Children’s health, well-being and mind fullness is key to our setting. Children need empathy, nurture and understanding whilst they are developing to give them a sense of a good attachment towards their caregiver, which supports a childs brain development. This is represented in our setting with the use of therapeutic parenting towards the children, we use PACE to support the child within the setting and to combat any unwanted behaviour. As adults, we need to remember that children show behaviour to tell us something or make us aware of something they are unhappy with. It’s the job of us as adults to unpick what could be happening, this could be part of their development (for example: turn taking, speech and language difficulties) or early life trauma, maybe even a change in circumstances at home or in the pre-school.

What is PACE?

How we respond to a child using empathy with the PACE model (playfulness to connect and diffuse a situation, acceptance of the child whilst not accepting of aggression, curiosity to detect your child’s need all steeped in empathy).

P- Playfulness

A-Acceptance

C- Curiosity

E- Empathy

What is a Therapeutic Approach?

Therapeutic approach is a highly nurturing way of supporting children, with empathy at its core.

We use firm but fair boundaries and routines to aid the development of new neural pathways in the brain so children may gain trust in adults. And so, their lower brain (survival brain) may connect with their higher brain (prefrontal cortex/thinking brain) so they can link cause and effect.

Using boundaries and routines helps children to understand there is consistency and predictably in their lives (they know they will have breakfast, lunch and tea plus snacks). TA advises that you use visual timetables to support you children with this.

Vocabulary used within the setting to be able to name their need for example: “I wonder if you are feeling cross…” or “ I wonder if you have a wobbly feeling in your tummy?”

“I Wonder…”

“I can see you are struggling…”

“I hear you…”

“I know you have a good heart…”

“We can make this right…”

“I need you to show sorry…”

“stay close to me…”

“do you have a funny feeling inside?”

This is to understand what the child is needing and to give them support in an appropriate way and for them to be able to respond, so that you can help resolve their behaviour.