Bringing Hygge into the Early Years

A Step-by-Step Guide to Bring a Calm and Slow Approach to Your Teaching

Kimberly Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032039619
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000534948
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Bringing Hygge into the Early Years is a "how-to" guide for every early educator who wishes to bring more calmness and balance into their day, in turn, leaving them feeling empowered to teach and live well.

Drawing from the author's experience of embracing the Scandinavian way of living well, "hygge," this book explores how this approach can have a positive impact across your early years setting, from improved mental health and wellbeing, to embracing child-led play and high-quality outdoor provision. With step-by-step guidance on how to embed the approach alongside examples of hygge from early educators around the world, the book is divided into four main parts:

• Re-balance you
• The hygge environment
• Slow teaching
• Embracing nature

Throughout each chapter, case studies and activities provide the opportunity to reflect on existing practice and support you as you make positive changes to both your wellbeing and provision. This guide will be essential reading for all early years professionals, offering further support to improve mental health and wellbeing, as well as valuable tools to lead early years practice with confidence and joy.

Part 1
Re-balance you

DOI: 10.4324/9781003189954-2

I remember when I was striving to be a successful early years teacher. I would attend courses, read books and reflect on my teaching daily. Yet none of this had the impact I desired when I didn’t have the tools to plan my time effectively, or have the mindset I needed to be positive when I came to my first hurdle. I remember not eating well and fuelling my days with coffee and sugar which then resulted in poor sleep on an evening.

It was when I started to prioritise my mental health and wellbeing that I was able to believe in myself and be an outstanding teacher. I gathered up a collection of daily habits for success and also spent my evenings and weekends with friends and family instead of my life being dominated by work.

This first section of this book is around re-balancing yourself by understanding what your struggles and barriers are and showing just what’s possible when you begin to make changes to your day. It will help you to prioritise your own mental health, leading to a positive impact on the children’s learning and development, and will highlight success stories and case studies from other early educators along the way to prove just what’s possible.

In this section we will focus on:

• Discovering what hygge is
• Unlocking the secrets to improved wellbeing and happiness
• Understanding how you can plan your time more effectively
• Finding strategies to help you feel calmer
• Exploring the link to your core values and your early years practice

Chapter one How hygge supports you

DOI: 10.4324/9781003189954-3

When taking a flight in the event of an emergency we’re often reminded of the importance of fitting our own oxygen mask first before helping others with theirs. This same concept can be applied to your teaching: you can’t support and inspire others, if you’re tired, run down or feeling stressed. One of my members recently told me that she decided to embrace hygge as, “I’m so used to putting everyone else first and never do anything for me. I’ve forgotten who I am these days and I want to remember who I am and be kind to myself.”

Data collected in a major report “Minds Matter” carried out by the Pre-school Learning Alliance (2018) showed that 74% of early educators experienced work-related stress in the month they took part in the study, indicating the extent of mental health challenges faced by the early years sector.

I know what this stress can feel like first-hand as there were times at the start of my career when I worked as an early years teacher and often had feelings of overwhelm and anxiety around doing my job well. I had an ever-growing to-do list and very little time to do these tasks. I would get up early to be the first at work and would always be the last one to leave. My weekends and evenings were often consumed with more work and my social life became non-existent as I was either working or exhausted. The stress of the job was having such a negative impact on the way my body was responding. My skin was dull, my eyes had lost their sparkle (and had been replaced with dark bags), I was exhausted, my body ached and my wellbeing levels were low.

There are many different definitions of wellbeing and it varies slightly around the world. In general, it refers to feeling at ease, being spontaneous and free of emotional tensions and is crucial to good “mental health.” It can be linked to self-confidence, a good degree of self-esteem and resilience. NHS England defines stress as “the body’s reaction to feeling threatened or under pressure,” and although a little bit of stress every now and again can be motivating to get things done, prolonged stress over time can cause burnout, which leaves a negative impact on our bodies:

• Insomnia: This includes broken sleep, struggling to fall asleep and nightmares.
• Muscles aches: When you feel under pressure, you’re unsure of how your leader might react to something and you hold your body so tight with so much tension. This is often felt in the back, neck and shoulders. It may feel like you’ve been lifting a heavy weight.
• Dizziness: When you’re stressed, your body produces a surge of hormones which makes your heart beat faster and your blood vessels narrow, which can lead to feelings of being light-headed and feeling dizzy. Longer term this also increases your blood pressure and puts you at a greater risk of a heart attack or stroke.
• Weakened immune system: If you’re feeling under pressure and stressed then your immune system is weakened. This might mean you catch every bug going around and need to take more sick days, which can then increase the level of stress you feel.
• Exhaustion: Do you feel as though it’s just too hard to get up in the morning? You press snooze three times; you need a nap mid-afternoon and crave sleep-ins on a weekend? When we find it hard to relax and switch off, our body doesn’t have any down time and we end up running on empty.

Feeling stressed is not only having a negative effect on your wellbeing but it can also influence those around you. How many times have you been at work and felt like the children just weren’t listening or that your team were pushing all your buttons? Next time you feel this particular way I want you to just stop for two minutes and consider your feelings. Did you have a particularly stressful morning before work or an argument about burnt toast with your partner? We often find that if we are experiencing a bad day or feeling tired then our mood can start to impact those around us. When we take a look at neuroscience, we can understand that the brain loves to imitate, therefore if you’re feeling grumpy or excited it can be contagious to those around you. Scientists (Fadiga et al., 1995) understand that imitation functions through a system of mirror neurons. As we watch another person mirror neurons fire through the motor cortex and map that movement into our bodies. This shows us that we need to be the energy we want from others in our classroom and provides another reason to improve your own mental health and wellbeing.

When my member Rachael started to prioritise her wellbeing she began to see a huge impact in her work as well as her personal life. This also involved the acceptance of not being able to do everything and learning how to say no.

Hygge in the Early Years course has had a massive impact on me and my setting. Unlike any other course, it focused on my wellbeing too, something I never had time for and always felt guilty about. At the start of the course, I was at an all-time low in my career – I needed a major operation, wasn’t sleeping and felt stuck in a rut, doing the same routines. The course taught me to prioritise my own wellbeing, to slow things down a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Endorsements
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Re-balance you
• Part 2 Hygge environment
• Part 3 Slow teaching
• Part 4 Embrace nature
• Summary of book
• Bibliography
• Index