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Hello and welcome to this week's podcast. So this week's episode is a follow on from last week's episodes of your tuning in for the first time. Uh, or you haven't listened to last week's one go back and have a listen to last. Week's one. It's all about intentional teaching. And this follow on episode comes from a lot of feedback that I had from educators. About intentional teaching and how they resonated with that feeling of knowing. That they're doing too much.
And the guilt that comes by association, once one starts unwinding the trap of doing too much. So I wanted to help you with that because it's not always the easiest thing to manage. So let's get into this week's [00:01:00] podcast episode. And it is titled. What if I didn't feel guilty? Because I don't want you to feel guilty. Alright, here we go.
[00:02:00] I K, I am going to talk to you today. As I said before, about how to address the guilt of. Not doing enough in your family, daycare for your programming and planning. And then hence throughout the day. Somewhere along the line. We absolutely bought into this notion that we need to be constantly doing something in order to justify our role and our position as a family daycare educator. I can assure you that there could be nothing further from the truth. So the main role that we have to facilitate as family daycare educators. [00:03:00] The very fundamental thing that every single educator must 1000000% get right. Every single day. Is that connection with the children? That above anything else? Should be the most important thing that you strive to do on any given day. So we all know what happens and how it feels.
If we do too much, we get overwhelmed and we repeat that doing too much, getting overwhelmed cycle. Four. Uh, a long period of time that leads to educator burnout that leads to educators, not feeling fulfilled in their role. It leads to educators not having the energy and the time for their own families.
At the end of the day, it leads to educators feeling stressed out, [00:04:00] feeling like they never catch their tail. They're always behind. There's just this. Massive weight on your shoulders. All of the time. That is the epitome of burnout. You get frustrated, you lose your patience, you don't enjoy what you do.
You don't have time to do the things that bring you joy in your life. You have no work-life balance when you're not working. You're thinking about work when you're working. You're not thinking about anything else. When you get off work, you're trying to rush around and catch up on your life. And then you're thinking about work again.
It's just this never ending. Ending cycle. You never feel good about what you do when you're away from work, you feel guilty that you're not doing the work when you're in work, you feel like you're not doing enough. You're guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. It doesn't matter what you do. Where you go, who you do it with?
It's really difficult to [00:05:00] switch off. Who's feeling seen and heard and who's sitting there going get out of my head, Victoria. That's often what educators say to me is that they feel like I'm inside their heads. Do you know? It's because I have been there myself. I was that educator that planned eleventy billion things every single day. I tried to push the children into doing things.
I thought that I had to send Kraft home every day. I thought that we had to be doing craft and painting and cooking and excursions and science projects all on the same day. I thought we had to constantly be entertaining the children. And I can tell you right now, it is not the case. And if you are an educator, that's doing that. You are doing a disservice to yourself and you're doing a disservice to the children on so many levels. So I want to. Talk about Ann [00:06:00] and firstly, thank the educators who sent me messages. Uh, and, and told me that they felt overwhelmed with guilt, that they didn't know when they started looking at, at doing intentional teaching. They started looking at their own program and realizing that they are doing too much.
And what they've done is they've tried to start pairing things back, but this guilt of not doing enough creeps in this whole idea that we have to be constantly doing things. And doing things for the children has crept in and it can be really challenging to unwind that. So those of you who use our planners. No, that there's only space for four observations a week. So I want to touch on what the actual requirements are.
And I am going to read the, the, uh, regulation here. It's regulation 73 on the educational program. And this is I'm quoting directly from the [00:07:00] regulations. An educational program is to contribute to the following outcomes for each child. A, the child will have a strong sense of identity. Be the child will be connected with and contribute to his or her world.
