Why Positive Early Childhood Education is So Important to Me Dr Shawna Lee > Academic
Canadian academic, Dr Shawna Lee, has spent many years researching child mental health, early education, and the links with the mental health of educators and family members. Here’s her story: We’ve all heard those flippant comments about how fun or easy it must be to ‘be paid to play all day’ when we know that being an early childhood educator is hard work. Given that 90% of a child’s brain development happens by age 5, every single interaction with children has the power to influence the child forever. We are literally building brains! I didn’t plan to work in early childhood education. In fact, I studied to be an air traffic controller (a similarly fastpaced, high stress, extremely demanding role, where you can’t let your attention wander for a minute, because people’s lives are in your hands)! So what happened? Well, I had a son who didn’t quite fit into the box at school. He was ‘that child’…you know the one: labelled as “difficult”, because he couldn’t seem to settle in a classroom. And I was “that parent”: the one who said, over and over, “but I don’t understand - we don’t see these things at home.” And we didn’t. But we also didn’t have 30 children in our living room, so it was much easier to tailor our interactions with him in a way that supported him to behave completely differently. What I really wanted was for someone at the school to get to know him and treat him as a worthwhile individual instead of a “troublemaker”.
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EARLY EDITION > SUMMER 2020
The final straw...and the turning point I can remember the exact moment that I knew I needed to change my approach. I had said to the principal what I’d observed at home: “If you don’t mind me saying so, what we’ve found at home is that if he feels valued, and respected, he’s fantastic! He’s happy to do anything, he’s considerate, he’s cooperative. But when he doesn’t feel this way - if he feels cornered, rejected, or like he isn’t welcome – he reacts badly.” The principal looked at me witheringly and said: “Well if you don’t mind me saying so, I’ve been in this field longer than you have been alive, and I think I know what I’m doing, thank you”. I left the office, and I cried. And it hit me: nobody listened to you if you were “just a mother”. To be fair, I didn’t have relevant experience at that time. I just knew my son. But what if I did know more about child development, so that I could explain what I’d observed in language that educators would understand? And what if I could help advocate, not just for my son, but for all the other children like him?
