In PHQP 0005 Relationships Are Foundational, Jeff highlights the critical role of relationships in early learning environments. Discussing caregiver burnout, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and strategies for building strong emotional connections—even with challenging kids—Jeff explains why secure relationships are more important than ABCs and 123s. Plus, he shares a fun DIY project for creating paintbrushes, advocates for caregiver self-care, and wraps up with a Dad Joke of the Week that will make you smile (or groan). Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0005 Relationships Are Foundational Episode Notes Secure Relationships: Nurturing Infant-Toddler Attachment in Early Care Settings Caring Relationships: The Heart of Early Brain Development Continuity Of Care Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs Abraham Maslow Continuity Of Care Social-Emotional Domain Caregiver Self-Care Delightful And Durable 2-part Epoxy Paintbrushes The Relationships Are Foundational Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. Thanks for pushing play. I'm Jeff Johnson on with the show. So, um, an astute viewer was wondering about my shirt and every episode so far I've been wearing a black t-shirt. That's because I mostly wear black t-shirts or white t-shirts and uh, actually for the podcast I was gonna wear my black t-shirts. It's not, it may be the same black t-shirt for every episode. I don't really keep track of them. I've just got a stack of black t-shirts, probably a different black t-shirt, although there might be some black t-shirt overlap, but I just usually buy a bunch of the same black t-shirts and then I wear them until they are worn out and then get some new, some new black t-shirts. This makes life a lot easier, wear the same thing all the time. Um, moving, moving on from that important bit of information, topic one, core value part five, relationships are foundational. They're the core of what's going on in early learning programs and I think a lot of times caregivers feel pressured and pushed to not focus on relationships because there is such a push towards early academics and school readiness that sometimes we are pushed towards attending to those things more than we do the one-on-one here and now interactions with kids and that's a problem because we are, we are social animals. We need physical contact. We need to feel safe and comfortable and valued and appreciated and loved by the people around us and in a lot of early learning programs when staff are feeling pressured to keep up with paperwork and checklists and learning outcomes and school readiness activities and STEM and being rigid, um, learning environments and all of this, we, we forget about the soft, cuddly aspects of, of this work with young human beings. The social side of things, the relationship side of things are more important than the ABCs and one-two-threes and, and look, last episode, we talked about learning risks and how those are important. It is very, very difficult for a young child to put them out, put themselves out there and take a physical or social or emotional or intellectual risk if they don't feel a foundational sense of security and, and comfort in their environments and so building strong emotional environments is the basis for all the ABCs and one-two-threes that come after it, but sometimes we flip-flop this. We focus on the ABCs and one-two-threes first instead of on, on building and maintaining those relationships. Building relationships saps emotional resources. It's a big cause of burnout in this profession. There's not a lot of research done on this. Best numbers I've been able to find and, and these are old is that 30 to 40 percent of caregivers leave this work annually because of burnout-related, um, issues and that, that, the, that emotional giving they do all day long is part of that burnout because caregivers are wonderful at tuning into the needs of others but fall short a lo...
