I have wanted to read The Diary of Laura for a number of years now, even purchasing a copy at conference last year, however I’ve been so caught up in the busyness of life that I tucked it away and promptly forgot about it. Luckily, my year end cleaning turned it up and now I’m trying to work through it in an intentional way, as is my goal for all things this year. The Diary of Laura is, as it sounds, the documentation diary of a infant named Laura during her time in an infant-toddler program in Reggio Emilia, Italy. What I really like about this book is that it has a number of chapters written by different authors sharing their reflections on the diary, and their experiences working with young children. There is also a section with questions to encourage group reading or the use of the book as a professional development tool, so if anyone wants to start a group read of this book, let me know.

One of the first things that struck me is a question posed in the introduction of the book – “Is the form of documentation called “diary” still of interest after twenty years?” I think that as early childhood educators, the practice of documentation is one that we are constantly refining. Programs and individuals have different goals in their use of documentation and especially as technology continues to evolve and change, our methods of documentation also seem to be changing. So, then if we are trying to determine whether the “diary” is still of interest, we need to examine what do we mean by “diary”. Clearly, a diary is a narrative form of documentation, it can include media, such as photos or videos and work samplings. However, I think what sets a diary apart from other documentation is that it requires reflection. A diary is not an exclusively objective presentation of the facts, it allows for wonder, for speculation. You can go back to a previous entry in a diary and continue to add to it, as insights occur. Contextual information is often included. As important as it is for us to be objective observers, the value of our reflections and speculations about why a child might be doing something (especially when the child can’t tell us themselves) are of equal value. I think that in a time where test scores and checklists are becoming our standards for assessment, it’s important to include in our observations opportunities to reflect, to wonder, and even to speculate.

What do you think?

Oh, and one last thing- the diaries in the infant-toddler programs in Reggio and shared between caregivers and families, and both have the opportunity to contribute their thoughts and observations. What a wonderful way to nurture our partnerships with families!

Infants are people.

Take a moment and think about that. I know it seems obvious, but I think as adults and as caregivers we can forget that these tiny little humans who depend on us so completely are also individuals. They are unique individuals who are developing their own identities and personalities as well as their “likes” and “dislikes”. Infants are people, just like you and I are people. Now, being conscious of that, how does this affect the way that we engage with infants? How can we not only appreciate them as individuals, but support them in the early stages as they begin to develop a sense of self?

My first tip- allow babies some time to be naked. No joke. Infants are learning about their bodies; they are discovering their hands, their feet and all the different parts of their bodies, but to be able to do that they need access. How will they ever learn they have toes if their feet are always covered with socks or slippers? Additionally, bodies that are free from clothing have freedom of movement. There’s a reason babies love to be naked, so why not turn the heat up a notch and allow your infant some time to explore their bodies freely?

Another suggestion is to provide lots of opportunities for uninterrupted, child-initiated play. By this I mean allowing infants the freedom to select a material to explore and the freedom to explore that material however they choose for as long as possible. Infants learn about themselves and the world around them through exploration. When we allow them to make choices and take initiative in their play, we support their sense of self.

Thinking about your infants interactions with others, strangers in particular, you can support your infant by paying close attention to their cues. “Auntie” might want to hold your infant, but is your infant alright with being held by a stranger? Maybe they need a few minutes to get to know each other before your infant will want to experience close contact. Allow your infant to dictate the pace, which will help them to make choices, to feel secure and will allow this introduction of a stranger to be a positive, and not distressful experience.

An infant who is still developing their sense of self, continues to rely on their caregiver to provide a safe and secure environment. They trust us to provide freedrom to explore, appropriate materials and a safe space. Infants learn how to be secure in themselves by being secure in their caregivers.

Photo from: MGD Photography

Today is international mud day, a day when it’s more than okay to get a little messy.