See, the child will have a strong sense of wellbeing D. The child will be a confident and involved learner and see. Uh, they've sorry. I can't read my alphabet E. The child will be ineffective. A communicator. So that's the first part regulation, 74 talks specifically on the documentation requirements. So documenting of child assessments or evaluations for delivery of educational program. The approved provider of the education and care service must ensure that for the purpose of the educational program, the following document, the following are documented a. For a child [00:08:00] preschool age or under. Assessments of the child's developmental needs, interest experience and participation in educational program. And assessments of the child's progress against the outcomes of the educational program and B for a child over school, age evaluations of the child's wellbeing development and learning development and learning. To in preparing the documents, the approved provider must a consider the period of time that the child is being educated and cared for by the service and how the documentation will be used by the educator at the service and be prepare the documentation in a way that is readily understandable by the educators at the service and the parents of the children. Regulation 75 is the information about the education and program to be kept available.
The approved provider of an education and care service must ensure that a. Information [00:09:00] about the contents and operation of the educational program for the services displayed at the education and care service premises. At a place accessible to parents of children being educated and cared for by the service and be a copy of the educational program is available.
Following places for inspection on request. In the case of a center base service. I don't need to read about that in the case of a family daycare service at each family, daycare residents or family daycare venue. So information about, uh, the educational program is to be given to parents. Um, so 76 information about educational parent program to be given to parents. The approved provider of an education and care service must ensure that a parent of a child being educated and cared for by the service is provided with the following information on request. A information about the content and operation of the educational program so far as it relates to their child. [00:10:00] Be information about the child's participation in the program. And see a copy of the documents kept under regulation, 74 in respect to that child. So you can see clearly there is not one single number. Not a single number.
So your service may have a policy, which says you have to have X amount of, um, observations per child. Now. I'm never going to tell you to do what your policy, to, to go against your policies. I will. However, say if you feel that those policies. Uh, restrictive or over the top, or you feel like you can't adequately meet them? If you have a look at the regulation and you feel like it is out of alignment with the regulations, or could just perhaps be tweaked and assessed reassessed and looked at by all means, have a professional conversation with your [00:11:00] service. Um, yourself with the information that you need to make the case that you want to make, though. Don't go and whinge and be a whiner. And complaint compelling complaint, but have no solution. I detest when people come to me like that. They whinge and they whine and I go, okay, so you've got a problem.
Cool. What's your solution to the problem? Uh, I don't know. Well, I don't have a problem with how things are going, so I'm not going to spend any of my time coming up with solutions to things. I don't have a problem with. If you've got a problem. Look at how you can overcome that problem, arm yourself with the information you need.
Take that to your service and have a professional conversation with them. Explain to them, why you're feeling the way you feel. Talk about the regulations, the requirements that are there. How you feel the current situation? He [00:12:00] really used you for review or an update. And then give them solutions.
Be part of the proactive fix for people.
You're more likely to get what you want. Or at the very least not annoying people. If you go there and our solutions orientated. All right. So. We know that some educators are feeling overwhelmed and over, over burdened and burnt out and guilty for wanting to do less. And that's. You know, they're feeling burnt out and one of the solutions is to do less, but when they start doing less they're so wound up in the previous way of doing things that they start feeling guilty. And it becomes difficult to let go of these. Rules, these, these things, these stories that we've put on ourselves and [00:13:00] attached to our professional. Way of being, we've created this big story because we've gone along with what somebody has said to us. And that's just how we've based things in all my goodness.
So we're getting into the, I've always done it this way. Kind of mindset now. And so therefore, because I've always done it this way, I can't change it. Well, that's not true. And that's a story that you can reassess and change. So let's start looking at what's creating that overwhelm. So. Educators are feeling like they're doing too much. Because they are. You are doing too much. Like, if you use our planner, there's four observations awaking there.
But even that. As you listened in, the regulations you don't have to do is prescript number of observations a week. You have to take into consideration the amount of time that [00:14:00] a child has been with you. So if you've got an, a child that's been with you for four years and you've got four observations yet, not good enough. Not good enough.
One a year is nowhere near enough to do a proper evaluation. Let's take into consideration that you have an ongoing observation. Perhaps you could get away with that. If you've got several pages of information that shows a picture of how that child has grown and developed. Over that four years. Yeah. That could work. But I don't think there's many educators observing like that.
