EECERA 2018 - PED talk - Managing Love-Led Practice

Transcript of PED talk – Budapest EECERA – August 2018

Jane Malcolm – Managing Love-Led Practice

Hello my name is Jane Malcolm and I have come all the way from The University of Edinburgh in Scotland, to say “I love you”.

I’d like you to pause for a second and take note of how that made you feel? 

I am going to guess some of you thought that was a lovely thing to say, others felt uncomfortable. We have all experienced love in very different ways. 

Children have the right to be loved, their health and wellbeing depends upon it. For the next 10 minutes I am going to take you on a journey that will challenge you to consider how you feel about love-led practice in early learning and childcare.

For everyone love means many different things. Our own personal experience of love impacts upon the way we feel about loving the children we are working with. Whether you are a lead practitioner managing a setting, an academic or a Government Policy Maker your experience of love drives your understanding of it.

I want to thank you for allowing me to share my personal experience of love with you. I am going to tell you a story. 

20 years ago I was the manager of a pre-school nursery. I worked with a four-year-old girl, called Rosy. She had a mane of blond frizzy hair, a bit of a lisp when she spoke and a smile that would melt the stoniest of hearts. BUT she had a wild temper. She struggled to cope with the big emotions she was feeling. This would often present as anger, tears, frustration and hitting out at staff and children however she could also be very loving and kind. One day her Mum asked us if we had worked out the hair clue? We all laughed and asked what that was. Her Mum explained that if Rosy came into nursery with her hair all neat and tidy then we would have a good day with her, however if she came in with her hair wild and tangled then we knew that her Mum had not been able to get her to sit to tidy her hair and we would have angry Rosy that day. She was definitely a handful. However, one day Rosy ran into nursery, her hair as wild as we had ever seen, we all sighed knowing what was to come. But this day she ran to me, wrapped her arms around me and said “I love you Jane”. While she could test my patience, my response to her was real, it was natural, I hugged her back and said “I love you too Rosy”. Then she ran screaming, pushed another child and ran off with their bike!

My point being I believe that every child deserves to know they are loved. No matter what challenges we have with them. We all need love to develop and grow.

Ten years ago I used this same story to illustrate the importance of love and attachment to childhood practice students I was teaching when I was a lecturer. 

My students were eager to learn, enthusiastic to put into practice the new and exciting ideas and theories they had learned in class. One day in class, a very competent and thoughtful student Alex appeared troubled.  Alex was  a vibrant student who was well known for his many tattoos. If you looked closely many of his tattoos were of his son, who had autism, and represented the struggles and challenges Alex had faced as a father. One tattoo was of a human heart, representing his love for his son and family. He was a great guy. I asked why he looked troubled. He said he had taken what he had learned in class, and knowing the power of love with his son, he had hugged a child in his placement, who had fallen and was upset. Afterwards, he was taken aside by his placement supervisor and was told that this was not allowed. He was not allowed to hug the children. This was sadly not the first time I had heard this. Struggling to find an answer for him, I spoke with other students of mine who were managers of early years’ settings. They all agreed with what Alex had been told. Frustrated, I asked why when they know the importance of love to children? The answer was simple, because the policies don’t allow it!

Kathleen Marshall, one of the previous Commissioners for Children and Young People in Scotland shared her concern for manager’s reliance on policy when she said “Lead Professionals cling to rules, like safety ropes on a stormy deck”.

My research grew out of this frustration. 

A year ago, I became the Policy Manager for the Scotland office of the National Day Nurseries Association. This role gave me the opportunity to explore, first hand policy development within the Scottish Government. 

There were several things I discovered however two struck me as having an impact on the way early learning and childcare policies are developed. Firstly, the language used in the key policy documents.

Out of 13 key policy documents in Scotland only 7 briefly mention love, with 4 only mentioning the word once. None of the policy documents explicitly forbid love-led practice however none of them encouraged it either. There was a lack of clarity in the documents, referring to components of love rather than love itself, for example compassion, care. With so little guidance it is no wonder that Managers are uncertain about delivering love-led practice.

The second issue was the complex nature of developing policies to suit everyone’s agenda. 

We, the policy advisers, academics, experienced experts may well be part of the problem. We all bring different agendas. My job is to lobby on behalf of our members, I am also advocating on behalf of children as an academic. Politicians not only have to contend all of us but they must also balance the needs of their constituents, and their own experiences and beliefs. Policy development is complicated. What starts out as a great idea, is pushed in pulled in so many different directions, we lose sight of the original goal.

I’d like to pause for a moment and ask you to imagine a world without love. (Pause) 

The human race faces many problems and challenges but without love there would be no one there to help, support and guide.

For children like Rosy and students like Alex to experience love-led practice, Managers need to have the freedom to manage that practice with integrity and professionalism. The policies need to start and finish with love. Children need love, we all need love. 

Those of us who advise on early years’ policy need to be brave, we need to set aside our fears, embrace our own experiences of love and use them to imagine a utopian model of childcare where love is at the heart of policy and practice and not something we tread carefully around. 

The challenge is to lead with love.