Part 2 Roadmap to Recovery with Donna Gaywood

We are delighted to welcome you to our ‘Roadmap to Recovery’ mini-series with early years expert Donna Gaywood. 

In the second instalment of our mini-series, Donna focuses on children’s personal, social and emotional development and looks at practical ideas to implement within your setting that will positively support children’s social skills and help them to reconnect with one another.

Supporting children’s social interactions to remediate the effects of COVID -19 

The joy and importance of early friendships

Recent research* shows us that one of the things which young children have missed most during the COVID-19 successive lockdowns, is going to their early education settings, and seeing their friends. Anyone who has worked for any length of time in early years knows that children’s friendships tend to grow in tandem with their developmental stages. 

Generally, we understand that children begin by playing independently, then they play alongside their peers and as they mature, they begin to play with other children. Often the months before children leave early education for school, they play in larger groups, engaging in extensive, intricate role play which can continue for weeks. However, it is important to remember that the skills that children need to develop reciprocal relationships take time to grow. Learning them is often not without a measure of pain and challenge. Most children manage to pick these skills up, almost by osmosis.  

Being with their peers in a setting gives them the best practice they need to learn how to rub along with others who they might not particularly like. They have their first tastes of really loving being with someone their own age, and the joy that it can bring. Children learn to notice and support each other if they are crying. They learn that it is not okay to take something from someone else, “just because you want it” and how to negotiate during a game. The complex skills of keeping others with you in a game whilst directing it and learning to choose who to play with, are vital for their developing relationships. These are not only great life lessons but will also stand children in good stead for the rigours of being a lifelong learner in school and beyond.**   

Supporting children after an enforced social pitstop

We now have a generation of children whose opportunity to mix socially with peers was significantly paused for over a year, which is a long time in such a short life. There is much rhetoric in the media and the government about children needing to “catch up” in their learning. This suggests that life and the process of learning is firstly a race, and that children develop skills in a straight line. Both recently published non statutory guidance for the early years, Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters, agree that children do not learn and develop in this way. So when we are thinking about children’s social skills which have been impacted by long periods of isolation from their peers, it is important to remember this. 

In the early years sector we describe children’s learning as a journey, suggesting a winding route led by the child’s interests, powered by the wheels of observation, assessment, and planning. For today’s young children, emerging from the pandemic restrictions, the crucial question is: how can we help those who have had an enforced pitstop, to develop the skills which will support their social interactions?

Sharing can be difficult for everyone!

Often difficulties arise between children when they have to share. It is important here to be clear: sharing is difficult! It is difficult for adults, and it is difficult for children. No one really wants to share. It can be helpful to reframe the concept of sharing and present it to children as a more structured process of taking turns. Although a subtle difference, the emphasis is laid on the fairness of everyone having a go, rather than transferring control of a much loved and contested toy. 

To help children develop this skill it is useful to introduce a consistent mechanism to enable them to turn take, which is then adhered to by all. Anything which offers marking a specific time will work, for example a sand timer, a stopwatch, or an egg timer. The key is to “teach” the children how to use it repetitively,  then implement the system consistently and persistently. 

Using small world figures or larger soft toys to demonstrate to the children how the turn taking system works is helpful. Staff can act out conflict scenarios for the children to fully understand how to take turns and resolve the difficulties using a timer. Offering them a chance to practice these skills with support, as part of the teaching, can also be really helpful, thus increasing the children’s confidence when they are playing for real. What is important is that the children are able to access the timer and have a script to support the turn taking. For example, if they want to use a bike that their friend has been on for the last ten minutes, they can go and get the timer and say, please can I have a turn. The timer can offer the child a timed turn or can give the person who has to relinquish the bike a specific time for their go to end. 

Either way, the important skill for the children is to learn that they have power to negotiate, and they also have responsibility to allow others to take turns. This isn’t just for older children in pre-school but can be equally successful with younger children if it is reinforced regularly and modelled by all the adults. Turn taking skills once established can be practised and crystallised with any board game or more physical game. Initially the children may need adult support but once they are confident and the skill is established, they can be left to police their own games more and more.  

Gentle hands and kind words

For children learning how to relate to one another, it is often good for them to know and understand what the adult expectations are or put more simply – what are the rules of engagement. Many children now are likely to have limited experience of mixing socially outside the bounds of their own families, therefore it is so much easier for them to begin to learn, if these expectations, social rules, or boundaries are made overt. Generally, settings should have no more than four overt social rules and they should always be positive. 

