In the third episode of Season 2 of the Early Bloom Podcast, we welcomed Cheryl Warren, an award-winning early years trainer and consultant, specialising in neurodiversity. Cheryl is the founder of Aperion Training and author of ‘Neurodiversity in the Early Years’.
She works with nurseries and schools across the country providing SEND support and creating spaces where children thrive. During our conversation we cover:
- What inclusive practice is and what this looks like in settings
- Being a neuro-affirming educator
- Ofsted’s focus on inclusion and being confident in your conversations with inspectors
- Strategies for reflecting on your current practice
View transcript (generated automatically)
00:00:00 Fliss
Hello and thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Early Bloom podcast for today’s conversation. I have the pleasure of welcoming the lovely Cheryl Warren. Cheryl is an award-winning trainer and consultant specialising in neurodiversity. You may also know her as the owner of the Perion training and more recently the author.
00:00:20 Fliss
Of her book neurodiversity in the early years, Cheryl.
00:00:24 Fliss
Welcome to the.
00:00:24 Cheryl
Podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Some my pleasure to be here. Thank you.
00:00:28 Fliss
So let’s start with getting to know you a little bit more and your journey and what got you to where you are today as a early years trainer and consultant.
00:00:38 Cheryl
A. A long 30 year history. Wow. I started. I mean, early years childcare was all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to be a nanny, OK? And so the only opportunity, the only sort of available course for me at the time was the NBA at.
00:00:56 Cheryl
My local college.
00:00:57 Cheryl
So I worked very, very hard to get the GCSE’s that I needed and study for the interview process. It was a big, big process to to get into the course. It was a two year full-time childcare and education course. That was the only training available if you wanted to get into into childcare and early years. So that’s what I did and I finished that.
00:01:17 Cheryl
And I became a nanny and I thought perfect. I’ve I’ve made it at 18. I’ve.
00:01:21 Cheryl
Done what I.
00:01:22
Wanted to do.
00:01:24 Cheryl
Loved it and then quickly realised that actually I wanted to do that little bit more. Yeah. So I continued my studies whilst I was still nannying and moved to working.
00:01:37 Cheryl
Within family centres. So I went from working with very affluent families as a many yeah to working with very vulnerable families, children who had been abused, children who’ve been neglected, children within the care system. And my first real experience of children with quite complex needs within the family centre situation.
00:01:57 Cheryl
And and then without going through my entire CV, I’ve I’ve been worked for local authority as a development officer, I’ve worked as Electro within a college assessor trainer. I’ve been a quality inspector for the National Day Nursery Association. I’ve been a quality and improvement officer within a local nursery.
00:02:17 Cheryl
Group SENCO, lead SENCO, lots and lots of of various different things.
00:02:23 Cheryl
But what brought me to where I am now really is that kind of professional journey and the experiences that I had within that, but also very much my personal journey and those that would have would have heard me speak before, would have heard me talk about my boys, both my boys and their divergent. I have a 17 and a 10 year old.
00:02:45 Cheryl
When my eldest got to five, I kind of said, help me. I don’t know what to.
00:02:48 Cheryl
Do now I’ve only ever worked.
00:02:50 Cheryl
In early years, but I’ve managed to keep him alive until 17 and he’s doing alright, so I’ve done. I’ve done something right. It quickly became apparent that my eldest son was following a very different developmental pathway.
00:02:50
Yeah.
00:03:05 Cheryl
And I recognise some autistic differences when he was quite young because of my experience.
00:03:13 Fliss
Yes.
00:03:15 Cheryl
And lo and behold, William was diagnosed autistic through our local cams service when he was six years old, alongside sensory processing differences as well.
00:03:25 Cheryl
And so we’ve had to navigate a very different journey, a different journey of parenting, a different journey of living our life. You know, he lives life differently.
00:03:36 Cheryl
Raising a neurodivergent children in a neurotypical world and you quickly realise that there are things you have to fight for, there are things that you have to speak up for, for him to get his needs met for him to be understood and accepted for exactly who he is. Not that he has to shift and.
00:03:57 Cheryl
Change and to morph into what everybody expects this yeah, 89101112 year olds to to be like.
00:04:05 Cheryl
So I’ve been on a very personal learning journey through him as well as then learning how to advocate learning the system and learning how to to get the support that he needs to be able to flourish and to be able to thrive. Yeah, and then.
00:04:25 Cheryl
It was during.
00:04:27 Cheryl
That my husband and I figured that my youngest was dyslexic because obviously, I mean, he was 5-6 at home. So home schooling the wonders of home schooling back over lockdown, still emotionally.