What I think is happening and what I see happening. Is that you're documenting into relational. Documentation. So how that child's getting on with other children. You're documenting, perhaps some difficulties that that child is having and they're like sporadic [00:15:00] observations. They might be around certain parts of your program. That's definitely one way to observe.
Another way to observe is like I discussed having this ongoing documentation for this particular child and it just goes on and on and on and on. And so you might do that all season and what I actually advocate. As a really great way for educators to try doing less, to be able to provide that overall picture is to in our planner. Observation pages, a double-sided.
So T take one per child and start jotting your notes. Write your goals on there for that child. And talk about how you're meeting those goals. What are the resistance that that child has to that goal? What are the challenges you faced? What are the things that you've done to overcome that, to help that child meet that goal? But let's get back to feeling like you are doing too much and you're feeling burnt out because of that. [00:16:00] It's a hundred percent, the fact that you're doing too much. Who said that we have to do five and six things a day with children. Let's pull it rot back. Right back to basics and do one. Planned intentional teaching activity a day. The rest of your day is made up with creative free play transitions to food. And sleep time or rest.
Like, that's it. I have the children arrive, have creative play. And by the way, I go right into this in the essential elements, there's an entire module on ebb and flow. I talk about in breathing out breathing and the importance of setting your rhythm up so that there's. These equal times for in breathing and out breathing and they're responsive to the children's needs, but you, the educator are holding this space for the children.
[00:17:00] So you are the boss, you are steering the ship. You're not like micromanaging it by any way, shape or form, but you are a hundred percent steering the direction of the ship. It's your job. This is your professional work to look at the group as a cohort, as a whole and go, I know what's needed right now. And everyone's cranky because everybody's tired.
We're going to bed an hour and a half earlier than what we normally would because I'm responsive to what the children are saying without them actually saying I'm tired because not many children will actually say that.
So your responsive to that. So let's say they've all arrived. And I really advocate for a community meeting. Uh, gathering circle, um, mornings. Cool. Why are we not allowed to have morning circles anymore? This is where we [00:18:00] check in. We check in and we see how everyone's going. One of my educators, Renee from kingdom kids, if you saw. The summit this year, she was on the summit.
And she's brilliant. Let me tell you, she has a, they make. Um, a. Baby Chino. They make a baby Chino. They all sit down together and they plan out what they're going to do. And the children talk about the things that they want to achieve that day. They have a morning circle and it's a legit, like a morning circle I could get on with. Yeah, coffee.
Sure. Thank you very much. What are we going to do for today for the day? Just like we do when we get into the office. I mean, when I had meetings with the department of education, they did a bloody gathering circle. Like, why do we say in early childhood that we can't do a gathering circle or a morning circle that. Oh, it doesn't meet everybody's needs.
And then when we get out into the workforce, My husband, when he was working [00:19:00] as a mechanic, they had toolbox meetings every well they're supposed to. And they didn't. And that's why the accident happened. He's a lesson. Right. But they used to, or a lot of workshops have toolbox meetings. You go into the military, they all come together.
They have a toolbox meeting. You know, you, you meet the hairdressers, everyone's having a cup of coffee, first thing in the morning when everyone gets there and they're talking about the day, like we do this everywhere. Why did we all of a sudden decide that in early childhood? It's not cool. It's because it was driven by teachers trying to do the stupid. Ready school readiness stuff. Where we all of a sudden tried to start shoving academics down.
Children's next. Sorry. I'm feel myself getting ranty here. But this school readiness and Emma. This is totally because of you. I had a conversation with one of my team today. She was like, how do I get out of school ready to [00:20:00] stuff? Right. This is it. We take ownership over our program and we do the things that we know are important for the children, because we know the children we have. We observe them.
We're not emotionally connected to them. Like we are our own children, right. It's different with our family daycare children. We are a professional in a professional role and we know the things that we need to work on that child to help them to the next thing that they're getting to. Like we just know it because we're good at what we do. Oh, my goodness, Victoria. Just relax. Okay.
