2022 - the year of connection
I had already started this blog when a Facebook post by Suzanne Zeedyk caught my eye. The article in Psychology Today says that one of the most damaging, although perhaps most common, experiences for children today is disconnection. Young children need more connection than the rest of us through the physical presence and comforting interactions of stable caregivers.
Recent Covid research has highlighted how very young children have been disadvantaged by disconnection by Covid in ways we had not imagined. During Covid, the significant caregiver/key person role was extensively disrupted. Children simply did not see the adults with which they had important and life giving relationships with, which had a huge impact on children’s emotional security. Grandparents, friends, nursery workers… the whole “village” that it take takes to raise a child was fragmented. Research found that, initially, assumptions were made about children’s resilience that did not always reflect awareness of the emotional and psychological impact of a traumatic event, such as a pandemic, on young children. Parents and educators were hugely underestimated the anxiety that children experienced during lockdown and coming out of lockdown. Young children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) were especially impacted by the fragmentation of the SEND support system, the research saying that “many of them were showing signs of distress in settings and regression in their development and learning”.
The same research also states that the emphasis for our youngest children, especially in educational settings should be placed on the ‘processes involved in moment-by-moment relational interactions’.
And that’s why this year is going to be the year of connection for me, both at home and in my work as a dance artist. I will be valuing movement improvisation as a tool to connect and build relationships with children in the moment by moment interactions not just in the dance class but in the everyday dances that happen in the free flow of life. And this year I’m helping others to understand, value and join with these movement conversations about life, the universe and everything else; whether they happen in the kitchen, the mud kitchen, the playground or the car. Children’s cues to connect are everywhere and they can be understood and edified by the adult who conveys powerful messages such as:
I see you
.
You are valued
.
You belong
You are loved
I was interested to read in the Psychology Today article that one of the reason very young children feel disconnected (although one could argue this is the same for all of us!) is that their efforts to connect are misread and misinterpreted. This week I went to a talk by Ben Kingston Hughes who talked eloquently about children’s “play cues” and how he had been invited to “play” by a very young girl who had come and stamped on his foot. Not knowing how to engage him but wanted desperately to play, the child had chosen her approach and means of interaction. Luckily for that child, Ben is an experienced observer of children’s behaviour and a play specialist and joined with the child in a meaningful interaction that thankfully didn’t involve any more toe stamping.
What’s fascinating to me is what that process is between the toe stamping play cue and the then evolving meaningful interaction involving both the adult and the child. And that, I realise, could possibly be the subject of a PhD! I will be attempting to unpick it through my creative movement practice, through observation and attempting to articulate it in this blog in the coming months…..
Liz Clark is a dance artist and creative consultant.
Her current programme Our Creative Adventure aims to train early years educators in creative movement practices and using dance improvisation as part of everyday interactions.
She is currently the commissioned artist for The Mighty Creatives “Creative Communities” Fund working with setting across Leicester and Leicestershire in partnership with Loughborough University Nursery.
