Alison Waterhouse
In my work as an Educational Psychotherapist, I’d been concerned for many years about the way poor mental health can affect children’s long term ability to learn from a very early age. So I devised a way in which schools and teachers could help children develop strategies for learning and for coping with emotional difficulties in a very safe and playful context. This was underpinned by academic research and projects in schools through which I created a training course for teachers.

Circles for Learning trains teachers to bring a Mum/Dad and baby into the classroom once a month for a year and to facilitate children’s observations, questions and responses. These help them to explore behaviour, relationships, emotions, how we learn and why we experience the world in the way we do. All my work in this area shows that this has a positive impact on behaviour, relationships and learning as well as managing and talking about emotions.

Baby Anna
As baby Anna sat on the rug with her Mum behind her, she looked around the circle of children. Her face was still. One of the children waved to attract her attention. She caught the movement of his hand and turned her head, he smiled and said her name, and she lifted her arm as if to respond, and then turned to her Mum reaching out her hand. I invited suggestions from the children as to why she looked so solemn. “She’s only just got here” replied one child. “I think she is thinking about what to do”, responded another. I wondered aloud why she had turned to her Mum and reached out. “She wanted to know that it was alright to come and see me”, ventured one boy. “I think she is feeling a bit worried”, replied another.

This is just one magical episode that shows how observant and sensitive young children can be when a teacher can focus the children’s attention on behaviours and interactions and ask questions for the children to reflect on. These pupils were only in year 2 but were already able to see the link between how someone feels and how they behave. The children were quick to understand that Anna’s Mum provided her with a feeling of safety – a ‘secure base’ which she needed to be able to manage new situations or learning. From this understanding they were able to share and discuss what they needed to be open to learning within the classroom.

Baby Joe
When Joe came into the classroom he refused to sit on the blanket but clung to Mum burying his head in her chest. Mum explained to the children that Joe had been poorly and that he had just woken up and was still feeling unsettled. The children tried to engage him with a shape sorter which he half-heartedly played with. When one of the shapes wouldn’t fit into the hole he was trying he bashed it harder and then his face fell and he started to cry. Mum picked him up and put him back on her lap. I wondered out loud about what he might be feeling? One of the children said he was feeling frustrated as the shape wouldn’t fit, another child stated that he was feeling sad as he couldn’t do the task.

Following up
To follow up, the children drew a picture of a time when they were sad. As part of the picture they had to add what had happened to help them feel better. One little boy, who was new to the school and lived with his Mum in a refuge, chose to draw his old house. He was able to share this with the other children and tell them how much he missed his house, his friends and his old school. Having been reluctant to welcome this young boy into their group, the children began to understand him a bit better and started to see that his behaviour was due to his sadness and to missing his old life. During the session they were able to tolerate his sadness and with the help of their teacher they were able to remember what it is like to be sad. This helped them understand that emotions don’t last forever and that we can often do things that make us feel better.

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How the method works in schools
There have been countless other examples of individual breakthroughs as well as whole class growth, all shared by the teachers trained to run the project in their classrooms during the research project, which I have carried out in 5 primary schools. Part of the training is to be able to model thinking about what has been observed, making links about the babies and how they may feel and their actions, encouraging the children to be curious and to explore what they were seeing and make links to what they already knew.

Dudley Infant school in Hastings was the pioneer school, but the work has now grown and I am now looking at the impact in 5 secondary schools and am just starting to share the project and train teachers to run it within their own settings.

Since the first few projects, other schools have joined in and other teachers have experienced the same excitement as I did. They have found this process has led both themselves and their classes to amazing discoveries, but all feel that their classes have grown together, are much more tolerant, supportive and able to talk about how they feel as well as accept that others may feel differently. They have also seen an impact on the quality of the children’s language and discussion about their learning, including managing frustration and developing the skills to collaborate and support each other.

I now have 5 schools undertaking the project, all different, from an SEMH (Social, emotional and mental health) school to a Severe Learning Difficulty school, an ASC (Autistic Spectrum Condition) School and two mainstream schools. All have developed the project in their own way and all are finding that the project is having a positive impact on both the children and the staff trained to run the project.

• Alison Waterhouse is also an Independent Consultant for SEND and Wellbeing. Her research is focused on:  Emotional Competencies, Relationships, Self Development, Skills for Learning and Neuroscience. She is a contributor to the Education Supplement. Find out more at circlesforlearning.co.uk

PICTURES: Alison Waterhouse

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