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An Adeona Family Podcast: An Early Childhood Journey

Episode 01: The Importance of Promoting Positive Self-Talk for Children
(Emotional Health Part 1 of 3)

What is emotional learning, emotional knowledge or social-emotional learning? What does it mean in the early childhood education practice and how does it relate to the life of the parent? 

It’s easy to see and understand the physical development of children over time, but often times it can be difficult to see or understand the emotional development of our children.

When we think of emotional learning or emotional regulation, we often think of the extremes; our 2-year old having a melt-down in the shopping centre and how we deal with that moment (and teach our child not to do that), but it’s so much bigger and more important than that.

Emotional learning and positive emotional health is about the ability to promote positive self-talk so we can overcome things, as well as learning to manage emotions in a healthy and socially appropriate way. It’s about learning resilience; bad things will happen but we will get through it.

It’s important for children to practise their emotions over the little things now, like not getting the cup they wanted, so they can handle the big emotions later in life. Likewise, once children understand their own emotions, they’re better able to recognise emotions in others and empathise.

90% of the brain is developed by the time children are 4. Emotional regulation is vitally important as it continues to affect us throughout our entire lives. Promoting positive self-talk in children in the early years can shape their long-term emotional health.

Thank You

We’d love to hear from you! If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions about anything we discussed in this episode, please feel free to reach out – zoe@adeona.com.au.

 

Our Early Childhood Education Centres

Coorparoo | Mitchelton | Noosaville | Mackay

 


 

Podcast Transcription

 

Tracy (00:11):
Hello and welcome to the Adeona Family podcast. I’m Tracy and I’m here with Zoe.

Zoe (00:16):
Hello.

Tracy (00:17):
And we have decided to present a number of podcasts to you. So, as you may know, Adeona started doing parent information nights for 2019. The response we got was great, but we realized that not every parent could make it in the evening and everyone is very busy and putting children to bed and all of those sorts of things. So we thought that we would make the information more accessible by putting it in a podcast so that you can listen to it while you’re doing the dishes or doing some vacuuming. And we’re able to share that information that we have with you. Firstly, though, I guess I’d like to introduce myself. So I’m Tracy. I’ve worked with Adeona for 12 years now. I have a Bachelor of Education in early childhood, and as I said, I have worked with Adeona for most of my career. I have been in the very fortunate position through Adeona that I have been able to be given lots of time and resources to be able to study child development and respectful interactions with children and being able to you know, practice on my own children, really. And what I really recognized was that there’s a lot of information out there that parents don’t have access to or have the opportunity to hear about and reflect upon. And I guess what we are hoping to do through this podcast is to share that with you. I have the absolute privilege of being able to work with Zoe at Adeona. Zoe is our director at Coorparoo, and I’ll let her tell you a bit about herself.

Zoe (01:46):
Hi everyone. I’m Zoe for some parents who would know me, some don’t. Welcome to our first podcast. So my background, I’ve worked in education for quite a long time, but I only came to childcare a few years ago. I’ve been an Adeona, this is my fourth year I believe, but I made a deliberate decision to move from older children to younger children because I really recognize the importance of those first three years of life for children. And I really wanted to be a part of making sure that I had the best outcomes in those first three years. So that was my move to really early childhood education. I have done a whole bunch of study. I have a Bachelor of Education in early childhood, a Human Services degree as well, and I just finished my master’s in education as well. So my knowledge is from all those areas. Just the same as Tracey is a mum, I’m also a mum, although my child is much older. But I guess one of the things we wanted to make sure everyone understands is we don’t claim to be parenting experts. We have lived experience and we have a level of professional knowledge, and we learn a lot through the parents that come to our centers as well. One of the things that parents quite often ask me when they come to our centers, or while they’re at our centers, is they want to know a little bit more about what we mean by emotional learning or emotional knowledge, or social emotional learning has lots of different names. For parents, I think that they see bodies and they see bodies grow and they can understand that a little bit more. But the emotional learning while we tend to see the extremes of that, parents quite often don’t really understand what we mean by it in our practice and how that relates to their lives either. So I guess I want to ask you the question, Tracey, what do you see? And what does Adeona see as emotional learning and emotional knowledge?