So.
Let me just gather my thoughts again. All right. So how do we unwind? We go back to basics. We have the children wait till everybody's arrived while we're waiting for everyone to arrive. It's creative play. Then we have a gathering circle. We check in with each other, we see how [00:21:00] everything's happening.
We talk about what's going to come for the day we wake the children's bodies up. We do some stretching. We might do some full body movement. We might do a, some songs. This is where I loved to do my seasonal songs. And, and we do full body crossing the midline when it was appropriate for the children to cross midline.
Like we did all of that stuff. We turned. The brain. On. And I was able to gather how each child was emotionally that day. I could work it out because I'm smart. And you are too. I promise, you know, what the children need when you're connected to them. So we have this connection circle. We then might go for morning tea. Transition the children to washing their hands and getting ready for morning tea. And you're, you're an educator who switched on.
So you already were getting morning tea, kind of ready while everybody was arriving and having creative [00:22:00] play. Because you are organized, it's all ready to go. So once the children have washed their hands, And they transitioned to the table. It's all there. Ready to go. It's not a big drama. In fact, it's a lovely process. And when you're all having morning tea together again, you connecting. You're chatting about things.
You're having a lovely experience with the children, your role modeling, how to eat with manners. You're asking the children to be at the table with their very best manners, because that's how you eat when you're at Tori's house. No, you don't leave the table. You sit at the table. And you wait for your friends.
You can sit here. If you finished, you can sit and chat to me and tell me all the things you did over the weekend and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and only go. But there's nothing wrong with teaching children, patients. I know you can't leave the table because your other friends haven't finished yet. [00:23:00] And we're sitting here together.
This is together time. It will be time to go in a minute. And then if you have all my who's taking an hour and a half and six business days to finish his piece of toast. Yes, you might let the children go and you'll sit here with that little fellow and let him finish his toast. We won't rush the children to eat. Because they're in there. They're they're nourishing their bodies. We aren't going to ask the children to sit there for an hour and a half.
So I'll make, can take an hour and a half to eat a single piece of toast. We aren't going to be like that, but we are going to use that as an opportunity. Two. I teach the children, patients. They don't have to rush off. This is a teachable moment. We're not going to be. You know, Anal about it and ask them to sit there, but we are going to ask them to wait a few moments.
There's nothing wrong with that. That's setting a boundary. You can get them to play a game while they're sitting there. The mealtimes was [00:24:00] just such beautiful processes in my daycare where we all talked and we shared jokes and we made stories up and the children, once they knew the boundary and they, they, they waited there.
They didn't ask. They just sat there and then when they'd had enough, then they were able to say, Tori, I'm ready to go and play now. And I would be like, yup. Okay. Cool. But it's not like shoving food down there, their neck, and then bailing because they're bored. No. This is a process that we enjoy together. And when you can bring the energy down like that. And it becomes an enjoyable experience as the children transition back to creative play. They're centered.
They're grounded. They're ready to play. They've they've got food in their tummy. Hopefully some protein, which is going to sustain them. So we're [00:25:00] not going to have these big carb highs and these big crashes, the cob crash that comes after it. We want to give them some good, solid protein, little bit of fruit.
We want to have some carbs there so that they've got energy. Then they're going to move and transition into play creative play. And while they're doing that, you may clean up morning tea, or you may get them to do that.
But after that you are then going to get that intentional teaching moment sorted.
So whether it be painting or gardening or you're going to walk to the park or whatever it is that you're doing for the day. Then you get that ready to happen. And if you're organized, you've got it in a box already and it's already to come out and you just put it out there and then you might either invite the children to come as a group, or you might do individually invitations.
You might not even invite anybody. You might just start doing the thing yourself. And eventually the children are going to come over and be interested in what you're doing. However you decide to do that. But [00:26:00] there is ways and means for everything. But that intentional teaching moment is happens in that time. And then. Once that's finished the children drift back into that creative play.
