Message from the Executive Director

Perspective（25） "The Individual, Friends, and A Group"

Every guardian hopes their children to be understood and accepted by people around them and grow up with energy, or to get along with their friends, even children have disabilities, or their development is slow. For that reason, there are many guardians who feel rushed and think to make their child play with other children by themselves or to send their child to a daycare center or kindergarten soon. So, let’s think about development of relationships with friends. 　Ideas that if the child goes to kindergarten or daycare center, they will be liven up by getting stimulated from other children and comes to speak more words, are quite rough. Of course, many children become lively through group living, but there are some children who feel pain communicating with others because of interpersonal tension. Where this difference comes from? 　To ravel that, we need to direct our attention to each child’s situation, the childcare giver’s experiences, the quality of the group, how the child perceives their friends around them, have a perspective of how the child accepts their friend’s approach. 　At first, when the child wants to get interested in other children and try to play positively, that’s not a problem. However, there are not only fun things happening in group. It can be troublesome such as toys being taken by others, being meddled, being stopped to do things, being warned. Please watch the child if they can not only be patient but also deny by saying “No”, “Please wait”, or “I want to do X.”, or they can ask for their guardian and calm themselves down. If the child develops their ability to insist or ask for adult’s help when in need, a little trouble doesn’t bother them much, and living in group comes to be fun. 　Next, whether a guardian can understand their child’s intention, feelings, anxieties and discomfort and support them is important. A guardian who sympathize with their child’s interests or feelings and notice their discomfort can be a very important emotional support. However, a guardian must use their energy to make their child do or manage a group activity when they are under pressure to manage said activity or to follow the childcare which strongly demands task accomplishment. As a result, it will be difficult to build a human relationship, which is the most important, when a guardian has time to face their child. 　At last, it’s about the situation of other children. Every child is in an immature state of development and wants to be seen, listened, and accepted. If each child is taken care well in daily childcare, they have room to accept the child with need of care. Then again, if a child is forced to be patient because of strict rules or strong childcare’s framework, consideration for others doesn’t grow. 　As stated above, relationships with friends don’t develop only by the child join a group. But also, the quality of the group is important too. The basic thing is how we build emotionally accessible human relationships wherever we live. 　 It is demanded to face a child in front of us and create human relationships so that they can feel safe and get confident in here, our child development center, kindergarten or daycare center (also at home!).

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Social Welfare Corporation SUISEN FUKUSHIKAI

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