Did you know that only 56% of kids starting school in Australia this year are hitting their developmental milestones across each of the sub-domains for school readiness? That means almost half of the kids that are starting school in Australia are not developmentally ready for the demands that we have in the school system.
And so it begs the question around what is the role of educators in the early years? Is, and what sort of shifts do we need to make, both in our mindset and in the way that we're rolling out early years education to support these kids Today, what we're seeing is a significant rise over the last 15 to 20 years.
In chronic stress amongst adults across Australia, 70% of adults in Australia experiencing chronic stress. We're seeing significant incidents , because of COVID and post COVID around, adverse childhood experiences for kids. Almost every kid today has an adver, at least one adverse childhood experience, and then you pile on top of that.
Relationship breakdowns, economic and financial strain for families, chronic disease that exists within families. Increased incidence of mental health issues, depression, anxiety, addictions, as well as a rising number of children with developmental delays, disabilities, and emotional regulation challenges as well.
And so when you look at all of these complexities and you put a group of kids into a learning environment, instead of seeing sort of 30% of kids with challenges, we're seeing that number significantly grow. And I guess for me, it begs the question around what are we doing about it and how are we preparing our education workforce for managing this?
The incidence of leave, staff turnover, work cover are all on the rise in the education space. We've got a largely underpaid and inexperienced workforce that are supporting what we're seeing now to be more complex kids than ever before. And. I think there's a need for us to look, to go back to basics with respect to what are we here for?
Are we here to get these kids ready for school, or are we here to get these kids ready for life? And what does that entail? Because we know that the neuroscience is saying that. In that first six years of life, kids are forming something like a million neural pathways a minute, and so the environment that they're in through that time matters enormously.
But not only that, the energy levels and the regulation levels of the people within that environment matter significantly because kids are not learning from what we say. Kids are learning from what we are modeling. And when you've got a chronically stressed workforce that are coming in to work each day and are dealing with challenge after challenge, whether it's staff shortages, whether it's behavior issues in the room, whether it's challenges with transitions, whatever might be happening either in the staff member's personal life or with the kids that they're working with and the challenges that they're supporting in their day to day work.
If that staff member's not supported enough to be able to regulate themselves effectively, then they're going to begin with, have a really hard time supporting and regulating their kids. And when we've got more and more people coming into the workforce in trainee positions or in supported education programs and that are lacking.
The experience on the ground with the kids over time, then their capacity to have that understanding of their own regulation and how to support the kids. And shifting the kids' energy states and the kids' ability to be able to regulate a significant, I think, so it's probably a mindset shift potentially around what.
This is why I'm here. This shifting that mindset from instead of being around, well, I'm here to help them learn. Yes, absolutely. We are here to help them learn, but first we have to help them feel happy and safe in the space. First, we have to make sure that their nervous system is supported so that learning can take place.
Because if their lit is flipped and they are in a survival state of fight flight, then. The frontal lobes and the cortex, the thinking part of their brain is gonna be switched off. The memory centers in their brain won't be working. They won't be able to retain any of the learning that they're exposed to.
And so the number one priority needs to be how do we support the regulation of these kids in the learning space? And what are we doing environmentally to create a safe. An optimum learning environment for these kids. And I think it starts with us as the adults that are working in that space. And then we need to start to look at things like.
The routines, the rituals, what's a consistency? How are we treating each other from a staff to staff point of view? How are we supporting the families and helping with the parents' regulation when the kids are coming in? And how are then we setting these kids little bodies up for success during the day?
Because. If we were aware of the fact that so many neural pathways are forming and that each of these neural pathways, obviously kids make about 300 choices a day, adults make around 30,000 choices a day. And if we can be helping the adults as the adults in this space, sorry, if we can be helping to understand that the more of these habits that we're supporting these kids to form, and therefore the more space that they have.
Cognitively to be focusing on learning the new skills, the more healthy neural pathways are going to be forming. And so creating that environment where our habits and our routines and our rituals are all really setting their nervous system up for success, I think is going to give these kids a really solid foundation for preparing them for school.
Because if we're sending these kids off to school, dysregulated. Then the learning certainly can't take place, but we're certainly not going to hit these developmental milestones that we need for school readiness unless they're first regulated. And so shifting that mindset around, these kids are giving me a hard time to, these kids are having a hard time and this is why I'm here.
And I love that piece of ancient Aboriginal wisdom around. If I was meant to be somewhere else, then that's where I would be, but I'm here and that's probably not the way that they say it, and definitely not do doing that quote justice. But that, that whole mentality of, well, this is why I'm here and shifting our mindset into this, is our role in this moment is to support these kids and it's to support.
