Small and Simple Stories of Support
At the turn of the new year, I resolved to take things a little easier, tamp down the anxiety, something I’ve carried like a heavy, leathered satchel of unease since childhood. I was tired and thought maybe in the face of immense pressure I could create change. I didn’t have a plan, I would just do it, during a raging virus variant and the onset of a sweeping and unsettling home renovation, I would will myself to be calm because I needed it so much.
Lately, it’s been hard for me to sit quietly and center myself long enough to write well. I’m so distracted. Competing thoughts and worries about the world push away most good story starts. I tell myself it is reasonable to expect my working memory (and executive functioning) to be a little off in an extended pandemic. This brings to mind something small, yet worth sharing, about a clear message sent now and again by my nervous system,
Stop. Just stop.
There is a lightness to being fully vaccinated. A little like a revival, it’s also a path to something new. I’ve changed, we all have. Rather than trying to fill the silences, I’ve learned to create small spaces of welcoming for aloneness. I never liked being alone but I do now. I’m returning to myself and find I have grown, which is a pretty good trick for a gal my age…
I have grown fond of laundry. Actually, all repetitive tasks are largely underappreciated. Rhythmic and cyclical, laundry can be both calming and productive, simultaneously getting something done while pushing away any cramped, worried thoughts carried around all day like held breathe. I really can’t think about those things right now, I’m busy doing the laundry…
A few years ago I was working a job marshaling a chorus of ringing phones in the customer service office of a busy bakery. One morning I overheard a managing partner deflect a coworker’s demand for her attention, stating the obvious,
“I am very occupied.” She returned to her elevated task without missing a beat. The interrupter walked away and, I suppose, figured out a way to solve his problem on his own.
It makes sense to shine a light on the ECE profession during COVID and acknowledge that what’s happening to everyone is, in fact, grief. We need meaningful encounters with self-compassion so we can take care of ourselves and others in a sustainable way.
offer ways you can position yourself to be strong enough to continue to deliver reflective and emotionally inclusive care for children and families while preserving your own well-being.
teach how self-compassion while caring for others by applying both outward and inward calming strategies benefits everyone.
outline practical, day-to-day ways to nurture yourself, the people you work with, and the children and families you serve.
How do you claim a portion of compassionate care for yourself? (Yes you, the giver?)
What is a reflective listening pose and how do you practice this with the adults you work with to help them process loss? Everybody is stressed and hurting and managing losses.
What are calming signals and how do they relate to helping communicate and foster safe feelings for infants and young children?
I want to share a personal story about equilibrium. I learned about work-life balance in the twilight of my teaching career. Until recently, I taught young children at Allen Creek Preschool in Ann Arbor where I learned to value myself professionally and prioritize my time. It took a long time to get here. At this school, things like respectful boundaries on staff time and teacher-child ratios being small enough to ensure both children and teachers thrived (not simply survived) are in place. Each classroom team has a rare, third resource, a therapeutic practitioner available for counsel, and referral if needed. Staff professional development is regular, relevant, and draws on the highest levels of developmentally appropriate practice. Within this intentional setting, I learned to value myself as a teacher and as a human being. I carry this with me today.
I have no idea if the kind of preschool teaching setting such as the one I found at Allen Creek Preschool exists anywhere else but judging from the vast numbers of people drowning in the profession, I believe it’s rare. And like everybody else, they, too, are now treading water through COVID, being careful and nimble. I’m telling you all this because I believe we teach people how to treat us and if you value yourself, others will too. If you don’t work in a supportive environment you have to work that much harder to maintain dignity within the profession and emotional well-being.
How do you find refuge and sustainability during this insane time? With stress levels so high, how do you manage the feelings of fear and panic while giving children and families your best? These are big questions and very hard to answer. Let’s first think about the endless fight or flight loop we’re all in these days, understand it better, then explore manageable options.