It is useful for the chosen social rules to reflect the most urgent and important skills you want to help the children to learn. As a staff team you may have to negotiate and decide what these will be. It might be that the social rules are already in place but need a re-launch to communicate clearly with children who may have forgotten them after a long period of disruption or absence.   Personally, my baseline is gentle hands and kind words, but each setting is different.  To help children develop or remember forgotten skills, what is important is that these are taught regularly, preferably in small groups, with clear consistent messages and implementation.  If all staff use the same scripts which are supported with visual prompts to keep the social rules live, children can learn quickly. For greatest effect, the phrases/scripts plus the visual prompts can be shared with parents so the children’s learning is supported at home, enabling them to interact with one another confidently.

An opportunity for the sector 

Research*** suggests that children make friends when they have a common interest. With the new statutory guidance moving early educators away from recording copious amounts of paper or digital observations, this is an opportunity for the sector and offers practitioners a newfound freedom to do what they do best, which is watch and know their children. It is this deep knowledge of the children’s interests which can inform staff planning for the children’s learning. 

By enabling children to have extended opportunities to engage in activities around a shared interest, practitioners can set the scene which helps children to begin to make relational links with their peers.  Recently I asked a practitioner what the children in her pre-school were into, what were they playing? She did not even hesitate but told me about a fantasy game that was in the process of developing and fast becoming the game of the moment. Most key people can tell you what the children are playing, what they are interested in and what the latest play craze is. 

To support children in developing their social skills, staff need to capitalise on the children’s passions and play interests. By observing and knowing them, staff can offer provocations which capture the children’s imagination and develop the environment to be one which enables the children to pursue their interests. For example, if a group of children are seriously into Paw Patrol, by setting up special missions which they can go on together as a group, practitioners will be providing a wonderful play canvas, to spend time together and begin to learn again how to get along. 

The benefit of small groups

In most settings, the welcome song is sung religiously every day and offers children an important structure which acknowledges the start of the session. This can be enhanced and made more purposeful for learning and practicing social skills. Dividing the children into smaller groups allows any interactions to become more personal and the whole experience less overwhelming. Many children who have become accustomed to mixing within a small family group over the last fifteen months, may find larger louder groups difficult to manage at first, and may need time to readjust. Providing a smaller group helps them to do this. 

What we know is that when children are relaxed, they are more likely to be open to learning and feel more confident to re-establish old relationships or forge new ones. This does need an element of planning and can feel undo-able for practitioners who are used to having large circle times, but the benefit for the children is astonishing. In these smaller groups, children can practice their social skills with more adult support. It also offers the children an opportunity to notice and begin to build relationships with children who they might have not previously mixed with.

Start the day with a smile

Through this pandemic greeting our friends and colleagues has significantly changed. The elbow bump is a new phenomenon. Greeting another person is a very important social skill for children. Using the small group welcome time to develop a greeting system will enhance the provision but can also offer another opportunity for children to develop their social skills further. It is great to engage in times of sustained shared thinking with the children and support them to choose two, three or four proposed greeting methods. These might be a wave, saying hello, an air – fist bump or an air-high five (taking into account COVID restrictions). Make a visual prompt for the children, so that they can indicate how they would like to be greeted by their peers. In their small groups, they can take turns to greet each other.  Children begin to understand the importance of a greeting, within a social interaction but this activity also allows them a choice about how they prefer to be greeted and it helps them to respect the choices of others, which is also an important social skill. Overtly and intentionally greeting each other in this way is fun and injects humour into the first structured activity of the day.  

We also know the great benefit to human beings of laughter, which alleviates stress and offers us further opportunities to connect. The same is true for children. They tend to bond socially when they laugh together. Starting the day laughing is exactly what the children need for their relationships and for their wellbeing, as do the early educators who are supporting them as we begin to ease out of a difficult time and into recovery.

References: 

*Pascal, C.  Bertram, T (2021) What do young children have to say? Recognising their voices, wisdom, agency and need for companionship during the COVID pandemic. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 21-34.
** Bertram, T. Pascal, C. Saunders, M. (2008) Accounting Early for Lifelong learning (AcE). A handbook for assessing Young Children. Amber Publishing Birmingham. 
***Zhang, D.  Luo, Y. (2016) Social Exclusion and the Hidden Curriculum: The Schooling Experiences of Chinese Rural Migrant Children in an Urban Public School. British journal of educational studies, vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 215-234.