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“Your child is a danger to the other children.”

“Your child is impacting other children’s learning.”

“Your child needed to spend time in the [segregated area].”

“We don’t have the tools and resources to manage your child’s …”

“Your child can only manage X hours in care for X days per week.”

Ouch. Even typing those words created a whirring heaviness in the bottom of my stomach. I suspect the topic question posed bounces around family dining room tables far more often than it should be though. So here we are. It’s an extremely complex question. It really needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis and requires consideration of other aspects before committing to an answer. Such as: what exclusion actually is, whose best interests are being served, and what role does reflection play.

What’s Exclusion?

It’s not always immediately obvious. Very rarely will an organisation overtly exclude a child from their service. This was the case for Alfie of Victoria, whose parents have bravely called out an organisation for their discrimination. You can read their story here. On the other hand, I’ve witnessed many more covert examples of exclusion. Such as organisations asking families to allow their children to take a break from the service, reduce their hours, or move them to secluded areas on site. These are all forms of exclusion.

Although the word sounds awful, exclusion does have its benefits. I think we can all attest to the wonder of some ‘me time’ when we’re over stimulated, over socialised, over worked, or just outright over being an adult. Kiddos can benefit from some me time too. BUT, when exclusion is forced upon them, there needs to be serious consideration given to whether it’s actually for the child’s benefit.

“It’s in the Child’s Best Interests”

This is a statement that’s so easily applied like a chameleon’s camouflage. It protects the speaker from the onslaught of rage and possible legal recourse that’s attracted by the true colours of discriminatory-based exclusion. Now, you don’t need a business degree to know what luxuries businesses have when demand is higher than supply. They can: (a) charge exorbitant rates and, (b) selectively choose who they sell to based on who represents the easiest money. Children’s additional needs naturally create more work, meaning they’re more difficult to make the same amount of money from. My cynicism is possibly as gross as businesses reducing children to pawns in a money making scheme, but it sometimes is our sad consumerism reality. And sometimes, it’s not.

Sometimes, individuals within child-service organisations possess the most wholesome values and make a point of getting to know individual children’s strengths, weaknesses, and what they need for their worlds to be a safe place. These people are earth’s angels. Knowing how vital social inclusion is for healthy social and emotional development, they seldom recommend exclusion strategies. But if they do, it’s after they’ve exhausted every other reasonable avenue, critically analysed their objective observations of the child’s environmental interactions, and deeply self-reflected on what’s motivating a recommendation for exclusion.

Reflection

You get a call from your child’s school, kinder, daycare, someone, and get slapped with one of the dreadful quotes that opens this blog. How do you respond? Do you:

  1. Simultaneously burst into ball of raging flames?
  2. Dissolve into an ocean of tears?
  3. Shoot off the most passive aggressive email that you’re capable of constructing?

At the risk of oversharing with an unprofessional self-disclosure, I will let you in on the fact that I have been slapped with all of those quotes. And, I have responded in all of the manners listed above. The first time was certainly the hardest, but with each subsequent slap the callus on my cheek has become tougher and those slaps don’t hurt so much anymore. This is the harsh beauty of emotional processing. Allowing yourself to fully feel and experience the really difficult emotions works like inoculation. Being vulnerable in the first instance, experiencing pain, and then healing is a process of resilience building. Then comes coping.

Reflection is a part of coping because it’s promotes healthy responding to the hard hits. You accept (not suppress) your emotions, you ponder the situation, you question their insights, you question your own insights, you question the data, you evaluate the possibilities, you think about why you think and feel the way you do. (Thinking about thinking sounds weird but it’s an amazing evidence-based tool that’s strongly linked to positive emotional wellbeing.) After all of that, you will have your answer.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Hopefully you know who your child’s angel is and you can constructively collaborate with them to reach solutions that are truly in your child’s best interests.

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