How can as many as 1,500 children under five be suspended from nursery and reception classes every year? Commentators expressed shock at the news that young children could possibly have such difficult behaviour. This is another example of the unhelpful romanticisation of early childhood. It doesn't surprise me at all.
Recently I carried out a short piece of research into the role of the key person, which reminded me how very difficult it can be for staff to manage the feelings evoked when a child bites or hurts them and the other children.
Times have changed. When pioneers like Margaret Macmillan, Anna Freud and others opened some of the first nursery schools in England, they found the young children to be highly withdrawn and introverted, used to spending time out on the streets without adequate food or clothing. Children thrived in those early nurseries, experiencing freedom, space, good food, care and love. But with the reduction in absolute poverty has come an increase in the miseries associated with relative poverty, feeling excluded and depressed.
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