You pack that away. You might then go, lunchtime is going to be the next thing. I'll get the lunches organized so that as soon as I hear that energy shift, soon as I hear that moment where the children are like, Ooh, that's it. End of that session and they will tell you without telling you, cause you'll hear it.
It changes. Someone starts getting techy, then, then, then someone else joins in and it becomes a bit of a. Uh, okay. Natural, natural transition is happening and you've already got the lunches ready. So my process from then would be the children would pack away. I would start the cleanup song. I met her. NATO dusty?
No, he said it's time to clean out. Ho, swish, swish, [00:27:00] clean. Oh, And I would just start singing that and the children, it took me a little while, but I use the same transitions until they got it. And then they would join me and they would pack away and we would tidy up all our space. Everything had a place if there was things missing.
Cause I had heaps of the greens in the grap it stuff. It was very easy to see if something was missing in an all went back in the same place. The children knew exactly where it went. So then we could easily see if there was a desk or a little NEMA person missing. And we would all look for it until it was put back. Cause I really respected my resources because they cost me a lot of money. And I invested in those and, and I was teaching the children. How to put things away, properly, how to have attention for detail and to look for things and go, oh, something's missing.
And we knew straight away. Again, that's a teachable [00:28:00] moment and there is nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's teaching the children to respect the environment that they're a part of. It's teaching them to be a important part of the community. And I am going to talk about community and the importance of community. In the coming months, because I've got a massive beam, my bonnet around it. So then we would pack away all of our space and we would make our beds.
And then we would transition to wash hands and having lunch together. Then after lunch and again, it was a relaxed meal time. It was an enjoyable experience where I ate with the children, even when I had babies. Because I would give the baby some finger food and then I would feed them. And then when I was eating, whatever I was eating, they would be norming on their finger food. You must eat with the [00:29:00] children.
Please be an educator that eats with the children. When you eat with the children, you're a person worthy of role modeling. You're a person worthy of imitation. You're showing them how to eat good food. You're showing them good table manners. You're showing them, oh, I can't talk. I've got a mouth full of food.
Just hang on a second. And you finish eating what's in your mouth. You, you demonstrate how to eat with your mouth closed. All of these table manners are things that are important for children to learn. I'm wondering how many children get mealtimes with their families anymore. I'd like it's so vitally important. So we have lunch together.
And depending on your cohort of children, again, they might wash up or you might do the dishes, but they get their hands in their face. Wipe. The toilet is go to the toilet. The ones that have their nappies get their nappies changed and we [00:30:00] go to bed. And we all go to bed together. And we read a story. And then you have two hours. Also if you're lucky. Where every 10 minutes you check them.
You're checking that they're all breathing. You might spend five or 10, 20 minutes in there. Yourself. Just breathing. Having a little bit of a reset, reset, your nervous system. Don't go to sleep. I'm not saying that by any way, shape or form. I am saying it's okay for you to sit there. And to do some deep breathing. And to just quiet your mind. Reset yourself, have a break.
You're a family daycare educator who works on her own. All day long. Have a break rest recuperate.
Right. Do your 10 minute checks go and put the kettle on while the kettle's boiling. Go and wipe the, uh, bathroom. [00:31:00] Bent-over take your, your spray and wipe and wipe over your bathroom bench. Give the toilet a key quick brush. Go back and check on the children, go and mop the floor quickly. Spot mop. If you need to sweep and mop the floor, go back and check on the children. Making a cup of tea or your coffee or whatever it is that you're doing, you don't need lunch because you've already had it.
Check the children. Look at your documentation, tick off your cleaning chart. Yup. As you're going, you're filling in your sleep chat. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, every 10 minutes you checking the children, you're doing your documentation. Your cup of tea is finished. Brewing. Sit down and drink a cup of tea for 10 minutes.
Put your feet up for 10 minutes. Whether that be in the same room as the children or your fight, you know, you just stay out in the next room where you really have a proper break. Set your alarm so that you don't go over that 10 minutes, go and check the children. Do your documentation. Check your emails for work.
