Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
INAEYC conference and early childhood focal points
The upcoming Week of the Young Child celebration provides a fascinating framework for understanding developmental priorities. From Movement Monday to Family Friday, these themed days don't just guide our approach to supporting children—they offer surprising lessons for adults too. Dr. Beth explores this reciprocal relationship, suggesting that young children might be teaching us as much as we're teaching them. As she reflects on early social skill development, from learning to share to simply tolerating others in their space, she reveals how these fundamental capabilities form the building blocks of all future relationships.
Looking ahead, Dr. Beth announces upcoming episodes exploring resilience, uniqueness, cooperation, and hope—concepts that resonate whether you're raising young children, working with them professionally, or simply applying these principles to adult relationships. Share your thoughts on what you'd like to hear in future episodes, and join us for these enlightening conversations about the profound lessons from our earliest developmental stages.
www.bethtrammell.com
Hello listener, welcome back. I'm your host, dr Beth Trammell, and I am a licensed psychologist and professor of psychology at Indiana University East where I'm also the director of our Masters in Mental Health Counseling program, and I'm glad you're here today. I thought I'd come on and do a brief solo episode today to chat a little bit about early childhood. So one of the kind of key areas that I do a lot of consultation training both virtually and in person is in classroom and behavior management in early childhood spaces. So preschools, infant-toddler rooms, kindergarten first, second grade classrooms we do a lot of work in trying to get those early intervention kind of things going right. So we know that if they can build some skills early on then they'll be in a better place by the time they get to the upper elementary grades or even into middle and high school. And so this past week I was presenting at the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children, indiana AYC, and that is kind of a branch of the national, so each state has their own association of the education of young children and I was at that conference and presented a couple of talks on ineffective things that we say to kids and the other talk was on communicating with parents, and it reminded me that part of what we learn in therapy right is how do we as therapists, work with young children and their parents and teachers? But then also as folks who are in therapy, you might have your own children who are in that early childhood range, or you might be around children within that range, and so I thought I might chat a little bit about that today. So we are actually next week celebrating the week of the young child. So NACI every year has a week that they dedicate to young children and they have most of you who might have kids in preschools or early childhood spaces know that there are kind of each day of the week there's a different celebration, and so kickoff is April 5th of 2025. And that starts sort of this week of the young child where we celebrate kids, and then Monday is movement and music, tasty Tuesday, work together Wednesday, artsy Thursday and family Friday.
Speaker 1:And I was looking at these and thinking. You know, we often think that we're the ones who are teaching our young kids, and I think about this list and I think about the ways that our young kids can also teach us as grownups, and so I started thinking about ways that I might incorporate those same themes into my own life and the lives of the kids that I have at home, who aren't necessarily in early childhood spaces. When we think about young kids, we often think about doing these early intervention things, particularly around language, around developing those language skills, but also around social and emotional skills, and so thinking about ways we can build their social skills, ways that they interact with their peers. Obviously, there are issues like learning how to share and learning how to play in an environment with their peers. Obviously, there are issues like learning how to share and learning how to play in an environment with other people. A lot of our kids still are kind of learning the ways to just tolerate other people in their space, and so this age group is really primed for learning those skills around how do we get along with the people around us, and so, with that in mind, I am actually going to be releasing some podcast episodes that I recorded with my friend, leslie Bolser, core Essential Values, and each month on the Core Essential Values podcast, we record a brief episode, usually 10 to 12 minutes or so, about a different word.
Speaker 1:So Core Essential Values is a curriculum company that releases curriculum to schools, and it focuses on one word each month, and so I'm going to share those episodes here on Things you Learn in Therapy, because I think a lot of the things that I talk about there also sort of apply to this audience here, and so in the next week you will also hear those new episodes cross-listed on how do we parent, how do we help people understand these different words that are kind of at the core of the curriculum, and so you're going to hear about resilience, uniqueness, cooperation and hope. So just a brief episode here to give you a little update on how things are going and what's coming next, and if you have thoughts or feedback about what you want to hear on the podcast, would love to hear from you. And until next time, stay safe and stay well friends. Ciao. And until next time, stay safe and stay well, friends, ciao. So so