I like the idea of having a mud day for many reasons. First of all, it promotes being messy and sometimes messy play is the most fun. It also promotes being outdoors, no matter what the weather, which I think is important. The beauty of mud day is if it rains, it actually makes more mud and therefore more fun. Finally, I like that mud is completely open ended, you don’t have to be a certain age to play in mud and there are so many possibilities. Once you get into it, playing in mud is freeing, it is an experience for the senses, its a way to let go of “product” activities and keeping things tidy and just allow the children (and yourself) to explore.

Online, I always find myself drawn to blog posts or photos or even videos of mud play. I am always inspired by early childhood programs that made mud a part of their everyday practice or even devote entire days to exploring mud. There is something about mud that fascinates and engages children and I think that they don’t always get enough opportunities to follow that interest and really explore with mud. However, we know that children are always learning and that they learn best when they’re engaged in something that really interests them.

Using the ELECT Continuum, here are just a few of the many different ways that children learn when playing with mud.

Infants

5.3 Tactile Discrimination (touching, rubbing, squeezing materials)

Infants and toddlers love sensory play. They almost always enjoy getting dirty and they learn best when they can completely immerse themselves and use all of their senses in play. Mud might be dirt-y but it’s all natural, so it shouldn’t hurt them if they try to check it out using their sense of taste. Infants don’t need any props in their mud play, just complete access so they can explore with their arms, legs, hands and feet.

Toddlers

4.1 Attention Regulation (maintaining attention for increasing periods of time)

4.4 Spatial Exploration (exploring containment by putting objects in containers and by dumping them)

5.3 Sensory Exploration (using all senses in the exploration of properties and functions of objects and materials)

Society often portrays very young children as having short attention spans, but those of us who have children or work with children know that when something really catches their interest, and we allow them the freedom to play uninterrupted, they can do so for significant lengths of time. Toddlers, like infants will enjoy exploring mud simply with their bodies, but at this age, you might also want to add different sizes of containers or even strainers and funnels to let them fill and empty with mud. At this age, you may also begin to see imitative or pretend play; their first attempts and mud pies or even mud soup.

Preschool/Kindergarten

3.5 Using Descriptive Language to Explain, Explore and Extend (using new vocabulary and grammatical constructions in their descriptive language)

4.3 Representation (using a variety of materials to build with and express their ideas & sustaining and extending their socio-dramatic play with language, additional ideas and props)

4.5 Observing (using all senses to gather information while observing)

Preschool and Kindergarten age children may enjoy exploring mud using a mud kitchen or even a mud laboratory. At this age, they engage in a lot of pretend play and will probably enjoy creating with the mud. They are also doing a lot of experiments, they are able to make predictions and solve problems they encounter in their play. There are many opportunities for language through mud play, just think of all the different ways we can describe mud- gooey, runny, sticky, bumpy, oozing, malleable, etc. They might enjoy making their own mud, experimenting with consistency and adding other elements from nature, such as grass, leaves, sticks or even flowers.

For us adults, I think that we should all spend some time with our hands in the mud. It’s relaxing, it’s freeing and it allows us to recapture the joy of playing and having fun!

Happy Mud Day!

For more mud reading, check out these links:

From Community Playthings: The Mud Center: Recapturing Childhood

From The Imagination Tree: An Outdoor Concoctions (read: mud) Kitchen

From Let The Children Play: Mud Play at Preschool

From Growing a Jeweled Rose: 30+ Mud Activities to Celebrate International Mud Day

Photo from Flickr- FreeLearningLife

The one thing that I wish that I could tell every new parent and caregiver is that you can’t “spoil” a baby by picking them up too often. I know that seems like common sense to many people but unfortunately that old way of thinking is still present in our culture today. I think that almost every person I have encountered with a young baby has had an older relative or neighbour tell them not to pick up their crying child.

What we know now, however, is that you can’t “spoil” a baby by picking them up. We also have a much better understanding of how important it really is that we respond to an infant’s distress. It is through our consistent responses to an infant’s distress that we reinforce our attachment with that infant. This  helps them to feel secure and is the foundation upon which a child learns to regulate their own emotions and behaviours. By consistently demonstrating to infant’s and young children that we will be there if they need us, they are able to learn to calm their own distress, knowing that their caregiver will meet their needs.

