This practical and accessible guide tackles the challenges that busy childcare educators face with their mental health in what is a wonderful, rewarding, but often exhausting role.
Drawing from "day-in-the-life" experiences and case studies, this book sets out high-quality staff wellbeing practices that can revolutionise the way childcare practitioners approach their job and their own health. Chapters guide the reader through a process of reflection and development, encouraging and empowering them to create a workplace culture that positively contributes to their personal wellbeing.
This book:
ā¢ Focuses on the realities of Early Years education, combining the author's lived experience with examples of real-life practice.
ā¢ Encourages educators to think and feel positively about themselves; to identify the individual skills, strengths and talents they bring to their work.
ā¢ Can be used individually or collaboratively by team members, with guidance on creating a positive workplace culture with a shared vision, core values and beliefs.
Essential reading for anybody who finds that the job they love can sometimes leave them feeling worn out, stressed and depleted, this book has been written to enrich the lives of all training and practising Early Years Educators.
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Yes, you can access A Guide to Mental Health for Early Years Educators by Kate Moxley in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Education & Education General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
This book is a guide for embedding wellbeing at the heart of your EY practice and can be used either individually or collaboratively as part of a team. It is organised into two parts. Part 1 lays the foundations for wellbeing. Part 2 shares four core values that create intentionality around wellbeing in all aspects of your life and within your early years provision to develop your own unique and individual wellbeing philosophy.
Happy, healthy, thriving staff = happy, healthy, flourishing children
The aim of this book is simple; to improve knowledge and understanding of wellbeing to increase your overall health, happiness, and job satisfaction. Throughout the book, I have used case studies as reflection points, with the supporting information designed to raise awareness and understanding. Our everyday actions, and workplace policies and procedures, contribute to our overall job satisfaction and improve the overall quality of our EY provision and outcomes for children.
Everyone has a part to play in contributing to the harmony and culture of the provision they choose to work in. This book will provide you with information that sets out high-quality indicators of practice, allowing you to reflect and review your individual role and influence within your team and consider your everyday practice, systems, and operational procedures.
This book sets out principles and intentions we can live by to motivate ourselves and our colleagues to think and feel positively, to identify our individual skills, strengths, talents ā showing up in our workplaces and to our families, being all of who we are, shining our light unafraid to edit and hide parts of ourselves away, celebrating our own and other peopleās identities, in the form of our ethnicity, culture, race, religion, gender identity, sexuality, neurodiversity, mental and physical health, unique personal characteristics, and personality traits.
Work towards the same ethos and vision of high-quality practice in unison to create a mentally healthy workplace culture
When you celebrate all of who you are and empower those around you to do the same, you connect as a team and belong, rather than just fit in. As I hope to demonstrate within this book, your own personal wellbeing is fundamental to your professional practice. When we lead with a clear identity of who we are and our values and beliefs, we can find our place within a professional working environment that we are proud to belong to and be a part of, where wellbeing is at the heart of our practice.
Over the years, there have been very many different names to call anyone who works with children ā when I left school, I was a nursery nurse; a few years later, I was an early years practitioner. I might have also been known as a childminder, babysitter; you know, the ones that get to sit and play with the kids all day. Other days I am a teacher, a play friend, or early years professional. As the early years and childcare sector has grown, so has the quest to professionalise the qualifications and job titles. Often, we feel a sense of frustration about how early years childcare settings are perceived because we know our role is so much more than childcare. The term I have chosen in this book is early years educators. I believe that we all have a part to play in empowering ourselves and each other, and elevating the profession that has become our lifeās work. Whatever you choose to call yourself, and whatever role or position you are currently in within the early years and childcare sector ā be it a student, volunteer, childminder, nanny, owner, manager, leader, teacher, practitioner, teaching assistant, crĆØche worker, before and after school-club assistant ā you are early years family and within these pages defined as early years educators (EYE). Please note, in the sections referring to leadership and management, this includes and relates to business owners, such as childminders, nannies, and nursery owners.
Note on statutory frameworks: while we have used the EYFS and Ofsted as our reference point, the developmental approach in this book applies to the other statutory frameworks of the UK as well, even if some of the practice differs.
Throughout each chapter of this book there are activities, reflection questions, and templates for you to use to develop and build your own wellness toolkits.
Wherever you see a
throughout the book this will indicate an activity or question for your personal reflection.
Wherever you see
this indicates an activity, space for reflection, or suggestion for you to use in your practice to create and cultivate your own early years wellness toolkit. You will see a prompt at the end of each chapter in Part 2.