00:04:27 Fliss
OK.
00:04:36
Yes.
00:04:39 Fliss
So you do like some bits.
00:04:41 Fliss
Yeah.
00:04:43 Fliss
Yes.
00:04:46 Cheryl
Traumatised by that? But yeah, I mean my my husband works in the sector as well. So between us we had 70 years worth of kind of early years education between us. He was pretty much getting 1 to 1 support.
00:04:47 Fliss
Many off.
00:05:05 Cheryl
And learning in a very, very different way. We had very hands on very outdoors learning. We didn’t look at a worksheet, we didn’t look at a screen we didn’t do online learning. It was very much kind of led by by play. But we quickly realised that he wasn’t able to retain some of the information that we were talking to him about with regards to kind of early maths and early literacy.
00:05:07 Fliss
Yeah.
00:05:26 Cheryl
And and things were taking a while to kind of sink in for him. And obviously we were trying to get, you know, kind of some, some writing and some reading going on.
00:05:37 Cheryl
But it just wasn’t sinking in for him. Yeah. So we went back when the world opened up again, and he went back to school. I started to have those conversations. And he said, well, now he’s back at school. Let’s have.
00:05:48 Fliss
A look so they didn’t notice anything before? Yeah.
00:05:50 Cheryl
They didn’t notice anything before, but it was very much ohh. Now he’s back at school now so and you’re kind of thinking. Well, he’s had one to one.
00:05:54 Fliss
Yeah.
00:05:58 Cheryl
With all of this experience this whole time, now he’s going into a class of 30 with 1 teacher, but then.
00:05:58 Fliss
This time.
00:06:02 Fliss
Yeah.
00:06:06 Cheryl
Again, it was that realisation through school that yes, there were some challenges for him. So we got him assessed and yeah, dyslexic. So I’ve got one son who.
00:06:22 Cheryl
Kind of not enjoyed school, but thrived on the structure and the routine that school gave him.
00:06:28 Fliss
Yeah.
00:06:29 Fliss
Is that what your eldest did? Yeah.
00:06:30 Cheryl
With my eldest, yes. But but he went through school with very few friends and emotional connections didn’t like play time. He preferred to be in the classroom with the teachers at lunchtime. You know, doing jobs and things so.
00:06:41 Fliss
Yeah.
00:06:43 Fliss
Yeah.
00:06:45 Cheryl
School was a struggle. If things changed or in terms of the emotional kind of support and and connections, whereas my youngest has those amazing connections, he is the centre of his friendship group and he adores friends, meets friends, gets invited to all the parties.
00:07:06 Cheryl
Loves the football and all of those things, but his narrative and his dialogue is.
00:07:11 Cheryl
The schools are prison school is he describes school as child abuse because you’re locked up and can’t do what you want to do. He struggles to go into school every morning and find school a real a real chore because the push and the emphasis is on the reading and the writing and the maths and the literacy.
00:07:17 Fliss
Wow.
00:07:30 Fliss
She doesn’t come natural.
00:07:32 Cheryl
Which is not where he shines. You know, he shines in the the PE and the project work and the DT, but those subjects seem to be forgotten. If we’ve got to do extra maths. So we’ve got to do extra reading or.
00:07:34 Fliss
Yes.
00:07:38
Yeah.
00:07:43 Fliss
Yes.
00:07:48 Cheryl
And if there’s a supply teacher, that’s always a real struggle for him, because there’s somebody that he doesn’t trust, isn’t there to help him.
00:07:55 Cheryl
So both have their challenges. Yeah, but very, very different challenges and and again still having to fight for the support for my youngest as well. So, you know, life’s fun. Yeah, there’s, there’s always a bottle.
00:07:59 Fliss
Yes.
00:08:01 Fliss
Yes.
00:08:11
Well.
00:08:14 Cheryl
The fridge.
00:08:15 Cheryl
Lots, lots going on, but would I have it?
00:08:16 Fliss
Yeah.
00:08:19 Cheryl
Any other way?
00:08:20 Cheryl
Not not for anything. You know, my children are who they are. My children are amazing individuals. They’ve.
00:08:26 Cheryl
You know, they’ve shown me a different a different pathway and actually, you know, I’ve learned so much from them and because of my parenting journey, that in essence is what I share. So I very much share my professional journey and my professional experiences. And that’s when I’m, you know, when I’m delivering training or I’m.
00:08:46 Cheryl
In the settings and we’re looking at strategies and support for our children.
00:08:51 Cheryl
A lot of that comes from my experiences as mum and seeing my children in those spaces.
