Being Truly Present with Children

Two popular books invite us as early educators, administrators or college professors, to celebrate what it means when adults are truly present with children.

The beautiful book, Treasures in the Thicket | Tesores en el monte, by Bethica Quinn and Rosalina Rodriguez is an investigation into project work with children that is grounded in deep listening and relationship. In the introduction to the book, Ann Pelo and Margie Carter write:

“The creation of the children’s book about the animals of San Francisco is the story of Bethica and Rosalina’s journey through the thicket, guided by their commitments to collaboration with children, to children’s intellectual and emotional development, and to their own on-going growth into the teachers they want to be.”

And in her popular new book, The Goodness of Rain: Developing an Ecological Identity in Young Children, Ann Pelo reflects on her experience of being the caregiver of 2-year-old Dylan. In one passage she explains:

“There is no easy distillation of how to be in place with a child. With Dylan at the blackberries, sometimes we discussed their sweet tang, sometimes we just savored the fruit, sharing purple smiles. There were times through the winter and spring when I talked with Dylan about the bushes’ cycle of rest and growth, sometimes those explanations sounded like foolish jibber-jabber, and sometimes I nailed the right balance of contexting information…

The only instruction for how to be in a place with a child, it seems to me, is to be wholeheartedly attentive, genuinely present.  Which means, sometimes, conversation, and sometimes, quiet. Sometimes, naming, sometimes, marveling.  Being present, together all the time, in generous and interested relationship with each other and with a place.”

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