Making your baby room the best it can be

Nina, 11 months old, is new to the baby room. She has spent the last two weeks settling in and it’s been a fraught time for everyone. Separated from mum for the first time since she was born, there have been a lot of tears and high levels of stress among all the adults – family members and educators. The good news is that Nina has formed a strong and growing connection with two of the baby room educators. She has even started reaching out for the arms of Mariam each morning, knowing that she’ll be safe with this person whose smell and face she recognises and whose curly hair she likes to touch. As the emotional anxieties of the transition decrease, the opportunities to experience joyful moments of learning and life start to emerge. Mariam has already noticed how much Nina loves to listen to music; not just nursery rhymes but all kinds of rhythmical music which have her moving her body. With the basics of the baby room transition covered, a journey of play and discovery awaits.

Getting it right in the baby room isn’t a science, but there are key principles that we know help babies learn, develop and thrive in nursery. Our research, drawing on global evidence about what works for babies, suggests five key priorities that all managers and educators need to attend to. In this article, I’ll talk you through what those are and I hope you can use these priorities as a launchpad for reflecting and making change in your own baby room.

Keeping it small: group size matters

The evidence shows that it isn’t just ratios in the baby room that matter. Low ratios are fundamentally important, but so too are low group sizes. Ideally, babies experience provision in small groups, with a maximum of six to eight babies cared for in the same space and at the same time. While we regulate ratios in English baby rooms at the moment so that there is a maximum of three babies to every one adult, there are currently no requirements about group size in baby rooms. Group size matters because babies need to feel seen and listened to by adults that know them well; in small groups, babies are more likely to be attended to by educators that are familiar and attuned. As baby rooms expand, nurseries need to consider the possibility of opening multiple baby rooms to keep group size small, or if this isn’t possible, to create clusters of babies and educators within the same baby room.

Building relationships of trust: co-caring with parents/carers

Relationships with parents and carers are particularly important in the baby room. Parental anxieties can understandably flare up when leaving babies with other adults, sometimes for the first time; educators need to have the skills to deal with this effectively. When we look at the global evidence on this, we find some helpful frameworks for how to build more trust between educators and parents/carers. For example, Sarah Lang and her team in the US have put forward the co-caring framework to support day-to-day interactions. Some of the main principles in this framework are:

• Open communication where parents/carers are encouraged to share their values when it comes to raising their baby, and the nursery doesn’t shy away from sharing what they most value
• Lots of day-to-day communication at drop-off and pick-up, which goes both ways, with a lot of detail from the setting (delivered face to face and not just via an app!) as well as asking questions of parents/carers about a baby’s experiences at home
• Intentional and scheduled sharing of information in the form of consultations (e.g. twice-yearly) which enable a more holistic focus on a baby’s wellbeing, development and learning
• A culture of validation. This comes about through advice and guidance going in both directions (e.g. educator asks for tips from a parent/carer on a particular issue, or vice versa). It is essential to avoid any undermining behaviours whereby the choices of a parent/carer are ignored or demeaned in any way.

Continuity of care: relationships develop over time

Attachment doesn’t happen in a minute, a day, a week or even a month. Relationships that enable babies to flourish, where they feel secure and safe, take time. If this is to happen, babies need continuity in who is caring for them. This is the principle of continuity of care – one of the features of the baby room charter developed by Kathy Goouch and Sacha Powell over ten years ago in collaboration with baby room educators around the country. Ensuring the continuity of care, that relationships are allowed to grow and develop over time, depends in turn on good retention. Retaining staff across nurseries at the moment is difficult, but it can be a particular issue in the baby room as a result of physical and emotional exhaustion, a feeling that the work is not valued by others, and few opportunities to learn professionally or make career progress. Nurseries can support the continuity of care by focusing on educator wellbeing in the baby room, looking closely at working conditions, ensuring a positive working culture among staff, and by supporting staff in the baby room to access relevant and high-quality professional learning that is specific to the baby room.

Relational pedagogy: warm, loving interactions

The literature on quality in the baby room aligns with what most baby room educators tell us: that what matters most is the sense of love and warmth in the day-to-day interactions that unfold in the baby room. These warm and loving interactions are so important that some tools to measure quality in the baby room focus exclusively on the nature of interactions between babies and adults, ignoring other things such as the resources in the room or the routines that are followed. For example, the Caregiver Interaction Profile (CIP) was developed in Denmark by Arnett in 1986. The tool assesses interactions according to the following categories: sensitive responsiveness, respect for children’s autonomy, structuring and limit setting, verbal communication, developmental stimulation, and fostering positive peer interactions.

Learning all the time: stimulation and joint attention

While warm and loving interactions are fundamental, the global evidence also highlights the need for a focus on babies’ learning and development. Babies are learning all the time and we have an opportunity to positively shape these learning experiences. Application of global quality measurement tools such as the CLASS-Toddler reveal that most baby rooms score relatively well on emotional and behavioural support, but far fewer do well in relation to support for learning. There is a need to develop knowledge and understanding among baby room educators about how to inspire and foster babies’ learning. This is not about fretting over developmental outcomes (such as whether a baby can walk yet or not) but instead about providing an inspiring baby room environment and attuning, in the moment, to what babies are attending to and discovering. We can share in babies’ learning by sharing in their discoveries of the world around them. This involves getting down on their level, joining in with their play but not taking over, and showing genuine curiosity and interest in the investigations that they carry out. Babies are scientists, philosophers and artists and we need baby rooms that celebrate their genius.

References

Goouch, K. and Powell, S. (2013) The baby room principles, policy and practice. Maidenhead, England: McGraw-Hill Education.

Lang, S.N. et al. (2016) ‘A cocaring framework for infants and toddlers: Applying a model of coparenting to parent–teacher relationships’, Early childhood research quarterly, 34, pp. 40–52.