Tracy (03:43):
Sure. Not a problem. I think that when a lot of families hear about emotional learning or emotional regulation, you know, the first thing that pops to your mind is your two year old having a meltdown in the middle of a shopping center, and how you deal with that moment and how you teach your child not to do that, whereas that’s a portion of it, I guess. But it’s so much bigger than that. So emotional learning or emotional or having a positive emotional health is about the ability to promote self-talk so that you can overcome things. So what emotional learning is about is about learning resilience. It’s about learning that bad things will happen, but we will get through it. It’s about learning to manage all emotions in a socially appropriate way, so it’s to have emotions definitely to feel emotions and express those emotions, but to making sure that you’re doing it in a healthy and socially acceptable manner. It’s about developing persistence. It’s about if, you know, at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. If it really matters to you, you can do it. And giving children those skills, it’s about developing healthy risk taking, not being so scared of failure that you don’t even try. That’s really, really important to for success in life. It’s about developing, learning, the ability to trust other people and yourself. It’s about being able to create positive relationships and attachments with other people, and the confidence to walk away. If those relationships are no longer positive. It’s building self-confidence and self-belief. And I think that’s why we decided to start with talking about social or emotional learning today, because it really is the foundation and the building blocks of everything going forward. I think that if we were all to sit down in a room and talk about what we want for our children’s lives, you know, a healthy, happy, confident little people or big people that they will turn into, is what we want. And I think that, you know, emotional learning is really the key to that.

Zoe (05:47):
Yeah, absolutely. Tracy, just before you mentioned self-talk. That’s something that we talk a lot about in our practice with our educators. Would you just like to explain what self-talk is a little more?

Tracy (05:58):
Sure. Self-talk is the messages that we give ourselves in our heads. So it’s that message that when I do something and it doesn’t go the way that I wanted to do, so say I want it to host a parent information night and only one parent turned up. Now there’s two ways that I could manage that. There’s one way to go. Well, you know, obviously nobody wanted to listen to what I have to say. Complete failure. Why did I bother? Or the other way I can view that as like, great, I’ve got one parent. That’s my starting point. What can I learn? Oh, okay. The time wasn’t right. You know, instead of putting it all on me. What other things can I learn to improve for next time? And that’s what we want to give our children. Is that self-talk in their heads that they’re not you know, we all have negative self-talk. It happens to the best of us, but it’s our ability to be able to then reason our way out of that, or for it not to be our default. Yeah, that we really want for our children. And because our self-talk dictates so much what happens in our body, it dictates, you know, hormone responses. It dictates the nutrition that we feed ourself. It dictates our value and our worth and our mental health long term. And so if we can really start to form positive self-talk for children, you know, in the early years when they, their brains are growing and developing so much, we are just setting them up so well to be, you know, for lifelong success.

Zoe (07:31):
Absolutely. And that self-talk doesn’t come as a natural consequence. That is something that is learned by children. We as adults kind of take it a little bit for granted, I think. And we have learned that somewhere along the way. And so I guess the emotional learning that we talk about in early childhood is to help children to establish that self talk a lot earlier, so it becomes a habit of theirs before they get too far into the big wide world, I guess.

Tracy (07:58):
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, self-talk there is a huge component of it that is built based on the messages that we receive as very, very young children. So from birth, we are sponges. We’re taking in information. And that information basically gives us our self-talk. It tells us what we tell ourselves. And a lot of that is formed by the age of five, certainly in the first three years, and then by the age of five. It’s a lot harder after that time to change that self-talk. It’s possible, certainly possible, but it’s a lot harder. So if we can get it right in the beginning or encourage that in the beginning, then you know it will be easier for everyone long term.

