.

Busy walls and displays

Some classrooms and nursery spaces have an amazing range of things on display, from pictures children have made, beautiful artistic colourful displays, notices and messages for parents, words in bold. I always find this interesting, and often wonder who the displays are for. A few questions I would ask are:

• Are the displays for the children?
• Are the displays for the parents?
• Are the displays for the manager?
• Are the displays for visiting advisors and inspectors?

Once you have established this, then break the answer down. If the display is for parents:

• Do they look at it?
• What messages are you trying to put over?
• Is it clear and easy to read?

If the display is for children:

• Can they see it?
• Do they understand why it is there?
• Do they look at it and engage with it?
• Were they involved in putting it together?
• How busy is the display?
• How colourful is the display?

The reason for asking these questions is that I think we often believe parents and children love displays, but in my experience they rarely look at and engage with them. Children’s displays, for example, are regularly at a height where the child cannot see it well: if you can see the display, or have to look up to do so, then the children cannot see it properly, instead seeing lots of colour and stuff.

Some children have sensory difficulties, including visual processing ones (Abraham et al. 2015). When a child has visual processing difficulties, they might find the visual stimulation around them too distracting, or even distressing. Displays can be tricky for some children, as they can be visual clutter to them. Even if the display is not at child height, it can still be too much visually: the mix of colours, and maybe things hanging down, can cause overstimulation, which can be distressing for some children.

Hanging objects

• What hanging objects do you have in your space?
• Are there washing lines with children’s paintings or creative work hanging down?
• Are there large mobiles hanging from the ceiling?
• Are there flags, banners or drapes?

Hanging objects are not always a sensory overload, but if there are a lot of them they can be visually noisy, especially alongside busy displays. Some settings use drapes and material effectively to create calming spaces, but, again, other types of hanging objects can cause visual overload.

Colour scheme and lighting

• What is the colour scheme in your space?
• Is it loud and colourful?
• Is it calming and subdued?
• How is the lighting? Do you have much natural light coming in?
• Do you have strip lighting?
• Do you have areas with dimmed lighting?

Many children will not notice the displays, colours and lighting. However, for some children, these things can be the difference between them feeling calm or feeling heightened and distressed.

We are beginning to understand how colours can impact our sense of calm or alertness, and thankfully lots of classrooms and nurseries are now painted in calmer colours rather than the bright colours that were used 10 or so years ago.

Children who have had a difficult start to the day can arrive, walk into a classroom or nursery room, notice the washing line of pictures hanging down or the flickering strip light, and this can cause them to fly into a rage. I have seen a child notice this and then run to hide.

For those children who don’t seem to notice, having many colourful displays makes little difference, but it can be extremely distressing for those children with sensory difficulties. I am not suggesting you get rid of all the displays and hanging objects, but I do suggest you look very carefully at your visual environment.

Take a moment

This is an activity you can do with your colleagues. If I am delivering training from their nursery, I often get staff to do this in training sessions.

Get everyone to kneel down or lie on their back. Look around the space. Ask them what they see from this height. What does it feel like?

This is a very simple exercise, but it helps us to see things from a child’s height and/or view, and that it can look very different from how we usually see the environment.

As a follow-on exercise you could do with the children, ask them to photograph from their height the walls, displays and hanging things, discuss with them. What do they see? What do they like? What don’t they like? This is a simple child’s voice exercise you can perform, giving you a sense of how the children experience the space.

Children’s involvement in creating the environment

Instead ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• SECTION I
• SECTION II
• Conclusion
• Index