00:08:55 Fliss
And you can see it from the parents point of view. Absolutely. And yeah, and then feed that to the setting. And I’m thinking like, I’m telling you all this information, but see it from the parent point of view as well instead of just.
00:08:58 Cheryl
Sing.
00:09:05 Fliss
The practise point of view, yeah.
00:09:06 Cheryl
Absolutely. I often talk about providing these safe spaces for our.
00:09:10 Cheryl
Children, our safe spaces for our children to thrive, but we also have to provide those safe spaces for our families. Yeah, because the outside world can be quite a cool place sometimes, you know, sometimes even from family members, members of the public that are quick to judge and criticise your your parenting because they don’t.
00:09:30 Cheryl
Understand what has impacted your child in that moment.
00:09:33 Fliss
Yes.
00:09:35 Cheryl
And I often hear the phrase you know well, we can’t support the child because the parents are in denial or, you know, the parents aren’t ready to talk about it. So it really is supporting the practitioners, the educators, to understand that parenting journey too, because it’s not. It’s not an easy one to navigate.
00:09:46 Fliss
Yeah, 100%.
00:09:50 Fliss
Yeah. And I’ve heard you speak few Times Now.
00:09:53 Fliss
And you are and we’ve just heard it there an advocate for inclusive practise, more specifically as well Neuro inclusion, but starting them with inclusive practise, what does inclusive practise actually look like in an earlier setting?
00:10:09 Cheryl
It’s understanding that that word inclusion means in the space. Yeah, with our children, the opposite being exclusion. And people think exclusion or you know they can’t come in here anymore like a school exclusion but also exclusion in terms of things happening with our children outside of the classroom.
00:10:28 Cheryl
Side of the room, things are being done differently. The best inclusive spaces are where we have those spaces where all of our children can thrive.
00:10:38 Cheryl
In the same space. So if we think about children who might require just that little bit of space, that little bit of safety, that little kind of nook, that little nest space to to decompress, to reset, to regulate, it’s not about having a separate sensory room where they have to ask for an adult to take them to it.
00:10:58 Fliss
Yeah.
00:10:59 Cheryl
It and it doesn’t have to be this. You know, we can’t provide an inclusive one because we haven’t got the funds or the space for a sensory room.
00:11:05 Cheryl
Just a quiet little cosy corner. It will look is all it needs to be and that understanding of why a child might need to use that space. I call them a place of escape. And it’s also about things like understanding why our children are doing what they’re doing and inclusion true inclusive practise only happens when everybody is on the same page.
00:11:27 Cheryl
So this has to be something that’s not a bolt on, it’s not an add-on. It’s what you are doing. That inclusion is at the heart of your vision of your mission, of your pedagogy. So it’s seeing our children as different.
00:11:44 Cheryl
But different is OK yeah, and understanding that those differences come with, yes, many challenges, but also many wondrous. Yeah, things inclusion is understanding that our children have a right to be in that space.
00:11:59 Cheryl
Inclusion is understanding that our children have a right to an identity.
00:12:04 Cheryl
And their neuro type is part of their identity. It’s not about curing or fixing through different interventions.
00:12:14 Cheryl
It’s not about compliance. It’s not about our children being school ready either. It’s a phrase I think we need to ban from the early sector, quite frankly, so inclusion is understanding that child in front of you, neuro inclusion and neurodiversity affirming practise is understanding and seeing the strengths.
00:12:22 Fliss
Yeah.
00:12:35 Cheryl
Of those children in front of you and meeting them where they are.
00:12:39 Cheryl
So our children play differently. Yeah, but what I’m finding in my consultancy work is that quite often, our children are the forgotten child.
00:12:50 Cheryl
Because they are the children that they’re playing on their own.
00:12:55 Cheryl
But they’re not creating a problem for anybody. They’re quiet. They’re. I’ll leave them to it, because if I go and interact.
00:12:59
Yeah.
00:13:04 Cheryl
That might trigger them, so therefore our children go without any interaction or any connection. So it’s understanding that if our children are, you know, our children have a preference for solitary or parallel play. So if our children are playing solitary.
00:13:08 Fliss
Introduction. Yeah.
00:13:19 Cheryl
Go and join them and meet them where they are, but when you’re joining them and you’re meeting them where they are, it’s not about look. You’ve built a tower. How many bricks have you used? Look, you’ve used the blue one. I’m going to use the green Tower. Look at that cow. Ohh. Wow. Look. That cow says Moo. Can you say moo?
00:13:38 Cheryl
That’s putting your neurotypical play agenda onto that child, so it’s again meeting children where they are every time they move a block, or they move a car, or they move an animal.
