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30 Teachearlyyears.com 1 2 3 TALKING POINTS A crucial role Making time to forge strong relationships with the children in your care is hugely important in helping them to manage the challenges of a busy classroom. “There’s a level of security and intimacy at home that can’t be achieved in an early years setting,” Laverne says. “Children have to do a lot of work to manage, particularly in those first few days.” It takes two “We have to be aware of the feedback loops that are taking place between us and the children,” Laverne stresses. “When a child does something, we have a reaction, which then makes us behave in a certain way. Sometimes you need to step outside the context you’re working in to understand this exchange, because if a child is incredibly distressed, often you don’t have time to think because you’re managing the behaviour.” Get the message “All behaviour is communication,” Laverne explains. “In the heat of the moment, when you’re having to clear a space or shield children from a child who’s out of control, try to consider, what is that child trying to tell you? When you’re able to lend your mind to that level of thinking, it’s an incredibly powerful tool for beginning to understand the distress that little one must be feeling.” Educational Psychology and a further two years under supervision as she embarked on a career that’s seen her work with children and young people aged 0–25. While her remit has always been wide, the early years holds a special place in her heart. “For me, part of the joy of being an educational psychologist is being very involved in early years work,” she says. “As part of my training at the Tavistock clinic we had to complete a nursery observation – it’s still part of the curriculum now. It was a real highlight: we had to follow a child through an hour or so’s morning play, whatever they did; observe them, then go away and write down exactly what we’d seen. Then we had supportive teaching from a clinician tutor, who would take us through our write-up. “What I discovered was that you can’t know what you’re seeing until you really, really look. There was a way I’d been observing the child I was given, a little boy, and he seemed to all intents and purposes to be pretty okay, but when I really watched – say, for example, at the water tray or the sandpit – I could see how he looked at the other children, took in their conversations, how he responded sometimes or not, and just how complex all those social interactions were for him. Ever since, I’ve believed that observation is at the heart of what we do – because sometimes you can feel that you’re looking at something, but there’s another way of really looking at it.” Even if you are paying close attention, the job of separating ordinary, if sometimes difficult, behaviours from those that might be symptoms of an underlying problem is far from easy. Although the numbers of very young children being identified as exhibiting challenging behaviour and emotional and social difficulties is on the increase, it’s often the case that issues only become apparent years later; even when this is the case, however, the early years remains an important consideration for psychologists, who will revisit an individual’s early experiences and behaviours as they build a comprehensive picture of their development to shed light on the present. “At the Tavistock, we’re very interested in early child development, in the relational aspects of growing up,” Laverne says. “So, how children are with their parents, their siblings, other children and people, because that tells us a lot about how children manage their social relationships, their confidence and their resilience.” While some of the children that psychologists like Laverne work with may ultimately be diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum or with conditions such as ADHD, the root causes of behavioural and developmental problems are varied: they may be reactions to stressful situations or only manifest in a particular setting. Laverne highlights, too, the importance of not overreacting to bumps in the developmental road or periods of difficult behaviour. “People can forget Children don’t want to be distressed and lashing out, but sometimes they feel like there’s nowhere else to go. “