They're learning from the ground up. And that starts with healthy brain development and creating a safe and supportive environment for the learning to take place. And the learning will largely take place naturally once we get that, that environmental piece sorted. And I think sometimes when we think about the environmental piece, we think about it in terms of the sensory systems, et cetera and creating a supportive space.
From a safety and maybe even a sensory point of view, but we are potentially not looking at some of the deeper layers to this around consistency, around the rituals that take place each day around the expectations that we have and that the changing expectations of the different educators and the impact that that potentially has on our kids.
The way that we are treating each other in the space, how regulated we are when we get to work, what we are doing throughout the day to manage our own regulation levels, our own energy states, so that when we are calmer, the kids will automatically sense our calm and start to calm themselves and.
Being then really aware of what are our triggers and when are these kids triggering us? Because so often what happens is the noises, the bright lights, the too much movement and too many competing demands, uh, behaviors that are triggering things from our own childhood or from our own traumas.
All of these things are coming up through the day that are impacting how calm that we can stay in the moment. And so whilst we often think we need to be there to fix these kids, and it's the kids that need fixing, when we start to recognize, well, hold on. There's this whole myriad of work that we can do on ourselves.
And when we take the steps to do that on ourselves, then we are not even realizing that we're subconsciously modeling all these amazing skills to our kids. So that's a massive part of it. And then I think the relationship piece with the parents and that piece of coming from a place of openness and understanding and support instead of what we sometimes tend to default to, which is the judgment piece, is again, really important.
What we're seeing is, more and more conversations around these adverse childhood experiences. And if you don't know a lot about them, it's definitely worth checking them out because for us it's important for us as adults to be aware of our own adverse childhood experiences and the impact that potentially those are still having on our lives today, and the impact that has on our cognitive wellbeing, our physical wellbeing, and just our biological makeup.
Full stop. But also then being able to look at the families that we are working with and the kids that they're raising, and the adverse childhood experiences, both of the parents and of the kids, and the challenges that are then impacting how they're showing up each day and really trying to meet them where they're at in terms of supporting them from a safety, from a, from a.
Have they got enough food? Where is the shelter, the financial piece at? All of those sort of key things that need to come before we can start to look at any of the higher things on Maslow's hierarchy in terms of self-actualization, et cetera. And when we come from that place of understanding, then I think our mindset shifts again.
And we come from this place of kindness and love instead of sitting in this drama triangle of. A persecutor or a rescuer or victim that then just plays out in this sort of negative thinking and fear-based approach to how we're dealing with the problems that we're faced each day.
So with all of that in mind, I guess. Yeah, these are the foundations that we are building on for how we're supporting educators, how we're supporting parents in this early year space. Genuinely believe that so much of what we've done over the years that, that perhaps we are rushing through today. Things like that.
Focus on quality, sleep, real food, time in nature, love and connection, movement, free play, those foundational pillars that. We all know are so important, but we sometimes probably take for granted and maybe don't give the level of attention that we need, like particularly that love and connection piece when kids can sense that we really care about them.
Even when the parents who are coming in anxious and worried and feeling judged when they sense that we actually care. So much of the energy shifts. And the support then just naturally starts to come out and we get this real high quality relationship starting to form, and that's where the magic happens, when the relationships are strong.
So that's the first part of it. The second part of it is we know that so many of the kids that we're working with today, and ourselves included, we've got this dopamine addiction, and it's particularly strong when it comes to screens, when it comes to sugar. Those addictive things that are simple pleasures that are easy to get and that don't require any pain to get compared to something like exercise that has an element of pain to it, but then the reward lasts for longer.
And so helping to recognize where these dopamine addictions is sitting for the kids that we are supporting and how we can find those. Those healthier doses of dopamine throughout the day. They come from things like love and connection, from movement, from time in nature, from play, and. Setting them up for success by really honing in on those basics and getting that opportunity to get them outside, get their bodies moving, and really prioritizing that stuff in the work that we're doing with them.
Going back to that sensory play because it feels good. It nourishes their nervous system, and it's gonna help create that solid base of regulation from which they'll learn and grow. So. A whole series of things that I think for us to think about, but then once we do start to reflect on them, a lot of it just comes back to the basics.
And we can let go of all of these rules that we are learning in, in, in all of the PD that's out there around, oh, we should be doing this and we should be doing that and go and just starting to. Pair back a few layers and get the foundations right for a start. And that's what the play way is all about.
It's around recognizing what's most important and simplifying our approach to how we're supporting kids and families today, and how we're supporting the adults that are working with these kids and families to set us up for success. So if this is of interest to you, we'd love for you to join us in the Hub.
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