00:13:41 Fliss
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:50 Cheryl
You find one to move to.
00:13:52 Cheryl
You follow their lead, they make a sound, you make a sound. They move their body into a different position. You mirror that, it says. Do you know what I’m going to follow you? I’m championing, championing you. I validate the way that you play and I am going to learn from you and the way that you play.
00:14:13 Cheryl
And when it happens, when I go into settings and I’m observing in the.
00:14:18 Cheryl
And I go and join a practitioner who’s with a child. And again, because we’re taught, aren’t we to commentate and try to include an element of learning and extension and all of those things.
00:14:30 Cheryl
But sometimes it’s about unlearning some of that stuff for our neurodivergent children.
00:14:33 Fliss
Yeah. And when that’s all you’ve been taught really until things change in the courses that we do to get the qualifications, that’s what you’re gonna think how to do it. So yeah, it’s it’s having that.
00:14:36 Cheryl
Absolutely.
00:14:41 Cheryl
Absolutely.
00:14:43 Cheryl
We don’t know what we don’t know, right? Yeah. And. And, you know, when I go into settings, it’s not a kind of you’re doing this wrong. That’s not how you should do it. It’s about.
00:14:52 Cheryl
Have you tried?
00:14:53 Fliss
This way change your approach a little bit. Change, yeah.
00:14:54 Cheryl
Change your approach. Change the way that you engage with the child and I will go in. You know you’ll find me in trainers and jeans and on the floor lying down, rolling around, modelling that to the practitioners. And it does become that. Ohh my goodness. We’ve never seen the child do that or we’ve never seen that element of connection or eye contact with an adult.
00:15:16 Cheryl
And it’s because I’ve said.
00:15:19 Cheryl
I am affirming who you are. I am affirming your identity. I am acknowledging who you are, how you are, how you communicate, and how you play. That for me is true inclusive practise. It’s about understanding the child in front of you, not understanding the diagnosis, because once you’ve met one autistic child.
00:15:40 Cheryl
We’ve met one autistic child. Yes. It’s about understanding the needs of that child in front of you and supporting them right where they are because.
00:15:49 Cheryl
Where my children are is right where they are supposed to be. You know, we’re quick. We’re quick to want to tick something off on the UFS. We’re quick to kind of think about, oh, next steps. We have to think about next steps. No, we don’t. We have to be present. We have to be.
00:15:57 Fliss
Yes.
00:15:58 Fliss
OK.
00:16:09 Cheryl
With that child holding space with that child, holding them in mind, being with them, being present in that moment.
00:16:20 Cheryl
To connect to provide that sense of belonging and that trust, and that for me, is the essence of of inclusive practise, seeing our children for who they are.
00:16:33 Cheryl
Not expecting them to fit in to what we consider is right. Correct.
00:16:40 Cheryl
Or supporting them.
00:16:42 Cheryl
To be school ready.
00:16:44 Fliss
Yeah. Yeah. And I think often as well with children when they maybe show a little bit more signs of, like, neurodiversity is than preschool ages as well more often. And I think that’s at them the age where you are focusing on that school readiness and stuff. So I imagine a mix together, it’s just.
00:17:03 Fliss
Not ideal.
00:17:04 Cheryl
It’s about our role. I mean, for me, our role is supporting wherever that child is going on to in their next stage of their journey.
00:17:10
Yeah.
00:17:12 Cheryl
Whether it’s school, whether it’s a specialist centre, whether it’s, uhm, moving on to a, you know, transition from room to room, it’s understanding that where they’re going to.
00:17:23 Cheryl
Is ready for them. Yeah. So are they aware of how a child, if they have a diagnosis, how that diagnosis presents for them?
00:17:31 Cheryl
Are they aware of triggers within the environment? Are they aware of what that child needs?
00:17:37 Cheryl
For a transition, are they aware of what dysregulation looks like for that child? Are they aware of if if the child is dysregulated, what do they need from an adult in that moment because it will differ per child? So what has that child special interests? How do we? What are the strategies used to really engage in that child with something?
00:17:59 Cheryl
That’s what we need to know. So it’s about the next space being ready for our child, not our child being ready for that space.
00:18:06 Fliss
Maybe for them. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really nice way to way to put it. We spoke a little bit before and you mentioned to me about how Ofsted and schools have started to focus a lot more on inclusion, which will naturally come to the early years as well. What are they looking at now? What are what is their focus around inclusion?
00:18:26 Cheryl
There is a definite shift. Send is higher up on the agenda than it’s ever ever been. It really, really is. And with the new cards and the new inspections that are coming out, obviously we don’t know the full details at the moment, but inclusion is going to be on the agenda, yeah.
