Talking Early Years: In Conversation with Jools Page

Professional Love: The Beating Heart of Early Years Education and Care

On Valentine’s Day, there is much talk about romantic love, but we are talking about a very different kind of love; professional love, a term coined by Dr Jools Page and familiar to many colleagues across the Early Years sector. 

Introducing the phrase professional love gave permission to Early Years colleagues to use the word ‘love’ in the professional context. I was delighted to replace the word ‘care’ with ‘love’ because for many, the relationship we have with the children is pure reciprocal love.  

We see it in the children’s delight when you return from your holiday, or when they first spot you and run into your arms for a warm embrace, or when they snuggle into your shoulder or sit up close to you on the sofa to hear a story being read. In fact, there are hundreds of situations that sometimes last just seconds throughout the day.  Jools’ 2023 paper on transitions makes for an interesting read on this.

Creating loving relationships between staff and babies or toddlers is at the heart of nurturing positive early childhood experiences. A culture of warmth and sensitivity, paired with thoughtful policies and processes, can establish an environment where professional love thrives. 

The policy expansion plan to support parents to work by offering funded hours to children as young as 9 months is a challenge because the main focus appears to be on availability of spaces rather than on quality of provision for babies and the importance of the staff able to deliver an environment rich in professional love.  

As with all conversations, they meander, and we found ourselves discussing how some settings and schools don’t allow physical contact between a child and the adult because of some perceived safeguarding fear.  Imagine, with all our knowledge of neuro-development, we would deprive a child of a hug when they need one or not provide physical comfort when they are sad and need help to self-regulate. Apparently, there is also a new panic among some parents that only the parents can comfort their children and no one else can touch them.  It’s a strange world we enter when human contact is limited and controlled. We looked at how to balance this level of paranoia with children having the right to decide what contact they want, and they are generally quite good at this especially when they are supported by very attuned adults who understand how to build strong, warm, healthy and loving relationships.  

This is very visible in the research Jools did at Soho Nursery and Pre-School (LEYF) with Liz Clarke called the Dance of Reciprocity.  The engagement was joyful to watch and the level of feelings between the child and the teacher was humbling. Learning to let the baby lead was eye-opening, and I hope Baby Room leads across the world use this in their training, and maybe a photo of the research in action! 

Furthermore, I hope they start thinking of themselves as ‘co-researchers’ because we know staff engaged in research, particularly Action Research, operate at a deeper level and deliver a higher quality pedagogy for the children. The role of children as co-researchers was also a topic of this podcast, exploring some of the ethical challenges which emerge when we invite children to be active in the research. We concluded that maybe we need a different way of describing the role of children in research.  

This podcast concludes with me asking Jools what three wishes she has for the Early Years sector? Obviously, I am not going to tell you what she said, for this you need to tune in and find out!

Additional reading: Twoness of Twos Report