My New Website Launch

I was just sitting in a river earlier today, watching the sun’s rays touch the water through the  dappled cover of the leaf canopy above me and it reminded me of how often in my childcare journey I have been given lessons by water.   

I am shown again how easy it feels to sit in the shallows and let the flow wash over me, perfectly still, watching and waiting for nature to unfold all around me. The launch of my new  website feels very much like this still point.   I don’t think I will ever stop being full of questions about children and our relationships with  them but I think in the early stages of my career I had so many lines of enquiry to follow.

And I tackled them with a tenacity which now, looking back, might have at times felt like swimming against the tide. It is so easy to fall into the habit of over working, over thinking,  over doing in general, we all do it.   

When I found Pikler many of my questions fell away, like water droplets evaporating on a hot  summer’s day. And the simplicity of the approach was a perfect reminder of how, what feels like the most elusive of answers can be just sitting right under your nose. Emmi Pikler and her colleagues at Loczy in Budapest did something radical, transformative and yet so simple,  they slowed down and they watched the children.

They asked the question, “What can the baby already do?”   

Now, almost 80 years later we see the approach validated by research into our children’s nervous systems and brain development. The concept of neuroception - the sense of safety  or danger and myelination - the brain’s way of building knowledge step by step were and still  are catered for in Pikler’s systems, equipment and philosophy without having these modern  day labels.   

Back in the early twentieth century when these ideas were being formulated at Loczy all they saw was what they needed to see - how children truly develop. And what happens when we take away our adult need for rush, for chasing the next step, all in the pursuit of that which is  already hard wired into our little people.

They sured this up with the most perfect conditions  for that development - solid, safe and compassionate relationship based care. Trust.  I am now five years into my journey with Pikler and, as I said above, have spent so many hours considering how the magic I saw in Budapest can be translated to our work in the UK with children in our care, and also translated into the love with children in our families (and  firmly believe these can be interchangeable). I have spent less time swimming against the  tide and more around the ideas I felt in my bones to be absolutely right and true.   

I am hoping this website will create just the right conditions for all my visitors to get a moment sitting in a similar still point and finding some answers that might help them to become more present and less focused on ticking off the next box. I will be creating blog posts and videos which will discuss various topics around relationship, well being and childhood. 

Simply put I’d like to share the magic. 

Reflections: I’ve had clarity, sometimes swimming in the sea, sometimes sitting under a gushing  waterfall, I’ve spoken to friends who can relate; do some of your insights come whilst standing in the shower or wallowing in a warm bath?