00:18:46 Cheryl
Again, we have to understand what inclusion.
00:18:48 Fliss
Is yes, but.
00:18:49 Cheryl
We also have to have the confidence.
00:18:53 Cheryl
To be able to speak to any inspector, whether it’s local authority, whether it’s Ofsted, whoever coming in, having the confidence to inform them as to why maybe children might not be joining in with an activity like their their peers are, you know, if we’re doing a.
00:19:13 Cheryl
A sitting down activity, a circle time activity. Why? It might be that you’ve got a couple of children doing different things in that moment.
00:19:23 Cheryl
It’s having the confidence.
00:19:26 Cheryl
To be able to share.
00:19:29 Cheryl
The inclusion is very, very different from compliance.
00:19:34 Cheryl
Children complying is not inclusion, so I work with schools too and when we’re thinking about a classroom environment, for me the best classrooms are the messy classrooms. And I don’t mean rubbish and yeah, stuff everywhere. What I’m talking about is yes, the main group of children might be sat down.
00:19:54 Cheryl
With some teacher input, we can translate to that to to kind of carpet time in, you know, in early.
00:20:01 Cheryl
I mean, for me, carpet time is not something that I advocate for anyway. I think I’m kind of, you know, I wonder why we’re doing.
00:20:04 Fliss
Yeah.
00:20:06 Fliss
It’s part of that whole getting.
00:20:07 Fliss
Them school ready thing, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:08 Cheryl
Absolutely, absolutely. So if we’re doing any kind of teacher inputs, I would for me inclusion would look like one child sat at the back of the carpet bouncing up and down on a yoga ball or a gym ball. Mm-hmm. Another child may be sat on a chair with a resistance band around the front legs. So they’re pushing their ankles.
00:20:29 Cheryl
Getting some proprioceptive feedback which is enabling them to regulate so they can take on board the instructions and the information from the teacher in front of them.
00:20:39 Cheryl
You might have a child again that is sat in that place of escape. They might have had that really tricky morning and they just need a moment with some ear defenders, maybe some lights, maybe some fidgets. Just taking a moment to decompress.
00:20:52 Cheryl
There might be a child standing up at a standing desk or at an activity that is in line with what the teacher input is. Maybe with either with a one to one adult or with an adult just around for support if need be. So they are learning their way in their own time. The way that works for them.
00:21:12 Cheryl
Again standing up, yeah, supporting that element of regulation.
00:21:17 Cheryl
You might then also in an earlier setting, have the door open for a free flow. So whilst you’ve got the group on the on the the floor, one child on the bouncy ball, one child with the resistance band, one child at the the Standing desk, one in the place of escape, you might have one outside. Eyes are on that child either with another member of staff and they’re doing a bit of a sensory.
00:21:37 Cheryl
Circuit outside that for me.
00:21:41 Cheryl
Is an inclusive space that for me says and and if we do have an inspector coming in and in that moment I would be going straight to the inspector before the inspector sits down and starts. Kind of looking at what’s going on. I will be going over to the inspector and I’ll be saying I’d just like to kind of set the scene for you right now as to what’s going on.
00:21:43 Fliss
Yeah.
00:21:59 Fliss
Yeah.
00:22:01 Cheryl
These children are doing this. These two are sat differently because we know that that supports them to be able to focus, concentrate and show attention to that member of staff because their sensory needs are being met, that one actually, that that child over there on the chair.
00:22:19 Cheryl
Struggles to sit on the carpet. Children are too close. The carpets really itchy on their skin. They prefer to sit on the chair. That’s why they’re there. That child over there in the place of escape. They’ve had a really, really tough morning. And in order for them to be able to participate in the next part of the day, we know that they just need that decompression time. Yeah, that’s what’s happening over there.
00:22:39 Cheryl
So we talk very openly, confidently with the inspector.
00:22:44 Cheryl
About meeting children’s individual needs. Yeah, and how you are showing equity and for me that’s that’s the shift we need to make. Yeah, this is not about equality in terms of everybody doing the same thing. This is about equity meeting our children’s.
00:22:59 Fliss
Saying yeah.
00:23:02 Fliss
In the weather.
00:23:04 Cheryl
Individual needs and exactly where they are right now in this.
00:23:09 Cheryl
Moment. And it’s that shift. It’s viewing our children through this equity then. So anybody, I mean, we don’t do things just for Ofsted.
