Emotionally-healthy environments

Learning the skills of emotion coaching can help to create emotionally-healthy environments, which builds resilience in communities that helps children grow and thrive as emotionally literate and resilient adults.

The brains of babies and young children don’t just grow; they develop through interaction with the environment and stimulation. Most of all, brains develop through relationships with a small number of closely-connected, loving, caring adults who are consistently there for them.

Babies are very sensitive beings. Their brains and nervous system are not fully developed, yet it is through secure attachment relationships that the growth of this essential organ and maturation of its processes continues.

Within early years provision, attachment and attunement is dependent on the relationship a key person has with the babies they care for and their families.

The role of the key person is to gradually get to know the baby through the settling-in process. Babies and toddlers need to form a close, trusting relationship with their key person in order to build a secure attachment. The key person should therefore always be responsible for the routine aspects of care, as it is through these seemingly unimportant tasks that attachment is built.

A child’s developmental journey isn’t a straight trajectory, but more of a spiral where the needs of the previous year or stage still manifest in the next, albeit with a different characteristic dimension.

Around the age of two years old, children are going through some developmental changes that are challenging and difficult for them to manage. Providing services that meet the needs of two-year-olds must enhance their learning and support their emotional development by giving consideration to their unique characteristics. This also depends on an understanding of what is going on in a two-year-old’s brain and how an emotion-coaching approach supports the developmental journey of loveable and delightful two-year-olds.

Helping two-year-olds to name their feelings – sadness, loss, despair, fear and anxiety, as well as happier feelings such as enjoyment, excitement, curiosity and courage – only happens when the adults recognise and acknowledge the full range of emotions that children experience, including multi-emotional states or feeling two conflicting emotions at the same time.

This is emotion coaching with very young children, and it’s vital in helping them to recognise, articulate, and increasingly learn to regulate their feelings.

Three-and four-years-olds are on new and ever-expanding journeys in their spiral of development, building on what has gone before to attain new competencies, knowledge and self-awareness. It’s important to acknowledge the huge variance at each end of the age spectrum and to consider ‘emotional, brain-friendly provision’ for three- and four-year-olds.

When looking at developmental approaches, consideration of ‘emergent’ skills in emotional literacy may be helpful, as is done for literacy and numeracy.

This would enable us to see children’s blossoming confidence in recognising and handling their emotions – especially the big feelings that still erupt from time to time.

The opportunities of play offer real-time challenges to problem-solving and emotional regulation, such as taking turns, sharing, learning to wait, coping with frustration and responding to the emotional demands of other children. All of these situations require supportive adults who can offer strategies to cope with the demands life makes on young children.

A brain-friendly environment that promotes emotion coaching in all its aspects helps young children to master the essential tasks: recognising and articulating their emotional states as the first steps on the journey towards emotional literacy – that of empathy and the recognition of the emotional states of others.

Support of their emotional states – especially that of children managing big feelings – through being mindful of their need for close attachment relationships in day-today practice involves careful managing of anticipated separations, and is the basis for emotional health in their setting.

These are the fundamental building blocks of emotional resilience and self-regulation in later years.

When settings prioritise the wellbeing of staff, they’re better placed to provide brain-friendly, emotion-friendly environments where children can thrive.

A supportive environment is based on respect, consideration, empathy and kindness. Managers are key to developing the relational culture in the setting: greeting staff as they come in, enquiring as to how they are, and showing concern about specific individual situations sets the day off to a good start. Similarly, thanking colleagues and staff for their work as well as singling out something to thank or praise them for helps end a tough, tiring day on a good note. Staff need support and guidance through supervision meetings with their manager, as well as team meetings where they have time to plan and reflect.

When managers set the pace for a caring environment, this is more likely to be reflected in the group rooms with kind and considerate relationships between staff, less tension and the creation of an emotionally-safe, comfortable environment for children.

For more useful mini-guides full of information and support on a range of topics, head over to the Members’ Area of the EYA Portal: portal.eyalliance.org.uk.