Psychotherapist Jonathan Kirkendall practices in Washington DC. area. Among other accomplishments, he’s worked alongside the homeless as well as supporting military families and children grieving the death of their loved ones. Kirkendall specializes in traumatic grief support and has a really great way of explaining hard things in easily understandable and compassionate terms. In a recent workshop, Adapting to Change, teaching about how to approach fear with gentleness toward ourselves, Kirkendall taught why after so long we humans haven’t yet evolved past those involuntary fight or flight responses within our bodies when something scary happens. Paraphrasing Kirkendall,
‘So why do we still respond with all the physical responses to fear humans needed for thousands of years to survive? Why do we still feel the rush of adrenaline, increased heart rate, raise in cortisol level, and all the other biological responses to a danger that were just so necessary to save us from being eaten by predators? When you think about it, only in the last 50 years or so has life been safer for most of us. 50 years is just not enough time for the evolution of our bodies to catch up with our current status of greater physical safety and well-being. We’ve needed fight or flight to survive for thousands of years and five decades is just not enough time for humans to grow beyond involuntary physical responses to stress.’
It makes sense to say the evolution of human development has just not caught up to our present-day safer lives…and then along comes COVID. What a paradox. Now we find ourselves regressing, living in a time of constant fear for our safety again, for our physical and mental well-being. No wonder our bodies are coursing with stress responses.
But we are not helpless. In the same Adapting to Change workshop, Tamera Bouret asserted we can help calm ourselves through targeted and practiced self-talk,
“There are things I can do to help me stay safe.”
“I can choose how to react to things that worry me.”
When you feel yourself physically reacting to something that upsets or frightens you notice how your body reacts. Is your breathing more rapid, does your heart race? Remind yourself you are in control. Choose what phrase you want to use ahead of time to remind your fight or flight responses they’re not needed at the moment. I borrowed my own phrase from someone I love,
“It’s not a thing until it’s a thing.”
I say this out loud, I have it written down where I can see it a lot. I breathe in and out and center myself when the stress level rises. It helps.
How else do you practice self-care when you’re feeling most vulnerable? By giving yourself permission to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as your needs allow during a pandemic. In fact, you should definitely say ‘no’ to some things during a pandemic.
Say ‘yes’ to any help offered. ‘Yes’ to joining forces and sharing resources. If someone wants to make something for you, loan you materials, let them. Say ‘yes’ to things people want to give you, do for you, complete for you. We are in a vulnerable time and accepting help is a strength, not a weakness. We’re so used to doing it all, turning down help because, after all, we are ever the cheerful and boundless givers, us early childhood providers. In a pandemic or otherwise, we can and should say ‘yes’ to anyone who wants to help us. And if people don’t offer, ask for what you need. It will be up to that person or entity to set their own boundaries. After all, you’re thoughtful and reasonable and they can be, too. Asking for all dirty dishes to be placed in the dishwasher, help to pick something up from a store, or borrowing a lesson plan is reasonable, especially during a pandemic.
You can say ‘no’ during a pandemic, in fact, please do. Say ‘no’ to things you feel might harm your well-being. Selectively choose where you’re able to direct your energy best and do that with your whole heart. You’re working the hardest you ever have in your life, so guard your personal time. If it feels good to connect with other people in a zoom meeting at night, go for it. But if the sound of that just sucks the life right out of you, take a polite pass. All I’m really saying is that you have the obligation to reevaluate regularly what brings you joy and relief or what brings you additional stress. Then, set boundaries accordingly. Your feelings about this will fluctuate and you have every right to make changes to how you handle outside obligations whenever you need to.
The Dougy Center is a national center for grieving children and families. Their mission is to provide support in a safe place where children, teens, young adults and their families grieving a death can share their experiences. The additional resources they offer the online community are exceptional. Below you’ll find one of their tip sheets, Cultivating Calm and Equanimity, a brief outline teaching about the functions of our nervous system and strategies to manage stress. It includes exercises to strengthen the vagal tone, increasing our ability to remain calm and think clearly under pressure:
Cultivating Calm and Equanimity, The Dougy Center
Here’s another resource. ‘Preventing Compassion Fatigue’, an article excerpted from NAEYC’s upcoming book, Trauma and Young Children: Teaching Strategies to Support and Empower Children, by Sarah Erdman, Laura J. Colker, and Elizabeth C. Winter. The authors talk about the dangers of compounding stress and teaching-related stress. They offer healing, hope, and practical ways to manage the many responsibilities we face in the classroom today:
Now let’s shift from gentle self-care (inward care) to helping people you work and live with manage stress and loss by practicing reflective listening (outward expression of care). Everybody is stressed and hurting and managing losses. We need to help one another.