00:23:18 Fliss
No. Yeah, I was gonna say this might like see like Ohh Ofsted inclusion. Let’s start focusing on our inclusive practise like no that’s not a reason to do it. It’s a reason to just always be reflected. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:23:30 Cheryl
And but it’s about understanding what inclusion looks like, because sometimes I know people go into panic and think what they’re gonna say, because that one’s over there doing this and that child’s over there, doing something different. And this one’s behaving that way, actually.
00:23:33 Fliss
Yeah.
00:23:43 Cheryl
If we’re meeting their unique and individual needs.
00:23:46 Cheryl
That’s the basis of inclusion and and it it’s having the confidence to to explain that.
00:23:47 Fliss
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:52 Fliss
And that’s what also off said. I always like come back. People get scared about Ofsted. But I always remember, like when I was in settings, if you show Ofsted that you know your children, you know your practise, you know your setting, you know your approach and you’re able to tell them that tick tick, tick and that is in essence you should have every practitioner in that room being able to do what you just did.
00:24:12 Fliss
And say that tells sat like that.
00:24:14 Fliss
Is this? And I also often think in early years, especially when it comes to them sort of things is the SENCO often becomes the one who ohh, SENCO go and explain that yeah, rather than all the other practitioners, but they should all be aware apps because it’s part of all their practise. It’s not just the same that interacts with that child.
00:24:34 Fliss
In the day, it’s everyone in the room and I think that’s also like a shift that kind of it probably has happened in many settings, but also like in settings.
00:24:43 Fliss
I’ve been in. It’s not a shift that’s happened yet and I think, yeah, that’s all part of the whole inclusive approach that you have having every practitioner on board, not just the same code being responsible.
00:24:54 Cheryl
For absolutely absolutely. You know, there’s, we know, don’t we within our legislation and within our framework, that’s safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility.
00:25:03 Fliss
Yeah.
00:25:04 Cheryl
Safe Inclusion, special educational needs. Knowing those children is also everybody’s responsibility as well. It’s not just the role. Safeguarding is not just the role of.
00:25:16 Cheryl
The DSL no.
00:25:18 Cheryl
Special educational needs inclusion is not just the role of the SENCO. Everybody needs to be aware of what inclusive practice.
00:25:24 Cheryl
Looks like what it means.
00:25:28 Cheryl
And how we can support our children in an inclusive space? It’s not just down to one person, it has to be truly embedded in everything that you are doing and that everybody is aware of the triggers for each child, the support each child needs, the provision each child needs.
00:25:47 Cheryl
The responses to their behaviours, you know, understanding the why behind the behaviours, being that curious educator that’s part of being inclusive and it’s everybody’s responsibility.
00:25:57 Fliss
You know 100.
00:25:58 Fliss
And I guess to any like managers, room leaders, practitioners listening to this and they probably are thinking like we need to have a look at our practise, what would you say like their next steps are like how how do you approach that with certain?
00:26:12 Cheryl
From a senior management perspective, I would be looking first of all at your special educational needs policy and your behaviour policy, because your practise and your provision and your ethos starts from there. Yeah, I would also be looking at your website. What does it say on your website? What’s the wording? What’s the narrative?
00:26:32 Cheryl
Around SN.
00:26:34 Cheryl
If your.
00:26:37 Cheryl
Special education needs policy. If your behaviour well, first of all, if your behaviour policy says behaviour management policy, that’s the starting point, behaviour, support policy or regulation, self regulation policy behaviour management is is is not.
00:26:56 Cheryl
But it starts from the the top down. Yeah, you know, what is the senior team sharing? Right from interview. Right. From induction. Mm-hmm. Around the narrative around special educational needs. Are we talking about concerns? Are we talking about children with developmental delays?
00:27:15 Cheryl
Are we talking about children who are not meeting developmental milestones? All of those things are not neuropharmacology.
00:27:22 Cheryl
Yeah.
00:27:22 Cheryl
That’s not a neurofilament narrative that says problem.
00:27:25 Cheryl
That says there’s an issue we need to fix. I’ve worked with settings before where they’ve used a form called A cause of concern form about a child about a child because they’ve seen differences in development. Yeah. And so their form was a cause for concern form. So I’m concerned about their development.
00:27:45 Cheryl
It’s the narrative. It’s the language again. It just says.
00:27:48 Cheryl
Our children are.
00:27:49 Cheryl
A problem?
00:27:50 Cheryl
Yeah. So what’s the language around your policy? What’s the language around your within your induction process around children who are?
00:27:59 Cheryl
Doing life differently, starting with that as as as your starting point and then that vision, that mission, that ethos then will run through.