Wherever you see this
indicates a lived experience case study from an EY professional.
Early years enthusiast
I am a proud EY enthusiast. I always have been. That is how I describe my love and the intrinsic motivation that is wired within me to nurture, teach, and take care of young children and babies. My mother was a childminder, and from when I was aged eleven to twenty, our home was always full of children. I would happily help feed and play with the babies; make, play, and hide in dens with the older children. I can still now think back to that time and remember all the children and families my mom welcomed into our home and how we formed such bonds, affection, and attachments with them. I would spend most weekends and occasional evenings helping and babysitting for local families or the children and families that my mom childminded for. It never occurred to me that working with children could be a career choice because throughout school since I had a starring role in a junior school play, I wanted to be an actress!
When I found myself leaving school at sixteen with no formal qualifications, I was steered into the childcare profession route. Yes, I am one of those EY childhood professionals we are warned about, or often heard described in negative ways! Someone that goes into childcare because they have no other qualifications. Insert the eye-rolls here. But more on that later. I did have something that not everybody has; I had a unique set of special skills and talents that I did not even know I possessed at the time. I have a natural affinity with children, and they with me. I can remember once, when I was about fourteen, and had arrived at my friendās house, to find two unexpected small children. One of them was happily playing in the garden and the other one was lying flat out on the floor using their whole body to make as much noise as possible ā shouting, screaming, banging, and stamping. It turns out that my friendās motherās godchildren had arrived, and she had unexpected babysitting duties, and one of them was none too happy about it and had been protesting for quite some time, and they had tried everything to coax, cajole, and settle him. For years, my friends would retell the story of the magic powers I had in communicating with children, because after a few moments of sitting close by and talking to this tiny little protester, he was outside playing happily with his brother in the garden. Peace had been restored.
The chances are that if you are reading this book, then you may have a similar story and recognise yourself as an EY enthusiast too. Children and babies are drawn to you in a way you cannot explain. In the supermarket, they look and smile, gurgle, or talk to you. You find yourself having conversations with children about random things, in unexpected places, like crouching down to discuss a giant leaf when you are walking down the road, discovering a heart-shaped rock and saving it, or unexpectedly chatting about dogs, birds, and dinosaurs in the supermarket, or stopping children from crying as they cling to their parents in the queue for McDonaldās just by making eye contact and pulling a funny face. Maybe even your children are embarrassed and ask you to please stop talking to children just because they have looked at you. I know my daughter does!
Do you identify with being an EY enthusiast?
When did you realise you were gifted at being an EY enthusiast?
My explanation of this is, children know. They see that light in your eyes. They know that you see them, that you hear them, that you notice, and that you care. And when they see the light, it lights them up. You cannot be taught this. You have this skill, or you do not. It is part of your wiring and who you are. This is a gift; you may have magical powers, but like any skill, sometimes we must learn how to fine-tune them.
Part of the reason I am writing this book on staff wellbeing, I believe, is due to that gift, the gift that I would now call empathy. The reason is, at the time, and for most of my life, I did not know that being an empath was a gift. In truth, it would be many years before I even learnt what empathy was. Like me, you may have been labelled sensitive and have it described as a flaw for feeling too much and being too sensitive. This sensitivity led to me feeling too much, giving away too much of myself, deriving my self-worth from all the things I did for other people. If you have the power to see the light in others and help them, find it, and shine it. If you are not careful, then you start giving more and more of yourself away, depleting your energy and your gift.
When you are an EYE, and your everyday actions are about taking care of others, it can become a core part of who you are. You become very used to putting othersā needs before your own, and you do it repeatedly in so many different ways. We are the problem-solvers, the fixers, and the light seekers. Over time, I gave away my power carelessly and made myself responsible for unnecessary things. I absorbed other peopleās feelings, problems, and worries. In truth, I gave away so much of myself, trying to do all the things for all the people around me and doing very little for me. I did not realise how much of this stemmed from me trying to prove I was good enough. I can look back now and see that so much of my everyday actions, both personally and professionally, were about proving myself and trying to feel good enough. Good enough to be there, wanting to belong, and I spent so much time trying to fit in; it was exhausting. To what or whom I was trying to prove myself, I am unsure ā some invisible and unobtainable standard that I had set. I was also worried and living in fear of the judgements and opinions of other people and whether they thought I was a nice/good/kind person and clever/bright/funny/pretty enough. This meant...
