It’s so simple - say what you see and affirm your child
The little boy is fearful of painting; he doesn’t like it and won’t join in when other children are doing it. But the other day in his childcare centre, he picked up a paintbrush and went and did it himself. His key worker, who has trained in Marte Meo, didn’t crowd him by gushing, “Oh it’s so fantastic, you’re painting”. She just responded calmly with: “I see you’re painting.”
“He turned around and smiled at her, and she smiled at him, and that was a perfect piece of interaction,” says the centre manager, Catherine O’Brien, who observed it.
Because this staff member had worked hard at building a relationship and connection with this child, “she appreciated what a very big, brave thing he had done”. He, in turn, felt affirmed in what he was doing.
That might be a tiny interaction but it is on such tiny interactions that they can build, says O’Brien, who manages three community-based childcare facilities run by the National Association of Building Co-operatives (Nabco), in Dublin’s East Wall, Brookview in Tallaght and Lucan, for families living in co-operative housing. Small children, no less than adults, like to feel that their efforts have been noticed and valued.