00:28:11 Cheryl
If you are a member of staff that does your show rounds with parents, again, what’s your narrative on that show round? Yeah, I knew my eldest son was autistic when he was about two.
00:28:21 Cheryl
And 1/2.
00:28:22 Fliss
OK.
00:28:23 Cheryl
If at 2 1/2 I was taking him around a nursery setting and being shown.
00:28:27 Cheryl
Around and spoken to, you know, if I asked the question of, OK, what if if there are you know, what if children need some extra help or or we’re we’re having those conversations around kind of developmental differences. And I’m being told the narrative around concerns, problems, delays. You know, early interventions.
00:28:44 Fliss
Yeah.
00:28:47 Cheryl
Uh.
00:28:49 Cheryl
I’d be thinking, OK, there’s a problem. There’s something wrong with my child, and I may then not feel safe enough emotionally to kind of go. Is this somewhere where I’m going to be heard without judgement or criticism? You know, I’ve seen these differences in my child. Is my child going to be supported here or are they going to be?
00:28:52 Fliss
MHM.
00:29:08 Cheryl
A problem here.
00:29:09 Fliss
Yeah, you don’t want to be the parent when you come and pick them up and say, oh, they’ve done this today. And I think I heard you say a nursery wild, how you want to come through the door and the practitioner went over to you and.
00:29:18 Fliss
Oh my gosh, they’ve ate a banana or something instead of saying, oh, they bear child like and that’s the sort of messages that you want to be able to pick up on on them show around. Yeah.
00:29:25 Cheryl
Absolutely.
00:29:27 Cheryl
No, absolutely. And you know, we are those parents that are told of of the.
00:29:31 Cheryl
Tough bits, yeah.
00:29:32 Cheryl
And we know they’re a tough bits. We’re living and breathing those tough bits day in and day out. But yeah, tell me, tell me the things that our children have done. Celebrate those wins with us and you know, share those with us at the end of the day.
00:29:41 Fliss
Yes.
00:29:47 Cheryl
So yeah, for me it it starts at the top in terms of your your narrative in terms of your vision around neurodiversity, affirming practise. So making sure that your your policy have those that kind of positive strength based approach to it. And I do support settings to.
00:30:07 Cheryl
Really review and look at and help them to kind of reword policies and procedures as well, and then thinking about the training that you’re, yeah, receiving, you know, there is lots of training out there. That’s just a quick online course.
00:30:25 Cheryl
Taking the box isn’t necessarily informed by the Neurodivergent community doesn’t necessarily have the right terminology within it. Thinking about.
00:30:39 Cheryl
A lot of the interventions that you’re being asked to deliver.
00:30:43 Cheryl
There are lots out there and I would question the intent behind them because there are lots of interventions and supports that are being our our practitioners being asked to deliver.
00:30:59 Cheryl
That really are about compliance. Yeah. And being school ready? Yeah. And not, you know, again, like I said earlier, the definition of neurodiversity affirming is affirming their identity. Yeah. Not getting rid of their identity.
00:31:14 Fliss
Yeah, we’re making them something else, yeah.
00:31:16 Cheryl
Absolutely. If we have interventions that are making our children comply, our children are masking. Yeah. And if our children are masking, they’re hiding their true identity.
00:31:27 Cheryl
Because they’ve quickly understood that who they are, how they are, how they behave, how they respond to situations is not right.
00:31:37 Cheryl
And our children at 3-4 are masking.
00:31:41 Cheryl
That has massive implications for their long term mental health and well-being. We need to acknowledge our children are different and that different is OK, so really questioning.
00:31:53 Cheryl
The things that you’re being asked to do, and I hear it a lot, well, you know, this professional has told us that we need to do this.
00:32:01 Cheryl
Be mindful that that professional may well have not even seen the child. Yeah, may well have seen that child in a clinic environment for a very short period of time. You may have that child with you 40 hours a week. You know that child. You know how they tick. You know how they communicate.
00:32:21 Cheryl
You know their play preferences? Yeah. Support them where they are. Yeah. Yes. It’s about supporting growth and development in our child.
00:32:30 Cheryl
And there are things that our children do need to understand in terms of, you know, people say to Michelle, what you’re saying is that, you know, our children can do what they want, when they want, how they want. And that’s not life. If our children are hurting themselves, hurting other people, damaging property.
00:32:51 Cheryl
Then we need to support them to find a different way of using that material or to try and regulate.
00:32:58 Cheryl
Or to try and approach a child for connection. Quite often I’ll go into a setting and they’ll say this child keeps going up and squeezing another child, or they’ll go up to a group of children and push down their tower and run away laughing. That’s not right.