Zoe (08:39):
Yeah, yeah, the brain science definitely says that 80% of that is kind of set in by three, four years of age. So yeah, the more we can do in those younger ages, the better off we are for outcomes.

Tracy (08:49):
Definitely, definitely. And to make, you know, we all love our children. We’re all doing the best we can. You know, I absolutely believe that is a universal truth. But understanding it, how to make it happen and how it works, I think, can also help parents feel more empowered to support their children in that.

Zoe (09:06):
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And so we’ve touched on a little bit of the why we started with the what, but we’ve touched on a little bit of the why it’s important. Are there any other reasons that you can think of that are included in the why it is important, Tracy?

Tracy (09:19):
Sure. So I know as a parent of of young children and you, Zoe, I’m sure as a parent of an older child, you know, our worries for our children’s mental health long term when we hear about, you know, things like depression and anxiety and things like that on the rise. And a lot of it does come into what we’re talking about here, you know, with self-confidence and resilience and all of those sorts of things. The other thing I just wanted to clarify as well, that when I talk about lifelong success, I’m not talking about becoming the next millionaire. I’m not talking about becoming, you know, the next pop star or anything like that. I’m talking about being able to live a happy and productive life where you have a community that you are a part of and that you are contributing to that community and that people are giving back to you.

Zoe (10:06):
Absolutely. And a lot of research of employers these days, the biggest feedback they get from employers is they actually want staff who are, emotionally regulated effectively. They don’t want the person who is high achieving academic, generally, they want people who can work with other people. So that’s part of the lifelong outcomes that we’re talking about. It’s those relationships that people are able to build within their work life and their social life and their personal life.

Tracy (09:19):
Sure. So I know as a parent of of young children and you, Zoe, I’m sure as a parent of an older child, you know, our worries for our children’s mental health long term when we hear about, you know, things like depression and anxiety and things like that on the rise. And a lot of it does come into what we’re talking about here, you know, with self-confidence and resilience and all of those sorts of things. The other thing I just wanted to clarify as well, that when I talk about lifelong success, I’m not talking about becoming the next millionaire. I’m not talking about becoming, you know, the next pop star or anything like that. I’m talking about being able to live a happy and productive life where you have a community that you are a part of and that you are contributing to that community and that people are giving back to you.

Zoe (10:06):
Absolutely. And a lot of research of employers these days, the biggest feedback they get from employers is they actually want staff who are, emotionally regulated effectively. They don’t want the person who is high achieving academic, generally, they want people who can work with other people. So that’s part of the lifelong outcomes that we’re talking about. It’s those relationships that people are able to build within their work life and their social life and their personal life.

Tracy (10:35):
So when we talk about success at Adeona or in this podcast, it is about, as I said, being happy, being social, being productive, if that’s doing any career or no career, you know, as long as you are those things, that’s what we talk about success. We’re not talking about academics, we’re not talking about money value, anything like that.

Zoe (10:54):
Although they certainly are related in some capacity. And yes, which we’ll get into further down the track.

Tracy (10:59):
But I guess that’s probably the other thing, is that, you know, there’s the expectation that we all do at least ten years of schooling and that also on a lot of parents, you know, children’s academic success is a factor, but it’s also understanding that children are unable to learn, not just unwilling, but actually unable to learn unless they have healthy emotional regulation or an emotional state. Because the way that the brain works and the body works is that it’s unable to physically take in new information if it’s in a heightened state of emotional anxiety or emotional distress or dysregulation.

Zoe (11:37):
Yeah, stress certainly plays a factor in that., so children, yeah definitely are not able to and to be able to have that self-talk to make sure that you can regulate obviously is really important. And so that kind of has to be the foundations of everything that we do in early childhood.

