The Viewpoint article by Jools Page ('Love, love.love...', 29 June-12 July) touched a very tender part of my heart and prompted me to respond. Her words chimed with my developing thoughts about how we actually demonstrate our love - not just for and with children (although this is crucial in their developing lives), but also with those adults who we meet professionally and more widely in our daily lives, whether they are familiar to us or not. In this wider sense I adapt a Quaker phrase, 'the welcoming acceptance of the other'* to incorporate and mean love in its widest sense.
I do not see this love in the perhaps commonly understood way but as an openness (Barack Obama talked about having an 'open heart' in his eulogy to Clementa Pinckney in Charleston last week), a willingness to listen to 'the other', a commitment to take action if it is needed, to show we care, to watch out for each other, to present without question a receptivity to others.
It is something far more than 'tolerance' - a word used in the Prevent strategy about British values, including in the early years. Tolerance is more about 'putting up with', possibly somewhat reluctantly, whereas 'acceptance' is outgoing, willingly and graciously receptive and positive. And a 'welcoming' acceptance (of the other) is even more explicit and ultimately active.
Jools talks about 'love', being able to 'mind' about a child, 'caregiving routines by an emotionally available key person', young children seeing important people in their lives 'getting on with one another' and having 'a secure base to return to in times of distress'. She also mentions 'when practitioners are able to ...see the world from the view of “the other”'. These attitudes and approaches are fundamental to the well being of children, but many of them also apply equally to every one we meet, in whatever context, in our society. And, of course, they are reciprocal. In the early years family members, practitioners and children are all 'others' to one another.
Children are precious and should be cherished. Nearly 100 years ago the provisional government of the Irish republic, in its proclamation to the people of Ireland, wrote :
The (Irish) Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally.....(1916).
It is time that we spoke truth to power. Now, 99 years later, it is not only 'astonishing', as Jools describes, but in my opinion both shocking and shameful that the words 'loving and secure' are no longer part of the Department for Education's EYFS statutory framework.
How do we show that we are genuinely welcoming and accepting - in our demeanour, in our body language? It is this openness of spirit, of empathy, of sensitivity, of receptivity, the awareness of exactly who the other is that shows itself to those others and provides them with the confidence to share their thoughts and open their hearts to us and know that we will truly understand. This is particularly crucial for children who need to feel that confidence to say or do something that enables us to support them in alleviating any pain or hurt they may have.
My thoughts also chimed with an article in the same NW edition by Julian Grenier about ensuring that every child is secure and content, not by just being upbeat and smiley about everything. By not responding to a child's immediate needs, they may lose touch with their own emotions and be, in effect, encouraged to please adults at the expense of themselves. In such scenarios the deep needs of the child may not be revealed. Their real feelings may remain hidden. How often do we hear adults describing an aspect of their troubled childhood where nobody noticed, not unkindly, but genuine opportunities to talk to an adult just did not take place!
Children need space, time and sensitive opportunities to talk about these things. What are children really feeling? How do we know what it is like to walk in another's shoes? Knowing empowers us all to open up – this is something akin to the way children and adults work together using Persona Dolls to develop concepts of empathy with those who may be different from themselves, the other.
My concern here is somewhat outside and beyond the scope of these two significant and important articles - with children who feel, for whatever reason, 'different' (the other), perhaps because speaking a generally unfamiliar language, for being a boy or a girl, for having a different skin colour (often but not always, especially in non-urban areas, where the majority colour is white), for having a disability or special needs, for being of a particular faith, for living with Lesbian or Gay parents or one parent or in care, for living in inadequate housing and/or in poverty.
We all know that our society is deeply riddled and embedded (institutionally, structurally and systemically) with inequalities, discrimination and prejudice, any of which a child may experience. They may want to tell us something that has happened to them, something deeply personal and hurtful. Or tell us about something that they have seen or heard happen to someone else. But they are only likely to do this if they feel secure with us and feel that we will understand, be sympathetic and will, if appropriate, take action to prevent it happening again – in other words if we, as adults, show that welcoming acceptance of them, the other. This is, of course, the true role of the key person.
We, none of us, can really 'know' what it is like, what it feels like in the lived experience, to be the other. We can empathise, we can learn more, we can observe and read but we can never really 'know'. So, fundamentally, we need to acknowledge this reality and truly understand that we do not know but that we will listen, help and tune in to the best of our ability and not imagine that our lack of knowledge and understanding is unimportant to them.
This means that we need, as human beings, not only as practitioners, to know something about the reality of so many people's lives and the consequences for them of living in our society. Not to know, denies them the opportunity to share, as partners, the challenges presented to all of us to work towards a society at ease with itself.
*Quaker Faith and Practice, para 2.12
