Assesment Question
Forum post 1
After reading the Dolby (2017) prescribed text [i.e. reading 1.1]and Readings 1.2 and 1.3 as well as viewing observations 1 - 4, answer the following question based on a child you know well and have been observing in your workplace (or an early childhood setting).
· How does the knowledge you have gained from readings make you think differently about a child in your care, i.e. how you interpret your observations and how you will work with the child?
PPlease reference the pdf document
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Topic 1.1 - What does attachment security look like?
This topic addresses the question of what early childhood educators can look for in their ordinary everyday communication moments with children, to recognise when children feel secure with them.
Before completing the readings and watching the first four video clips write down your thoughts on what you would look for to decide if children felt safe and secure with you. Also what are your thoughts on how 'feeling secure' helps children to learn? Do you have a natural model for making the link between close relationships and learning? In your teaching role, do you naturally think of teachable moments and building contact (or emotional exchange) moments?
Your first reading for this subject is the prescribed text by Robyn Dolby (2017). It will introduce the Circle of Security as a road map to describe how children communicate their emotional needs and use the adult as a secure base for exploring/learning and a safe haven for comfort/tenderness and reassurance (emotional refuelling).
The text guides you to look for a natural rhythm in how children come in to and go out from their attachment figure (special person whom they feel close to and who is responsible for them) when they feel secure.
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Read
Reading 1.1
Dolby, R. (2017). The circle of security: Roadmap to building supportive relationships.Research in Practice Series, 24(2). Canberra: Early Childhood Australia.
This is your prescribed text.
Purchase your own copy of this from Early Childhood Australia (cost is approximately $17).
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Observations 1-4 show children demonstrating this 'going out and coming in' rhythm with their educator in an early childhood setting.
In the first observation you are asked to look for this rhythm and to also notice how the educator welcomes the child when he comes in and how she brings a sense of curiosity to the child’s exploring when he moves out to play. You are further asked to look for how this secure base moment is naturally attractive to other children. It brings other children into the boy’s play and gives an opportunity for the educator to help children get interested in what he’s doing and to appreciate the differences between themselves (roots of empathy). Finally, you are asked to look for how the boy’s capacity (what he can do developmentally) increases in this interaction (as he is experiencing his educator as a secure base/safe haven).
In the second observation you are asked to look for the 'going out and coming in rhythm' in an older child.
In the third observation you are asked to practise naming the child’s emotional needs on the Circle of Security as he comes in and out to his early childhood educator and then reunites with his mother. Observation four shows him six months later in the playground, using his educator as a safe haven/secure base.
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Watch
View- Observation 1:
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View- Observation 2:
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View- Observation 3:
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View- Observation 4:
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How directly or obliquely children make a pathway in to the adult will depend on their expectations about the availability and responsiveness of the adult, as well as the immediate situation they are in. When they are getting to know this person, they will be guided by their own personal 'Circle of Security' or secure base representation (internal working model) of how relationships work. This will include what they expect of themselves and others in relationships, based on their first attachments or experiences from growing up in their own family. The children will bring their own models with them to the early childhood setting and these will be played out (albeit unconsciously) with educators when building relationships.
Readings 1.2 and 1.3 give examples of how the adult (a foster carer in reading 1.2 and an early childhood educator in reading 1.3) look beneath the child’s behaviour and make 'attachment' sense of the children’s behaviours when they miscue their carer and distract them from what they really need. Both readings help you to see how to read the meaning under the child’s (albeit distressing or chaotic) behaviour to meet their emotional needs; and challenge their expectations by instead offering a secure model of responsiveness and predictability in your emotional availability.
Topic 1.2 - How do children learn security from you?
This second topic will consider how children learn security from you.
Before looking at the next observation and Readings 1.4 – 1.5, write down your thoughts as to the kind of caregiving that contributes to children feeling secure. If you are working in the early childhood field, recall a favourite moment with a child that occured in the past couple of days, or, if you are a parent, a favourite moment with your own child.
Have you described a moment of simply 'being with' the child, enjoying them for who they are rather than what they are doing? Think of the message you give children when you enjoy being with them like this – the look on your face, the tone of your voice. It is a moment of emotional exchange rather than a teachable moment. There needs to be enough of these in every child’s day as they are the foundation for children learning security from you.
Children also learn security from you when things go wrong, when their feelings are too big for them to manage and they experience you as able to step in and comfort them and help them to make sense of their emotions. “Our willingness to be with children and feel some of what they feel gives them an experience of being safe and connected as they learn about emotions” (Cooper et al., 2010).
Reading 1.4 will help you to discover the importance of relationship repair (the Circle of Repair) in helping children learn security from you and Reading 1.5 describes 'Time-in' as a way to offer relationship repair.
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Read
Reading 1.4:
Weininger, O. (2002). About time-in. InTime-in parenting(chap. 1, pp. 25-34). Toronto: Rinascente Books Inc.
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The original writers of the Circle of Security authors (Cooper, Hoffman, Powell & Marvin, 2005, p. 134) wrote the following words to describe how you can be the 'hands' of support on the Circle to build security as "Always be bigger, stronger, wiser and kind. Whenever possible: follow my child’s need. Whenever necessary: take charge”.
Marte Meo is a developmental support program, which looks at, in a very concrete way, what is involved in 'following and leading'. You will become familiar with the natural steps in following or establishing emotional connection and creating a welcoming atmosphere; and in leading or offering structure without losing connection with the children. The special contribution of Marte Meo is that it gives you an eye for what is natural, what is hidden in plain sight because we do offer natural support moments every day but don’t consciously see what we do.
Reading 1.5 (see p. 4) describes how the Marte Meo method was used in a therapeutic intervention to help parents reflect on their child in a new way, not to see him/her as a problem but as having genuine needs, and to see how they could follow and lead to lend support in everyday situations. The intervention significantly reduced the children’s behaviour problems and aggression. Marte Meo is used widely in early childhood services in Europe as a basis for reflective practice and for quality assurance and is being introduced to early childhood care and education in Australia through KU Children’s Services.
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Read
Reading 1.5:
Neander, K., & Engstrom, I. (2009). Parents’ assessment of parent-child interaction interventions – a longitudinal study in 101 families.Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 3(8).
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Observation one can be viewed again, this time to guide you in what to look for to see how the early childhood educator is following the child’s interest to build connection with him. 'Following' keeps children happy and builds internal structure so children learn to pay attention to themselves. Registration comes before regulation.
Observation five will guide you in what to look for when the context is one of leading. You will see the early childhood educator offer structure to the child and hold the connection with him as she leads him step by step. Later we will revisit this clip to see how the educator could use the footage to share her relationship-based practice with the child’s parents. A key principle in leading interactions is to make a connection before taking the child into the action that you want him or her to do. This is called contact-action rhythm.