Put On Your Oxygen Masks

Kari Sutton

Early childhood educators have a critical role to play in shaping and guiding children’s attitudes about themselves, their abilities and potential. The education and care they provide is an essential service for families and communities and their positive attitudes and influence within their environments creates a climate where young minds can learn and be challenged to reach their highest potential. Being an early childhood educator is emotionally demanding and requires significant emotional labour which can become both physically and psychologically exhausting.

There is no doubt that stressed out, overwhelmed educators cannot effectively support children with their emotional needs when they, as adults, are struggling to meet their own. They need to put their oxygen masks on first before they can effectively nurture children’s wellbeing.

Wellbeing and self-care are currently hot topics and the amount of information in both mainstream media and social media can seem very overwhelming. This article presents evidence-based strategies that have been proven beneficial at improving early childhood educator’s physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing.

The first part of building your resilience and wellbeing is to become aware of how you are feeling and functioning. This enables you to acknowledge your needs and respond to them with strategies that work for you. Be You (2021) has a tool called the Mental Health Continuum that can support teachers to reflect and identify how they are feeling and functioning. Once you have taken time to reflect on what is going on for you personally, you can then select strategies that enable you to take care of your physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing.

Early Childhood Australia (2021) identified the following strategies that early childhood educators used to support their personal and professional wellbeing enabling them to thrive:

• taking time to exercise: many educators reported that regular exercise was essential to their physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. Whether it is walking, swimming, yoga, running, find something you enjoy, that fits into your life and start a new habit.

• being in nature: being in nature helped educators feel more connected and grounded which in turn positively impacted their wellbeing. Taking a walk outdoors, listening to the sounds of nature or simply sitting outside and taking the time to enjoy nature are all great ways of improving wellbeing.

• engaging with a non-work hobby: research illustrated the benefits of having a hobby completely unrelated to work – whether that be gardening, photography, drawing – anything that lights you up and brings you joy.

• connecting with family and friends: relationships are the cornerstone of personal wellbeing. Make the time to build and maintain relationships and check in with the people you care about who are important in your life.

• setting effective boundaries: ensure you set appropriate boundaries between work and your personal life e.g. turn off your email and work phone outside of work hours.

• developing mindfulness and gratitude routines: engaging with these positive psychology tools increases physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing.

• sleep and rest: prioritise making time for rest and sleep and getting to bed at a reasonable time.

• pausing to reflect on the day: before going to bed reflect on your day and write down three good things that happened, or that you observed.

• celebrating small wins: set small achievable goals and celebrate the wins – this provides an upward spiral of positive emotion that increases emotional and psychological wellbeing.

• engaging in ongoing professional learning: seek out opportunities for growth, learning and building skills.

Wellbeing is a very personal thing, there are no silver bullets, and one strategy does not fit all. Take time to reflect on the strategies you are already using to scaffold your personal and professional wellbeing and decide if you could benefit from adding a few more into the mix. Experiment with the above strategies and determine which are a good fit for you. Start by implementing one, let that become a habit, celebrate the win and then choose another one you would like to implement.

You might believe that there is absolutely no way you can jam anything else into your already busy diary. If this is how you are feeling, it is critical that you take the time to put on your own oxygen mask before you burnout.

The work early childhood educators do is vitally important. You are shaping future generations by providing positive educational environments and experiences that foster children’s social, emotional, physical, and psychological wellbeing in their formative years, which significantly impacts the rest of their lives. To continue to do that you must take care of yourself first so you can keep showing up as the best version of yourself.

Kari Sutton is an educator, speaker and author who has helped over 25,000 children, parents, and educators with evidence-based strategies, tools and approaches to foster children’s resilience and emotional wellbeing and cultivate educator wellbeing. You can find her in any of these places: www.karisutton.com https://www.instagram.com/karisuttonofficial/

References https://beyou.edu.au/resources/mental-health-continuum https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/mental-health-and-wellbeing

Be You (2021). Mental Health Continuum.

Early Childhood Australia (2021). Supporting Early Childhood Educator Mental Health and Wellbeing.