The quality of the interactions between staff and school age children attending long child care is very essential since it contributes to children’s experiences during the time they spend at the service and also influences their sense of belonging. Relationships are very important in building high quality interactions because meaningful relationships make children feel welcome, connected and respected at the service.
Communication plays an important role in developing real relationships between staff and children in child care. It can be said that communication is the foundation for making a good relationship. Arranging the environment and experiences is one way to create moments of conversations between staff and children. Staff can gather further information to build relationships with individual children by observing them and their verbal and non verbal communication. This observation is important since it can provide staff with a further understanding of how children think and feel. Inclusive relationships with school age children can also be developed by respecting for their differences, such as diversity in culture, gender, family structure, language and religion.
Besides relationships with staff, it is also important to promote cooperative and harmonious relationships between children and their peers in child care. Taking a positive approach when guiding the behaviour of school age children is one way to achieve the goal of developing good relationships among the children. The following are some ways for staff to guide children’s behaviour:
- Being aware of individual children’s relationships, interests and needs.
- Involving children in discussions about desirable behaviours and in setting limits and rules.
- Role modelling positive communication and behavior.
- Discussing emotions with children and acknowledging their feelings.
- Having appropriate expectations of children’s behaviour.
- Giving explanations to children when limits are enforced.
- Preventing conflicts and inappropriate behaviour rather than punishing them.
- Allowing children to make decisions.
- Encouraging children to negotiate and find solutions during disagreements.
- Providing sufficient equipment and space, and organising the environment to promote harmonious play.
Positive group interactions are something very essential in child care centres and need to be promoted to create comfort and harmony among the children. Cooerative behaviours in which children respect each other, take responsibility for their own actions and seek to find solutions to problems with others are the characteristics of positive group interactions. Promoting cooperative behaviours can be done by encouraging children to work with others to achieve common goals, respect views of others and communicate openly and positively.