Tracy (10:59):
But I guess that’s probably the other thing, is that, you know, there’s the expectation that we all do at least ten years of schooling and that also on a lot of parents, you know, children’s academic success is a factor, but it’s also understanding that children are unable to learn, not just unwilling, but actually unable to learn unless they have healthy emotional regulation or an emotional state. Because the way that the brain works and the body works is that it’s unable to physically take in new information if it’s in a heightened state of emotional anxiety or emotional distress or dysregulation.

Zoe (11:37):
Yeah, stress certainly plays a factor in that., so children, yeah definitely are not able to and to be able to have that self-talk to make sure that you can regulate obviously is really important. And so that kind of has to be the foundations of everything that we do in early childhood.

Tracy (11:52):
Yeah. And just the fact that being aware of, and being able to control your self-talk is a higher brain function, which we’ll get more into later. And higher brain functions is what we need for our academics and our critical thinking and all of that sort of thing. So it’s, you know, clicking that into motion immediately.

Zoe (12:09):
Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, all of this emotional stuff, it does take place in the brain and even to the extent that our emotions affect hormones and a whole bunch of other things, it does take place in the brain. And it is not something that children are born with. There is certainly a people have a natural disposition, our genes play a certain role in who we are. But the nurture that we have around that also plays a really significant role. And so the brain being a muscle, we have to exercise it. It is a use dependent organ in our body. So if we don’t learn about it, if we don’t make those connections in the brain, if we don’t have exposure to certain things, then the brain won’t make those connections and it won’t be part of our makeup. It won’t be part of the nurture part of our development.

Tracy (13:01):
Yeah, absolutely. So we need to practice having those emotions so we know how to deal with them when they come up later in life.

Zoe (13:08):
And that’s probably one of the hard things for parents to sit through, I guess, is children practicing those big emotions.

Tracy (13:14):
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one of my favorite little sayings is that they’re practicing their big emotions over the little stuff now so that they can handle the big stuff when they’re older. So that big emotion over not getting the blue cup is practice for when they don’t get the OP they want when they’re in high school, you know it all, it all feeds into how they manage all of that. And so even though the threat isn’t real, their fear is, you know, so it’s really important to acknowledge that.

Zoe (13:44):
Yeah. And it’s also practice for them to understand other people’s emotions too. It’s not just about understanding their own. Like once they master their own, they’re able to understand and empathize with other people’s emotions as well.

Tracy (13:55):
Yeah, absolutely. Empathy is a really important part of the whole process in terms of us giving and then receiving and then giving back. And I guess the other thing to sort of be aware of, too, with emotional regulation and emotional is that, you know, the reason we see it coming out so much in those early, you know, it’s important to be aware from birth, but the reason we see it displayed is behavior so much in the toddler years is because that’s when they’re becoming aware that they’re not the only people in the world, and they have to negotiate and rely on other people, but they want their independence. And so there’s a whole raft of things at play there that really make that emotional turbulence of that age really apparent. Yeah. Which is where you get your questions from parents.

Zoe (14:37):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Who is this three-nager I have.

Tracy (14:42):
You’re right, exactly right. And I think, you know, talking about, you know, three-nagers and things. It’s probably a really good place to leave it. And then next time we will talk, I think a little bit more about the science behind it and actual brain development, which I think is a really important part to understand, so that when we talk about some strategies, we actually know what’s happening and why, how that will work and the impact that’s having on inside the brain. Because as you said, we can’t see that. So we can only go by what we’re seeing behavior wise.

Zoe (15:15):
Well thanks, Tracy.

Tracy (15:17):
Thank you Zoe.

Zoe (15:18):
And we hope you all enjoyed our very first podcast.

Tracy (15:21):
We will link some things where we post this on our on our website. Some further information about what emotional regulation is and some of the goals with having a healthy emotional life.

Zoe (15:32):
And some great links to where we also get our information from as well.

Tracy (15:36):
Thanks for listening guys, and we’ll be back in your ears soon, hopefully.