Loved or listened to? Parent and practitioner perspectives on young children’s well-being (original) (raw)

2017, Early Child Development and Care

Well-being is a significant concept in research, policy and practice in education, but consensus about what it is is challenging. In addition, the well-being of children under eight is under-researched. Using online surveys, this paper looks at the perspectives of 155 parent/carers and 285 practitioners in England on young children's well-being. In many areas there were high levels of agreement: the importance of fun and laughter, feeling good about oneself, feeling listened to, good family relationships, time and space to play and opportunities to express thoughts and feelings. Parents/carers emphasized 'love' whilst practitioners emphasized listening to children. Practitioners also strongly emphasized the importance of their relationships with children and parents/carers. The paper concludes that, whilst the perspectives of parents/carers and practitioners are valuable, a full understanding of young children's well-being needs to include their voices as well as those of adults. Keywords Well-being, perspectives, parent, practitioner, love, listening five elements of well-being: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment (PERMA). Disabato and colleagues' study (2016) concludes that Hedonia and Eudaimonia are highly correlated on a number of measures, and may be better seen as one well-being construct. The final perspective, educational, is underpinned by a more instrumental, developmental view (Mashford-Scott et al., 2012). These different perspectives emphasize different aspects of well-being, whilst at the same time they are also clearly overlapping to some degree, for example, ideas of Eudaimonia are significant in Psychological Well-Being (PWB). The second potential reason for the lack of agreed definition, the apparent interchangeability of well-being with other terms, is reflected in the range of expressions used in the literature.