You're a business owner. You [00:32:00] should be checking your emails every single day. That is a not negotiable. You're a business owner. This is how you keep in touch with things. If there's emails to answer, this is when you email them. Check the children.
You're getting tomorrow's craft organized and ready. You know, you're going to paint and you want to paint these certain particular things. Cut those things out.
If, if you needing to do that, Get the paint colors that you want out, whatever it is that you're doing, do that, check the children. And if you've done everything that you need to do. You only need to do one observation a day, pull your 12 week planning out. Check that you're on track with that. Yep.
All good. Great. Guess what? You've got half an hour. Where you can sit in that room with those children and just breathe or read a book. Check the children every 10 minutes. But you get to read a book. If they're all asleep. You get to read a book, maybe someone [00:33:00] gets up, you spend time with that child one-on-one change their nappy, send them to the toilet, whatever it is that they're doing all look to as is up everybody's up claim the beds, wipe the beds over, pack the sheets and stuff away. In that rest period, you probably got afternoon tea ready?
So everyone's going to be hungry and tired. So you change nappies. You go to the toilet wash hands and you transition back out to morning, afternoon tea. After afternoon, T's finished, then it's free creative play for the rest of the day. Like that is a busy day friends. That is a busy day, include the children in these tasks, include them in all the cleanup. So if you've got children that are there, right till the end of the day, I just used to pack everything away and just leave the sand pit open or we'd be at the front. We'd be playing in the garden.
Everything in the room would be packed away. No, I want to go back inside. We played outside. We had just one area that was [00:34:00] open that the children could creatively play in. And it was usually what they drifted towards. Anyway, maybe they'll riding bikes and playing in the garden or in the sand pit or in winter time, it would be. Reading books and playing blocks and stuff, but then outside was packed away.
I didn't have all my stuff open everywhere. It was one area so that when that last child left, all I had to do was sweep and mop in my room. That was it. That was all I had to do. Everything was already done by the time five o'clock rolled around that last child went. It was 10 past five and I was done. That is a big day friends and that is all that's required of you. One intentional teaching moment. One activity. Your intention of teaching for particular, children may be different to that activity, but taking turns turn-taking and teaching children, how to [00:35:00] wait their turn. We'll be happening all day long.
So you can mark that. You touched on that when we were playing 10 pin bowling, we touched on that when the fishing gang came out, we practice that when it was time to wash hands. Like you could note that every single time that you do that task with that child. And see how long it takes might only be a couple of weeks.
And then you're over that hurdle and they've, they've worked it out and they've picked it up and you move on. Right. That's how you document that sort of stuff. It doesn't have to relate to your intentional teaching moment. Uh, the intentional teaching task that you have set out for the day.
So, this is how simple our day can be when we pair it back. You don't need to do so much all the time. And if you go on an excursion, you're going to be doing less because the children are going to be tired. And the rest of the time [00:36:00] that they need is open to that creative play.
That's as difficult as your day. Needs to get. That's how you avoid being overwhelmed. That's how you avoid. Doing too much. We want to get quality over quantity. Now that kind of day is a day of quality. You have so much connection with the children. They're learning all the things they need for school readiness in terms of emotional regulation, in terms of being responsible for their belongings.
And we'll do another podcast on that. We'll go further into that. 'cause I feel like educators get smashed by parents. Oh, I should be writing. They should be doing this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, we have a play-based program here.
And you can see how many opportunities there are for play-based when you run your day like that. You don't have to [00:37:00] do so much. Your doing. Is in preparing the next things, knowing what's coming next. And being ready when you've got children that want to have you in the play all the time. You make yourself busy doing other things.
Things that are important to the program.
I'm not saying go and watch Jerry Springer. I'm saying, oh, sorry, Jimmy, I can't help you right now. And just getting the lunches ready because it will be time for lunch soon. Could you maybe ask so-and-so to play with you while you wait? When I finished this, I can come over and have a, have a go with you. And go over and have a go once you're finished, but don't be their first port of call. They've got their peers that help them.
