Making Room for Growth
Ground Notes, Part Five
The questions emerging through these Ground Notes have begun to take another form.
I am developing The Ground We Gather On Reflective Practice Cards: a set of discussion and reflection prompts for parents, educators, childcare workers, facilitators, coaches and teams.
The idea is simple.
When a situation becomes emotionally charged, we often reach quickly for an explanation, instruction or judgement.
The cards invite us to pause before deciding what the behaviour means.
One card might ask:
What happened?
Beneath it:
What could a camera have recorded?
This separates observation from interpretation.
“The child pulled the bicycle from another child’s hands” is an observation.
“The child was being deliberately mean” is an interpretation.
Another card asks:
What happened inside me?
What feeling, bodily sensation or impulse appeared?
Perhaps my shoulders tightened. Perhaps I wanted the noise to stop immediately. Perhaps I felt protective of one child, irritated with the other, or anxious that people would think I was not managing the situation properly.
A third card asks:
What was I trying to protect?
Safety, fairness, order, belonging, quiet, authority or connection?
Another asks:
What comes after your ‘because’?
What need is sitting beneath your reaction?
And perhaps the most challenging asks:
Whose need is this?
Is this for the child to meet, for me to regulate, or for us to hold together?
The cards are not intended to turn every family disagreement into a formal meeting.
Nor are they scripts for becoming permanently calm, perfectly reflective adults.
They are small invitations to make room.
Room between an event and our interpretation of it.
Room between feeling something and acting from it.
Room for the child’s experience without erasing the adult’s.
Room for boundaries that protect without humiliating.
Room for curiosity after certainty has already begun sharpening its elbows.
The developing card set may be used individually, between partners, in family conversations, during team reflection or as part of facilitated workshops.
The image accompanying this post is a first visual demonstration of what the cards could become. The final wording, number of cards, categories and practical guide are still taking shape.
Expressions of interest and early reservations for the first card set are welcome here:
[REGISTER INTEREST IN THE REFLECTIVE PRACTICE CARDS]
The cards will grow from the same ground as these notes: lived experience, cultural curiosity, reflective practice and the belief that what happens between us deserves more than our fastest explanation.