Reflective listening is the most generous way to communicate with another person. When you reflectively listen, you signal to the person talking they can be fully free to feel and say whatever they need to at the moment because they are directing the conversation and you are not. Reflective listening is just as it sounds, reflecting, and/or repeating back to the person what they are telling you without trying to change or direct their feelings. You’re an open book, a puddle without a ripple. When you practice reflective listening the person or child feels fully heard. They have control of the content and you are not redirecting them to something more comfortable for yourself (like advice, or cheering-up). No one can tell another person how to feel. It is hard to sit quietly with someone in their sadness or anger. But that is your one job when you reflectively listen.
It takes practice to be a good reflective listener. Be mindful enough not to make suggestions, not tell how the same situation may have happened to you (that’s called hijacking), not offer silver linings, or otherwise prevent the person from having the right to feel what they feel, and you’ll be able to help a lot of people. You can say things like,
“Can you tell me more?”
“What does it feel like to be you right now?”
“It makes sense that …(repeat what they told you they feel)”.
Leave space, silences, for as long as they need, to form their thoughts and express what they feel. This is a real gift. You can learn more about how to practice the art of reflective listening and other support skills by connecting with children’s grief support network, Ele’s Place.
Before we can begin to help infants and young children feel safe we need to feel safe ourselves. Learning how to remain and express calm helps vulnerable people around you feel secure. Combine gentle self-care (inward care) with reflective practice (outward expression of care) to foster reassurance for infants and young children.
‘Calming signals’ is a term coined by Norwegian dog trainer Turid Rugaas. Rugaas categorizes behavior patterns that she says dogs use to avoid conflict, to prevent aggression, to calm other dogs down, and to communicate information to other dogs and to people. Why can’t we transfer this term to human behavior? (I think we can.)
The term, ‘calming signals’ has me thinking more deeply about the relationship between human anxiety and the ways we transfer these feelings to infants and children. Not surprisingly, there’s a large body of research targeting the connection between behavior patterns in anxious adults and the effect this has on the well-being of infants and children. It should come as no surprise to anyone cultivating a calm temperament in adults benefits children.
The Child Mind Institute is an independent, national nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders. They’re a great resource for research related to adult anxiety passed to children and offer practical application to help prevent this stress transfer. Researchers suggest adults:
come up with strategies in advance for managing specific situations that trigger your stress
intentionally and consistently use a calm voice
stick to simple one-step directions, celebrate together and build on successes
To learn more: How to Avoid Passing Anxiety on to Your Kids
Child Mind Institute offers this COVID-specific advice to help prevent the transfer of stress from an adult to a child:
avoid exposing yourself to catastrophic, doomsday-themed news reporting
focus on what you’re doing at the moment, practice mindfulness
be aware of your breathing by practicing measured, deep breathing in quiet moments together
rely on routines, staying as close as possible to repeating rhythms and patterns of activity in the day
Read more here:
Anxiety and Coping with the Coronavirus
work inward using healthy self-talk to bypass the fight or flight responses, practice physical exercise, positive visualizations, and breath work to train the vagus nerve to help remain calm in stressful times.
work outward, practice reflective listening to enable you to authentically nurture people you work and live with.
there’s more; work outward, cultivating a calm voice, practicing breath work in quiet times with children, and keep the rhythm of the day as close to regular as possible. This will signal to infants and children things feel safe.
Jonathan Kirkendall & Tamera Bouret, Adapting to Change Workshop, August 16, 2020. (Learn more about the work they do at DCDA
Copyright (2020) Suzanne Bayer. All Rights Reserved.