They've got their peers there to play with. That's who they need to be asking to play with. Not you, you need to extricate yourself from that. Because that allows you the time to do the things you need to do to keep the [00:38:00] program going. That's your job. That's what you're there for that encourages that child led play. Because they don't. Ask you for the input, they create the ideas.
They follow their own impetus. That's how we create this childhood program. Yes. You still have a structure there. But I believe children need structure. They work well. They, they feel safer when there's boundaries. They feel safer when they know someone is in control because children don't have the, the emotional. Capacity. To be in charge of things like this.
That's you, that's what you're paid for. So I hope that gives you. An idea as to what your day can look like and can help you alleviate guilt. You can see that there's a terrible amount of educator input. That has come from the work you've [00:39:00] done before the day even started. You've really thought about your rhythm.
You've really thought about how you want the data flow. You've put things in place throughout the day so that it can flow like that simply and easily. I know when I go and visit an educator and it's calm and it's peaceful. Just how much work she has put or he has put into the running of that program. That's not by accident. It's because there's an educator, who's done a lot of thought and prior preparation and put that in place. And he's reaping the benefits of that because she's not strung out by the end of the day. Because the children are comma she's comma.
Everybody's enjoying themselves. So I hope you can see how that's enough. Like children are just rushed. All day long. Everywhere else in their [00:40:00] lives.
But hats make family daycare. This total Haven. This total place where they just get to unwind and relax and drop into their play. Let's make our family daycare places so safe for these children. That they trust that there's an adult. Who's got their back. There's an adult who stops things when it gets out of their control. There's an adult.
Who's there to guide them and help them. And yes. Saying no to children is completely okay. In fact it's essential.
If children don't feel like you are in control, they will look elsewhere for the people who will give them direction. That's going to be their peers. Because [00:41:00] there's no one else there. If you are not in control, the children will be in control of the day. That's not okay. They don't have the emotional where we thought to do that. There are certain parts that they possibly could. You could give them a bit of autonomy, but not the entire day.
They don't have the emotional bandwidth. To be able to do that. That's your job. That's what you're there for. Saying no to children is a positive thing. I touched on that somewhere else. I remember talking about going to the supermarket. Uh, and you can't just jump the queue because you don't want to wait. Like we have to teach the children how to behave in community. And that means looking at other people and going, oh, I'm not the most important person here. And I'm actually okay with that because there's lots of other people here. And we all have to work together. So saying no to children [00:42:00] is part of that. And children are allowed to get upset. Our job is to help them process that those feelings help them know that that's actually okay.
It's normal to feel upset when you get told. No, sometimes. Sometimes you won't feel upset sometimes it won't matter to you, but sometimes it does matter to you and it's okay to be upset. Being upset is normal. It's all right. You can have a cry and you'll feel better once you've had a cry and then we're all going to move on. It doesn't have to be world war three.
It doesn't have to be this whole big emotional rigmarole. Well, children don't need to know all that sort of stuff. They don't. They just need to know that you said no. I just need to know that it's okay to be upset if they get told no. And I just need to know that that feeling of upset is going to pass. And they're going to be okay in a minute. And the story like. Yeah. [00:43:00]
Yeah. Anyway. I got really ranty. I'm so sorry. I hope you got a lot out of that. I'd really like to see or hear what you think I'd really love your feedback on this, because it is a topic that is really strong in my heart at the moment. There's a whole lot of things that I want to talk about over the next couple of months. When they all come back to the importance of connection. The importance of being connected to each other, the importance of that real safety net, that connection creates for children. Uh, so yeah, I hope you were along for the ride for that.
And yeah, please let me know what you think. I'm always interested to see how this lands for people. All right. My friends so much for my 20 minute podcasts. We're at 41 minutes now, but I think it was pretty good. So I will see you all again. Next week. Much. Love. Bye.
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