00:33:13 Cheryl
But why they doing it? Yeah, they’re doing it for connection.
00:33:18 Cheryl
They just don’t have the skills to connect with the children in a way that might be deemed more appropriate.
00:33:25
Right.
00:33:27 Cheryl
They’re seeing a group of children having lots of fun building a tower. They wanna be part of it. Yeah. So they’re gonna go and push it down to join.
00:33:33 Cheryl
In.
00:33:34 Cheryl
Not knowing the backlash that that’s gonna have, they’re wanting to connect and I had it, I tell a story quite a lot around my my oldest son, when I was picking him up from school one day and my youngest, he must have only been 2-3. And William came down the stairs and said Ohh mummy. Where’s where’s Stanley? Where’s he gone? I said oh, he’s over there.
00:33:35 Fliss
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:55 Cheryl
And just playing with some other children. We’ll we’ll just wait a couple of minutes and then we’ll go off home. And William stood and watched Danny playing with his other children and he said to me.
00:34:04 Cheryl
Mummy, how does Stanley do that? Oh, don’t. And I said, what do you what do you mean? What? How does he do what? And he said. How does he play with those children? He doesn’t know them, does he said no, he doesn’t. But he’s just playing them. And.
00:34:18 Cheryl
William didn’t know, even though he’s he’s six years older, he didn’t know how to engage with other children because they play differently and he doesn’t know how to how to engage and connect with them.
00:34:21 Fliss
Yeah.
00:34:30 Cheryl
They just need to be they they do it differently, but also it’s about giving them the skills because things that other children just do instinctively. Our children don’t do that. Yeah.
00:34:42 Cheryl
On the one hand, that’s OK, they do it differently, but they might want to learn how to engage with other children. So that’s where we come in.
00:34:49 Fliss
Yeah. And that was kind of like a little light note to you, like, oh, I’m interested in that. But how can you do it in a way that absolute, that suits him? Yeah, absolutely.
00:34:49 Cheryl
To support them.
00:34:57 Cheryl
This.
00:34:59 Cheryl
So yeah, it’s it’s, it’s listening and understanding to our to watch and understanding our children.
00:35:04 Fliss
Yeah, 100%. That’s like a key message. Key message folks on what they can do understand them.
00:35:06 Cheryl
Yeah.
00:35:10 Fliss
Don’t make them fit into anything, yeah.
00:35:13 Cheryl
The greats are Renee Brown. I don’t know if you’ve read any of her, what staff, or listen to any of her podcasts. I’m. I’m a bit of a fangirl over Renee Brown. She talks about the opposite of belonging, is fitting in.
00:35:26 Cheryl
And if we’re fitting in.
00:35:28 Cheryl
There’s the possibility that that we’re going to be found out for being.
00:35:31 Cheryl
Somebody we’re not.
00:35:32 Cheryl
We don’t want our children to fit in and mask. We want our children to be able to be their true authentic.
00:35:34 Fliss
Yeah.
00:35:39 Cheryl
Off. Yeah. In a space where they feel they can truly.
00:35:41 Fliss
Belong. Yeah. Yeah. Two very similar. Sort of like words. But then when you put it in that sense, yeah. Very different meanings. Yeah, 100%. I think that wraps it up very nicely. But I do like to end the podcast by asking all our guests to finish the.
00:35:48 Cheryl
Yep.
00:35:50 Cheryl
Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:59 Fliss
Sentence to me working in the early years is.
00:36:04 Cheryl
Impact.
00:36:08 Cheryl
I think.
00:36:09 Cheryl
You know we have.
00:36:12 Cheryl
We have this sense, don’t we, that we’re just kind of looking after our children before they go off to school schools where it really happened? You know, that’s the kind of narrative we’re given.
00:36:22 Cheryl
We brain builders.
00:36:23 Cheryl
We have massive what we do now with our children in their early years matters and we can have massive impact.
00:36:34 Cheryl
Positively. Mm-hmm or negative?
00:36:37 Cheryl
And if we choose the positive impact.
00:36:40 Cheryl
It will last a lifetime. Yeah, that’s why I’m still in this sector. 30 years on. That’s why I still adore it. Because it’s where we have impact not only on our children, but for our families too. So, yeah, early is means impact.
00:36:56 Fliss
I love that. If only everyone knew that.
00:36:59 CherylWe can try. Yeah. Let’s try to spread the word. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:37:01 Fliss
We, that’s what we’re here to do.
00:37:04 Fliss
Right. Well, thank you very much.
00:37:05 Cheryl
Cheryl, thank you for having me. It’s been great.