Understanding this, I also want to caution caregivers to “look before you leap”. What I mean by this is rather than rushing in to swoop up a crying infant, take a moment to determine why the infant is crying first. Do they have a physical need; are they hungry or tired? There are times when intervention is required by the caregiver, but there are other times when the infant simply needs comfort or support. This might mean engaging the infant in a different way. Rather than picking up the infant, you might choose to get down to their level, talk to them or place a reassuring hand on their arm or back, as you would with an older child or adult. We can offer this type of support, especially as the infant  becomes older and is learning to self-regulate.

It is through the consistency of our responses to children’s distress that we form secure attachment relationships and within those relationships, children are able to learn to regulate their own emotions. The way that we respond to children’s needs is so important and although there are no expectations that we will be perfect, our consistency and responsiveness is key to helping children’s socio-emotional development.

Photo by: Dan Harrelson (Flickr)

I’m going to jump ahead to the Physical domain for this post because of something that happened to me yesterday. I had stepped in as a substitute facilitator in a parenting group for women with young babies. My co-facilitator, who regularly leads the group, asked me to bring out a breastfeeding pillow and show one of the mothers how to prop her six month old infant into a sitting position. I knew where we kept the breastfeeding pillows, however, it occurred to me in that moment that I don’t actually know the best way to prop up an infant into a sitting position. I don’t know because I’ve never done it.

In my practice I’ve never felt the need to use a pillow or other supports to hold a child in any position “independently” when they aren’t able to get into that position on their own. They are going to sit eventually, so what’s the rush? Why do we create these artificial milestones that children are only able to achieve with adult intervention? The ability to sit supported no longer matters when the child is able to sit unsupported. In the ELECT the milestone is identified as “sitting without support” with no mention of sitting with support as either a skill or even a strategy to support the development of the skill. So unless a professional has instructed you to prop your infant into a sitting position as part of an early intervention, don’t do it. You don’t need to.

At times I wonder if young children, especially infants, feel like marionettes with adults pulling the strings and manipulating their movements. Infants are definitely willing and able to move around on their own. With ample opportunities for free movement and exploration, children will achieve developmental milestones on their own, in their own time. That’s why the ELECT uses only the most general age guidelines, so that we don’t try and enforce a timeline. It’s a continuum of development with each new milestone logically following the previous milestone; that’s how we were meant to develop.  Children will get there in their own time, no need to rush.

Photo by Honza Soukup (Flickr)

It can be easy to think that babies have two modes; babies who are happy smile and coo and play while babies who are sad cry. However what we forget in this assumption is that babies are people too with the same range of emotions that we experience as adults, although they aren’t yet able to express these emotions in the same ways that we do. Infants and young children are only just beginning the process of learning and understanding what emotions are, while at the same time experiencing them in a big way. This is why it’s so important that we acknowledge and label an infant’s feeling so that they can begin to learn to understand them and to manage them. This is also why it’s important to take the time to determine what a child is feeling before intervening. We are often quick to swoop in and try to “fix” a crying baby but how can we appropriately engage with an infant if we don’t know what they’re feeling.

If an infant begins to cry because of the frustration she is experiencing in her engagement with a toy and we pick her up and take her away from the toy, we remove the opportunity for her to work through her frustration. What message does that send? That if something frustrates you, you should give up? Will we further mislabel the feelings this infant experienced as “sad” or “tired” because we weren’t paying attention in the first place? Even worse will we send this child the message that it’s not alright to feel frustrated or to cry? For infants, crying is still the primary way that they are able to communicate their needs or express their negative emotions and we certainly don’t want to discourage that. We need to be respectful enough to allow the expression of all types of feelings.

