The Power Of Play

26/08/2024

This is the Power of Play ▶️

24/08/2024

🙌 Every child deserves a champion! This person might be their parent, grandparent or other special relative...It could also be a teacher, a counselor or a coach that is that child's encourager and motivator.

Don't underestimate the power of connection and how much of a difference you can make in a child's life.

⭐️ Every child deserves to have people in their lives who connect with them, who believe in them, who support them, who see their strengths, who celebrate them and cheer them on...encouraging and motivating them to create goals and dreams and reach for the stars!

This is so important for a child's growth, self-esteem, and mental health.

23/08/2024

The system is broken!!! Not our children 💔

What a strange thing we do to our young people in this culture and time.

We make them spend several years learning things that they often have no interest in, that they have not chosen and that they will in many cases never use again. We tell them that these things are vitally important.

Then we sit them in rows and make them write about the things they can remember for an intense few hours. We compare what they have written down with everyone else of the same age, and then we rank them.

We make them wait a couple of months and then we tell some that they are the successes, and others that they are the failures. We encourage them to hang their self-worth on how they performed. Newspapers publish pictures of the delighted, whilst the disappointed hide their heads in shame.

We tell them that these results will determine the rest of their lives – and then we set up systems that make this true. We provide fewer opportunities for those who did not succeed. Those who did well can take their pick of courses, whilst those who did not are made to take the same tests again and again, just to hammer it home.

We make sure that young people spend the majority of their adolescence focused on exams and under pressure. Every summer, they sit in rows and try to remember. Each year, they’re told that their whole future rests on this.

Many of them inevitably cave in under the pressure. They become anxious and depressed. They show signs of burnout by the age of 16. They lose their spark, and just go through the motions. Some of them retreat altogether.

Then we pathologise them, say that they need mental health treatment or to become more resilient. We send them for therapy or give them medication. We say that they are the problem, whilst the system carries on unchanged.

What if instead we stopped to think about what we are doing to our young people?

Adolescence is a time of opportunity and vulnerability. It’s a one-off stage of life. What if we asked ourselves, should our young people really spend these years on a conveyor belt of high stakes exams?

Imagine we allowed ourselves to look beyond this time and place, and to see just how strange this really is. What would we do then?

27/07/2024

11/10/2022

So tomorrow Marks the last day of Educo Childcare.🥲

New beginnings always require leaving something behind, with that new opportunities have forced Educo Childcare to close so I can start this next chapter.

I'll miss my little Team as we would refer to ourselves as the Educo Family, because that's what it felt like.

I was blessed to spend so much time with all the children, each one was truly a gift and with their own unique personalities and talents there was never a dull moment. We had plenty of laughs and the odd serious conversation about life, but it was a proper adventure and I feel I was able to deliver the care I set out too, to nurture and develop each child's innate ability. Little did I know how much these little guys would help me develop my practice, always engaged and full of ideas it really was a pleasure.

Thank you to each and all of the parents who put their faith in me to look after your children, it was an honour and I cannot thank you enough.

💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛
I'm glad that I was your childminder I've come to love you so.
I can't belive the end is here,
I hate to see you go.

I've watched you learn and grow and change from day to day.
I hope that from all the things we've done have helped in some small way.

So it's with the happy memories that I send you out the door,
With great hope and expectations of what your future has in store ✨️

Thanks to each and every child that I had the pleasure to have cared for!! All the memories that we made will stay stamped on my heart forever ♥️

Love Mel

07/09/2022