Rooted in The Moment
Ground Notes, Part Four
On one particularly demanding day, we cared for ten babies and fourteen toddlers. A handful attended for only half a day. Even so, it was a lot to hold. Some children were restless and irritable due to the onset of illness - in a few of those cases, especially if the child happened to have a high temperature, we could call the parents to arrange for the child to go home earlier.
Writing about this now, I notice that there was rarely a clean point at which risk had been dealt with and reflection could begin. Care happened in forward motion. Yet I hope to illustrate how reflective practice can help an already full on day slow down enough to create genuine connection with the children present.
A child could fall, climb, bite, snatch, roll or slip in the time it took to turn towards another child’s cry. Toddlers are still developing coordination while moving through the world with proportionally large heads and changing centres of balance. Scratches, bumps and bites could occur despite the competence and genuine attentiveness of the adults caring for them.
Much of the work involved continuous, almost subconscious evaluation. Which cry suggested pain? Which child needed immediate physical intervention? Who could wait for a few moments? Which frustration needed accompanying rather than stopping? What might happen next—and how much attention and energy did I have available to anticipate it?
More than three children might be asking simultaneously for different forms of loving attention: comfort, protection, guidance, interruption, reassurance, space or the firmness of a boundary. My hands could be occupied with one child while my eyes followed another and my ears tried to locate a third.
Sometimes, while moving between children, I would notice the tension in my own body and take a slower breath. It did not stop what was happening around me, but it could soften how I met the child I was turning towards.
When my activation eased, even slightly, I could sometimes meet the child before me with fresher eyes. I might play soothing music through a small Bluetooth speaker or make up a short song about what was happening. Children often responded to the change in rhythm. It did not remove the conditions around us, but it could alter the atmosphere enough for us to encounter one another differently.
The ability to pause mattered, but it could not reduce the number of children needing attention or make the conditions less demanding.
The work of Flemish researchers Nele Van Gils, Kris De Visscher and Els Biessen, from Karel De Grote University, on the experiences of kinderbegeleiders (nursery nurses), names the moral stress that arises when workers know what good care asks of them but are not given the conditions needed to offer it consistently. Reflective practice cannot become one more demand on individual caregivers to privately regulate what the wider system has failed to hold.
Slowing down could not change the wider system or the conditions it produced. It was one way of remaining in contact with myself and the child before me while continuing to work within that system.
Six Reflective Practices That Helped Me Stay Connected in Moments of Conflict
Family life has its own conditions, but parents and caregivers may recognise the accumulation of tiredness, noise and competing needs. Many cannot leave work early and do not have relatives or friends nearby who can step in. A crying child or distressed teenager may touch an already tender place, and we find ourselves about to meet their intensity with more of the same.
Reflective practice can begin in the kitchen, the hallway, the car or beside two children arguing over the same chair. Its purpose is not to pretend that individual steadiness can eliminate conflict or compensate for inadequate conditions. It is one way of noticing what is happening within the child, within ourselves and within the environments asking so much of us.
One recurring kind of encounter in the crèche involved the small bicycles the toddlers rode around in the garden. On one occasion, a child pulled another child from a bicycle, took their place and rode away. The displaced child began to cry.
It would have been easy to understand the moment only as a dispute about sharing: return the bicycle, say sorry and wait for your turn. But several experiences were unfolding at once. One child had been physically displaced. Another had acted forcefully upon a desire. There was crying, movement, frustration and a decision to be made about what required my attention first.
I began by asking the crying child what had happened and whether they wanted to continue riding the bicycle. I might ask the other child to bring it back, but the purpose was not simply to restore the object and declare the incident resolved. I stayed with the children until some of the intensity had eased and there was more capacity for us to encounter what had happened.
The moment helped me recognise that children are not only learning to “share.” They are learning what to do with “no”: how to express it, hear it, resist it, wait through it and remain connected when they cannot have what they want.
The following six practices grew from moments like this.
1. Describe Before Interpreting
Before saying, “You are being selfish,” I tried naming what happened as if it were caught on camera. What might a camera have captured?
In the bicycle encounter, I might describe it this way:
You pulled the other child from the bicycle, took their place and rode away.
The other child began to cry.
This is different from saying:
You were being deliberately mean.
You never share.
Description does not remove the need to intervene. It gave me firmer ground from which to do so. It allowed the children to respond to an event rather than defend themselves against a judgement about who they are.
2. Notice What the Conflict Awakens in You
In a charged moment, I also needed to notice what was happening inside me.
What am I feeling in my body?
What am I afraid will happen?
What do I want to stop immediately?
What am I trying to protect?
The crying might awaken an urgent need to restore fairness. The physicality of the encounter might make me protective. The noise might heighten my existing sensory overload. I might also feel pressure to demonstrate that I had the situation under control.
Recognising these responses did not mean that I had to resolve them before intervening. It helped prevent my overwhelm, fear or urgency from disguising itself as moral certainty.
3. Find a Way Back to Yourself
While staying present with the children, I sometimes needed to find a way back to myself.
Even when the environment around me was chaotic, I was often able to access an oasis of inner calm. I suspect this capacity grew from the meditative practice I have maintained since childhood; it is something colleagues and others have consistently noticed and remarked upon. Children are extraordinarily receptive and perceptive to the emotional and energetic quality an adult brings into an interaction. Responding from this quieter inner space often made it possible for me to reach them without adding further urgency to the moment.
This did not mean delaying action. Sometimes I needed to interrupt what was happening immediately. But the interruption could still arise from a grounded place. Calm did not make the boundary less clear or less firm; it shaped how that boundary was carried and how the child experienced me while I held it.
Different moments called for different forms of grounding. I might silently remind myself:
This is a toddler. What am I expecting them to be able to hold in this moment?
