Attunement is more than a professional skill. In school age child care, it is one of the ways educators build connection, respond with care, and create moments of shared meaning with children.
This past Saturday, 32 people came together on Zoom to share their course “homework”: an All About Me poem.
It had been about six months since I last used this activity as an opening focus in a facilitation session. What caught me slightly off guard was something that had been sitting in plain sight all along.
Not patience.
If you know me, you know how I feel about patience being handed out as the common badge of honour for educators.
And no, not the idea that we are somehow meant to work below the cost of living because “we love children.”
Hardly.
What stood out was something much deeper.
We share the ability to attune.
Attunement is the ability to listen, notice, reflect, and respond in a way that opens up a loop of communication and understanding. It is a bit like the way certain instruments harmonize when they are played with care, skill, and sensitivity.
It is beautiful to hear.
Beautiful to observe.
Even more powerful to experience.
In our work with children, attunement often shows up in the smallest moments:
“I just jumped from the big log to the little log and didn’t fall!”
“Look at my tower, it’s the tallest I’ve ever built!”
“Can you hear the funny sound the paint tube makes when I squeeze it? Glug, glug, gloop!”
Magic.
Children are constantly inviting us into moments of shared meaning. They are not usually trying to manipulate or drain the adults around them. They are reaching out to be seen, heard, understood, and joined.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons so many of us are drawn to this work.
In the wider world, this kind of attunement can feel in short supply. So much of our attention is pulled toward devices, emails, deadlines, systems, and the daily grind of simply getting through.
But educators spend their days inside the deeply human back-and-forth of relationship.
That does come with a cost.
Those who offer attunement also need care, rest, reflection, and community. We need ways to refill the energy we give through our heart, mind, and gut. Especially when we are using that energy to seek out children who have gone too long without being noticed, connected with, or understood.
This skill is not always rewarded by society at large.
But it is needed.
Maybe more than ever.
This is part of what we explore in Nurturing Play and Beyond: Middle Years Child Care Fundamentals, Principles & Practices.
The course offers 27 professional development hours through 9 modules, self-led learning, and 4 facilitated Zoom sessions where educators can reflect, connect, and deepen their practice together.
The June 6th cohort is now enrolling, with bursary-supported spaces currently available for $55.
If you are an Early Childhood Educator, School Age Educator, ECE Assistant, or Responsible Adult looking for thoughtful, practical, and relationship-centred professional development, this course may be a meaningful next step.
So, to those of you working in care and education, please know this:
We are strong.
We are connected.
We have the ability to help steer the fabric of our communities toward kindness, health, and wellbeing.
We are often called “care workers,” and yes, that may be true some of the time.
But the fuller truth is this:
We are engaged in a deeply meaningful and unbelievably necessary professional practice.
One day, I believe this work will be more widely understood for what it is.
A choice to be of service.
A choice to be of value.
A choice to be essential.