We want infants and young children to express their emotions and to understand them. This means we need to pay close attention. As caregivers we should always respond to a crying baby in an observant and thoughtful way. This does not always mean picking a child up, but perhaps simply responding to them verbally. We should take the time to determine why they are crying so that we can respond appropriately. Further, although it’s easy to focus on the negative emotions and the act of crying, we also need to respond to and label the infant’s positive emotions, such as excitement or pride. Supporting an infant to understand and express their emotions is beneficial for both baby and caregiver.

Photo by Eric Fleming (Flickr).

It’s all about relationships.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; caregiving in the early years is all about relationships. The most important thing that we do day in and day out is not “teaching” new skills but forming trusting, supportive, respectful relationships with the infants and young children in our care. That being said, when it comes to group care, this can be a challenge because we are often very busy and rarely have the opportunities which allow us to have fully engaged one on one interactions with the children. So we do our best to have as many of those moments as we can and we take full advantage of caregiving routines which allow us this time. That being said, when it comes to forming relationships in a busy infant, the ability to keep connected across space is a significant one.

As we go about our classroom routines, we need to be conscious of what is happening with the children around us. By being attentive to children’s explorations, even from a distant, we allow them the opportunity to engage us in what they are doing, even when we are doing other things. Across the room, an infant may be exploring with a toy, and look over, attempting to make eye contact, he or she may gesture or say the name of the toy, trying to call our attention to what they are doing. Although we may be unable to join them in their exploration, by acknowledging their communication and responding to them, we are still able to support their exploration and strengthen the relationship. An infant or young child may call out for us with a need, such as hunger or physical affection. We might not be able to meet this need immediately if we are attending to another child, but now we are able to respond by letting the child know that we have heard them and will be there to support them when we are finished with the task at hand. We’re never too busy or too far away to respond to an infant or young child in a respectful, supportive way.

This is a wonderful example of what I really love about the continuum in the ELECT. This item “simple turn taking” is found both here, in the Social domain, as well as being repeated later in the “communication, language and literacy” domain under non-verbal communication skills. This is great because it takes into account the holistic way that young children learn and develop. This and many other skills and milestones in the development of young children encompass multiple domains and I think that it’s important to remember that. Children (or adults for that matter) are never learning just one thing; they are taking in many things all around them, learning and growing at a rapid pace. Life isn’t a place where you can control for all the variables to isolate one factor, and I think that’s a good thing. There are several overlaps like this in the continuum and I hope that they will help all who use it to keep the holistic nature of development in mind as we work with and observe young children.

One more thing I’ve noticed is that “peek-a-boo” is a game that we all seem to instinctively play with babies. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you have a lot of experience with babies and young children or none at all, when faced with a baby, everyone seems to end up playing some form of “peek-a-boo” either with their hands, or peering over a newspaper or around a corner. At least that’s my experience. I’d love to know what you think.

Infants have an amazing capacity to learn. Not only do they learn at an incredibly rapid pace but they are constantly learning like sponges, absorbing all that’s around them. This can be a scary thing. Not only because as adults we can’t even hope to learn as much in a day or month or year as infants do, but because we are the ones that they are learning from.  As parents or caregivers, we are the primary influences in an infant’s life. They watch everything that we do (even the things we wish they didn’t). This puts us in a position of great responsibility. We are their guides to this world, teaching them how they can interact with their environment as well as with those around them. Thinking about our everyday lives, if we were more conscious that we were being watched and our actions were being analyzed, would that change our behaviours? Are we acting as the models that we’d like to be?

Now my intent is not to stress everyone out because we’re not perfect. No one is, myself included. Fortunately one of the other things we know about child development is that in order for an infant to truly learn something, they must see it (or hear) it many times over. So it’s not what we do all the time, but rather what we do most of the time that counts. We all have our moments.

As surprising as it can be when we see ourselves reflected through the words or actions of a young child, it’s also wonderful. Who doesn’t smile when they see and infant pick up a purse, wave and say “bye” or hold a baby doll to their chest as if trying to breastfeed. What a wonderful peek into the adults that they will become.