Healthy And Unhealthy Relationships

Early childhood educators, taken as a group, are among the most compassionate, caring humans I've ever encountered.

We love the children even when they cry and yell and tantrum on the floor. We love them even when they hit us or say they hate us or sneak up behind us to dump a bucket of cold water over our heads (which has happened to me more than once). We love them when they boast, when they're mean, when they're combative, and when they're irrational. We keep loving them even when they get on our very last nerve.

We might not always like them, but when it comes to young children, most of us, most of the time, love them even when they behave in ways that would cause us to put continents between ourselves and any adult who behaved in the same way. 

We don't take it personally. We tell ourselves that it's just a phase, that they are still learning, that their executive function is still developing, or that there is something else going on in their lives that makes them act out. On the most difficult days, we remind ourselves that behavior is communication, then set about trying to figure out what they are trying to tell us.

If any of these things were happening in our adult relationships, our therapists would be telling us to run like the wind, right? I mean, if our spouse or parent or co-worker or friend behaved in these ways towards us, if we kept coming back to them, excusing them, we would call that an abusive relationship. The difference, of course, is that by virtue of being the adult, there is an implication that we ultimately have the power. We are physically stronger, we are more experienced, and at the end of the day, we have both the ability and (according to society) the right to compel them, to command them, and to punish them.

And I know that many educators exert that power: all of us some of the time and some of us all of the time. As former students ourselves, I doubt any one of us hasn't at least been in the room with a teacher who regularly exerted their power, perhaps even harshly, over the children in their care. Most of us have experienced the disempowerment that results from being at the receiving end.

That said, most of us strive, however tempting it may be at times, to avoid wielding the power that comes to us by virtue of our role as the adult amongst children. Instead, we see that the only valid use of power is to give it away: to seek to use it to empower the children in our care. Indeed, much of what gets labeled as "bad behavior" (or "challenging behavior) is really about feeling powerless. Likewise, the antidote to those behaviors, rather than compulsion and punishment (which usually makes things worse), is empowerment.

This doesn't mean that we are weak. Too many adults outside of our profession believe that if we don't use our power to control the children, then that means they are controlling us. But we know that what we are doing, to put it simply, is creating healthy, normal relationships with these fellow humans. In any relationship, power ebbs and flows, but ultimately, if the end result isn't mutual empowerment, then it ain't a healthy relationship. And healthy relationships is what we are all about.

Of course, in any relationship, there are the occasional power struggles. But when power struggles are daily, when they come to characterize the relationship, when a child is forever acting out (which is to say, attempting to exert power), even when they've been scolded and punished, when the adult is forever commanding and correcting (which is to say, attempting to exert power), then we're looking at what can only be called an unhealthy relationship. I mean, it would be obvious to everyone if we were talking about, say, a marriage. But we have trouble seeing it when children are involved.

This is the milieu in which we find ourselves as early childhood educators, and is why compassion and caring stand at the heart of what we do. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are in the business of creating healthy relationships. The rest is secondary. 

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"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D. If you want to see what Dr. Gray is talking about you can find Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book right here. 

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