Can I offer a calm, clear limit without requiring them to become calm first?
At times, I would sing my thoughts to the tune of a nursery rhyme, pop song or spontaneous little ditty. The playfulness could change something in me as well as in the atmosphere around us.
I might use a breathing practice I learnt at the end of my first pregnancy: inhaling slowly to a count of four, pausing briefly and exhaling to a count of eight. This often helped me feel more centred. At other times, if the space and circumstances allowed, I might release some of the gathered energy by jogging on the spot for ten seconds.
These were not formulas for making the child—or myself—behave calmly. They did not remove the noise, reduce the number of children or resolve the conflict. They offered small ways of returning to my body and recovering some choice in how I entered the next moment.
That return to myself could change how I held a boundary: with greater clarity and less need to overpower the child before me.
4. Hold Boundaries Without Erasing Theirs
In the bicycle encounter, one child’s desire to ride did not override another child’s bodily boundary. I could interrupt the action and say:
I will not let you pull them from the bicycle.
You want a turn and I will not let you hurt them to get it.
The boundary did not require the child’s agreement. They were allowed to remain angry or disappointed while I continued to hold it.
But boundaries do not travel in only one direction.
It may be uncomfortable for an adult to acknowledge that a child does not want to be held by them, receive affection from them or be entrusted into their care. A child may turn away, stiffen, arch their body, pull back, cry, reach towards someone else or become what adults describe as “uncooperative.”
The child may not have the language or other resources to explain what is happening. Their response does not automatically reveal its cause, but it speaks and deserves to be taken seriously. Before interpreting the child as difficult, disobedient or a “problem child,” the adult can slow down and consider what the behaviour may be communicating.
Whose “no” is being heard here?
What is the child’s body communicating?
Is this touch necessary for care, or is it something the adult wants the child to accept?
Am I interpreting resistance as disrespect because it unsettles my authority?
What might become possible if I slow down rather than insist?
Affection should not be extracted as evidence of trust or good behaviour. Where touch or a transition is genuinely necessary, the adult can still explain what is happening, offer whatever choices are possible, reduce unnecessary intrusion and acknowledge the child’s protest without shaming them for it.
Sometimes adults must make decisions that children do not like. That responsibility does not make every adult choice relationally harmless, nor does it make the child’s disagreement irrelevant.
A child may be physically protected and still feel frightened, exposed or controlled. Another may remain intensely distressed while nevertheless experiencing the adult as steady and available.
This is why I am becoming more cautious about declaring a situation “safe.” We might instead ask:
What harm needs to be interrupted?
Who needs protection, and from what?
What boundary am I responsible for holding?
Safe enough to do what: remain close, make a choice, formulate a thought, enter a conversation or relax without fear of reprisal?
Who gets to decide whether safety is being felt?
“Safer” may be a more honest word than “safe,” provided we remain clear about what is changing and whose experience we are describing.
The point is not to train children to observe authority without resistance. It is to hold necessary limits while remaining responsive to the limits they are already expressing.
5. Attend to What the Child Is Communicating
Children do not always have the words, confidence or resources to explain what has happened to them. Communication may arrive through speech, movement, proximity, refusal, withdrawal, crying or the way a child’s body responds to a particular person or situation.
Behaviour is not a transparent language with only one possible meaning. A child pulling away does not automatically tell us why they are uncomfortable. But neither should their response be dismissed simply because they cannot provide an adult with a logical explanation.
In the bicycle encounter, I asked the crying child what had happened and whether they wanted to continue riding. Depending upon their language, other words might gradually become possible:
I was still using it.
I did not like being pulled.
I wanted you to stop.
I wanted a turn and did not know how to wait.
Offering language is not the same as deciding the child’s experience for them. The adult can suggest words, notice the child’s response and remain open to being wrong.
The child who took the bicycle also needed support in encountering a limit. Learning what to do with “no” can include asking, waiting, protesting without hurting, choosing something else or remaining disappointed without being left alone in that disappointment.
Instead of requiring an immediate apology, we can allow enough time for the children to recognise what happened and how it affected someone else. Understanding impact creates firmer ground for repair than repeating “sorry” while still angry, frightened or confused.
6. Stay—and Return After the Storm
Not every lesson needs to take place during the most emotionally charged moment. In the bicycle encounter, part of my practice was simply to remain with the children until some of the intensity had eased.
Later, there may be room to ask:
What happened from your point of view?
What did you need?
What might help next time?
Is there anything that still needs repairing?
Returning tells children that conflict is not the end of connection.
These practices are not about becoming endlessly patient or speaking in perfectly constructed sentences. They are ways of creating enough room for honesty, protection and learning to coexist.
What I noticed with babies and toddlers was that their relationship to me could change when something in my own presence changed. A child might continue crying with full force, but once my energy had softened and I no longer felt as threatened or defensive, I could meet them differently.
I could stay alongside their distress and offer gentleness while their body remained braced against what was happening. Sometimes, even while protesting, they would seek me out or remain close. At times they wanted to be held; at others, my task was simply to stay present without using touch or trying to quell their rage for my own relief.
Over time, the trust and connection between us could become both solid and light. I felt trusted, and I learned to trust the children’s processes: to believe that they could move through discomfort without my hurrying it away.
What I could offer was not “safety” as a condition I had the authority to declare achieved. I could offer a more regulated presence, protection from immediate harm and a relationship in which distress did not automatically threaten connection.
Perhaps feeling safer does not always look like calmness or joy. It might look like remaining in contact with oneself while upset, reaching towards another person, recovering the capacity to choose or finding words for what has happened.
Sometimes it may mean no more—and no less—than feeling less alone while the experience moves through.
