Diverse Pathways for Early Childhood with Kerry Murphy Early Years Education Specialist

So you've got a bit of a, I suppose, of a paradox in early childhood at the minute.

I often argue the point that early childhood, particularly education, is one of the most naturally neurodiversity affirming spaces because what we tend to be afforded in early education, because we're not compulsory, is that we can be child led, we can be child centered, we can embrace the self-directed play of children, we can follow children's interests, uh, we can enable children's development to unfold down different developmental pathways.

We often talk about, uh, this concept of a unique child, and that children develop at their own rate and their own pace.

So I would say on paper, and what I often see in practice, is that we are the most naturally neurodiversity affirming space.

But I think that we also are encountering some really intense challenges.

So we, as a developmental phase, are under a lot of pressure for school readiness, and that often imposes itself on our capacity to be able to engage in those things that do feel natural to us.

So we suddenly feel that pressure to kind of be getting children ready for school, um, and getting them into that compliance-based mode.

Um, and then we also have that other tension that societally we live in an ableist and neuronormative society, and I believe that parents from conception to birth to early experience are saturated by messages that in order to be a good parent you have to produce a normal child.

And so I feel like early educators are often really trying to balance that tension.

And, and parents are diverse in and of themselves, so, you know, lots of parents reject that messaging, but also lots of parents and carers are under the intensity and the pressure of that.

So I think the starting point for me when I speak to early educators is asking, "What was your motivation to care for and educate young children?" And what you often find, I rarely meet an early educator that talks about creating normal children or wanting compliance or wanting children to be the same.

They often talk about wanting to provide children with a sense of themselves, to belong to themselves, to belong to others and in community, to be able to advocate and have autonomy, uh, to understand their different characteristics, why they're the same as other children and how they are different.

And so for me, I think the starting point is really go to at the core of why you are doing this, what is the reason? And, and I would say in the majority, you always have that percentage that maybe think a little bit wayward, but in the majority we want children, we want children to have lived experiences that help them to thrive and flourish, and it's often the constraints around us that threaten that.

Um, but really go to the humanness of, of why do we do this work? Why do we turn up and, and hang out with babies? Like, why are we there? And we're not there to get them to comply.

We're there to help them to experience selfhood.

Um, so I suppose that's a bit of a weird answer 'cause there's no real tangible thing other than go back to what your motivation is.

Because I think ableism, one of the biggest trickeries of it is it overrides instinct, and it makes us lose sight of why we're doing what we're doing.

And I've be- I've made many errors in my own career.

I've definitely engaged in ableist practice, um, because I thought, well, that's, that's how we have to do it.

We have to navigate the education system, or we, we have to, um, comply or conform to what's expected, otherwise we're deemed to be failing children.

And actually, I think that's a nonsense.

So it's also being aware that ableism and neuronormativity trickles into thinking that we need to normalize children rather than help them to expand.

I always see inclusion, you know, inclusion almost seems like bringing everybody in, whereas I believe it is like expanding out.

We're trying to get bigger and bigger and bigger the more that we understand about, uh, human development and, and child development.

So yeah.