Love and Power

Empowering children in early childhood education

Power, like love, is a strange thing.

I remember once sitting with a group of mothers, all of us expecting for the second time, when one suddenly burst out, “what happens if I don’t have enough love for this child, I love (my first) with all of me, how can I love another with all of me?”. I looked at her with a bit of shock, wondering if she thought I divided up my love in two for my twins and that my daughters somehow received less love than her singleton. I pointed out that love doesn’t work like that - that our capacity to love is all encompassing and that we can fully love more than one. In fact I think love is more powerful the more we are… because love is reciprocal. If love is not reciprocal then it’s not love, it is something else - maybe infatuation, or obsession or…

This is how power works too. By empowering children as educators we do not lose power, but our community of learners (where I am both learner and teacher) gains power. It is our very togetherness that is the source of our power.

I do not believe that power is finite, that there is only a set amount, power that is shared out - which reminds me of loose parts and affordances (what can be done with the loose parts) - that because it is not the actual objects that count, but the multiplicity of what can be done with them - so the objects working together have more potential, more possibilities, more opportunities, more combinations.

This is what I think togetherness is - the power of a community has more potential, more possibilities, more opportunities, more combinations - more love, care and support too.

The problem with power, though is that some people misuse or abuse it. They take more space than is rightfully theirs… and space is finite - physical space, social space, emotional space and temporal space… someone who talks all the time does not allow space for others to speak and be heard. In fact there is something called babble hypothesis which suggests that people who babble (about anything) the most and fill the space tend to get the leader roles… maybe not the best way to elect leaders.

When I work with a group of children I am always aware of how much space each child takes - and how to support those who take a lot of space learn how to be generous, how to listen and how to self regulate; and to ensure those children who do not dare to take much space receive the encouragement to take more. If we do this the power of the group becomes greater, because all ideas are being shared, and not some ideas. All the children can participate, and not some of them. There are more possibilities, more potential, more…

It is not taking power away from children to encourage them to listen more, instead we are empowering their listening skills, and as listening is the largest part of communication this is an important skill to master.

Communication:

Listening - 45%

Talking - 30%

Reading - 11%

Writing 9%

There is also research suggesting that 55% of communication is non-verbal, 38% vocal and 7% is words -Albert Mehrabian, a researcher of body language, who first broke down the components of a face-to-face conversation. So I think that encouraging children to speak and not to listen is a disservice to children and instead of empowering them, disempowers them, because they lose access to a wealth of information that would have been gained through listening.

Love and power is about balance, respect, empathy and equity. I think we all sit with power - but whether we feel empowered or disempowered depends on how much space we take - there is enough space for everyone, and if we all share that space with equity then we can become powerful together - more powerful than we could be alone - because we learn to listen to those who have more knowledge and experience in areas we don’t, and share our own knowledge and skills with others - we all have different roles… just as my role as teacher is very different from the child’s role as learner - yet in a community of learners that is democratic in nature (the heart of Original Learning) being a teacher does not give me higher status, it is simply a role - and I still have the responsibility to listen and learn from the children and to hold space for their play and discoveries and learning, and I should have the response-ability to interact as an equal - reciprocal, caring relationships rather than controlling hierarchical relationships. Love and power

In my book The Original Learning Approach I include love in the joy chapter.

Jools Page (2018) and her research into Professional Love has had a huge impact on me ever since I was introduced to it, by her, while doing my masters degree. Love has always been central, but it has also been this unsaid thing, kind of in the background where people are not knowing how to talk about it, or how we should feel about it. Her research has been important for me, and hopefully many others, in bringing love to the forefront and examining the relationships in the early years - between the teachers and children, the parents and children, the children with each other, and also parent and teacher. She writes about how care is often being used instead of love, as a safer option to use, but that this is often used in the terms of "care-giver" which is placing power in the hands of the adult who is giving care, and not the reciprocal equality of love. Professional love does not compete with parental love, it is complementary. It also requires the educator to push through their own personal bias in order to professionally love and equally value all the children and not just some.

Spinoza (2017) wrote in the 17th century about love being joy which comes with the idea of an external cause. This suggests that love is a sense of joy created by interacting with others. Professional Love is the creation of joy within each child and the group as a whole.

It is worth pausing and asking yourself 

How do children experience love? 

How does professional love feel?

There is research, over a long period of time, that explains the importance of touch when it comes to young children, well, all animals really (Ardel & Rankin, 2010) and the negative impact on development through the lack of touch. This suggests that positive physical interaction is therefore essential for children’s well-being and sense of joy.

If children need physical contact to be able to feel joy, then what happens if hugs and/or kisses are made taboo? Are we sucking the joy out of the early years environment by being afraid of putting love into practice?

I keep thinking about the orphans in Romania and how their lack of physical contact and interaction resulted in autism-like behaviours, which slowly disappeared when adopted in loving families. Loving in this sense means positive, consensual physical contact, being valued, the respectful and positive use of verbal and body language.

An orphanage, like an early years setting, is an institution designed to care for children. I wonder why so many can be appalled at the lack of love in an orphanage but encourage a hands off approach in preschools and other similar early years settings?

Spinoza also wrote about Intellectual Love. A kind of love that connects the whole world to the individual rather than just an object or a particular person. In other words, we become a part of the whole. This implies that love is about emergent and collective responsibilities rather than controlling, directing and exploiting others. Which reminds me of a more Indigenous approach and kinship. Maybe a possible reason for love being discouraged in EY practice is that the norm is based on control rather than reciprocity, and about choosing sameness over diversity, and that change is a problem? This current norm views love, professional and/or intellectual, as a threat to the status quo, just as play and curiosity are. Love, and the resulting joy, brings with it the ability to work through our fears, which is a process that allows us to overcome stereotypes, create shared values and meaningful communities rooted in equity.  

There is power in that - a kind of power that is harder to dictate over, as social justice will be prioritized over compliance. As John Lennon famously said… all we need is love.

Joy and love are about a sense of power to affect and be affected and that depression and hate are connected to a loss of power (perceived or real). Teaching and learning are the processes of affecting and being affected. Indicating that creating learning environments where children have the power to influence and impact their own lives as well as those around them, as reciprocal, respectful interactions, is essential for well-being. Children, especially young children, are often filled with the languages of joy, love and play. Languages adults need to listen to and reciprocate with respect and consent by responding with joy, love and play.

As an exercise with adults at workshops I have done I have given each individual an unlit candle and I light mine. I hold my candle and talk about how the flame is my power, love and knowledge and point out how it lights up the room so we can notice new things. I light the candle in the hand of the person next to me, and that person lights the candle next to them… until all the candles are lit.

I then point out how my candle is still burning bright, that sharing my power, love and knowledge has not made my flame smaller in any way. I then point out how much brighter the room is now with all the candles burning - that we can see more, see further, and see details that were veiled in darkness before. That together we are more powerful. That together we have more knowledge. That love lights up the world.

This post is also available as a podcast.

candles in the dark