The role of the family

Thanks to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, we can affirm that children are subjects of rights, not only because they belong to the human race but because they are specific legal subjects. An affirmation that brings to light an entirely new profile of the child, equal to the adult yet psychologically and culturally different, to the point of recognising the child’s right to self-realisation. To this last right are then connected the right to identity, to education, to being a respected minority and above all the right to a family, because it is precisely to the family that the task falls of guaranteeing these rights, “so much so that the Declaration obliges the State to commit itself to helping and supporting families, including adoptive and foster families, in carrying out what have been defined as their functions. Not only that: States are also charged with the duty of ensuring that families honour the responsibilities entrusted to them”^[1].
The family is the primary educational agency par excellence, and for this reason it commits itself to dialogue with the other educational agencies and with all institutions in order to realise children’s rights. This brief excursus on the Convention highlights, through the lens of rights, the importance of the family, one of the aspects on which I wish to dwell in my reflection, together with the theme of listening within the complex relationships between children, parents and educators.
The term family in the singular, the traditional heterosexual couple with children, is no longer appropriate, because new forms and new types exist.
Single-parent families, extended families, foster families, adoptive families, unmarried couples, families living apart, each with its own characteristics, with which educational institutions and the nursery in particular, to which we are here making explicit reference, come into contact, represent a picture as plural as it is complex, one that calls for particular attention to each of them. Each type in fact presents multiple variables of a cultural, social and economic nature, of ethnic and religious belonging, such that “the nursery faces the need to diversify what it offers and to organise itself in new ways, more flexible and open to change, proposing models capable of transforming themselves according to the needs and the different social and cultural situations in which it is called to act. At the same time, the needs of parents emerge forcefully, parents who are often isolated in living out their specific functions”^[2].
Parents need to be helped to become such, to take on their own responsibilities, because being a parent does not mean having biologically given life; it requires becoming a parent, growing aware of one’s role and of one’s responsibilities towards one’s children. One is not born a parent, one becomes one, and so parents must be supported, educated, encouraged. “Support for parenthood perhaps lies precisely in helping parents to embrace the importance of what they have done, a son, a daughter, without being overwhelmed, in living with naturalness and serenity a responsibility that sometimes pushes them towards delegation or flight, in making them aware of their own competences and untroubled by the limits that fathers and mothers normally experience in themselves”^[3]. Parenthood is a complex matter that incorporates individual aspects, for example the idea one has of a parent; relational aspects, that is, of how, together with the other, one carries out this task, all of it conditioned by communicative, relational and spatio-temporal dynamics. One cannot, therefore, be a parent always and in every case in the same way over the course of a lifetime, and this obliges us to rethink our educational style constantly; the nursery, for its part, is certainly no neutral element, but influences the family and is in turn influenced by it.
Collaboration between family and nursery helps to accompany the growth of a child, something that often presents itself to parents as a difficult experience, full of worries, above all as regards the educational choices to be made. “These services give parents the opportunity to meet and compare experiences, to be helped in overcoming certain difficulties and not to be alone in their educational choices, and all of this not occasionally but with a continuity that renews itself day after day and through relationships with professionally competent adults”^[4]. This encounter can come about through dialogue, communication, listening, welcome, collaboration, complicity, the absence of prejudice, availability, empathy. These are only some of the founding words of a service that no longer wishes to fulfil a merely custodial function, but takes shape as a place that offers a meaningful formative, educational and caring experience and that guarantees the quality of the service.
A further leap in quality, in order to bring support to parenthood, might be made “by providing pathways of family education (which) could also be led by those nursery educators who have behind them a significant personal experience”^[5], with meetings in which parents have the chance to compare their views and to reflect on themes concerning educational issues, allowing them to focus their attention on emotional, cognitive and social needs that are as important as the primary ones.

Being welcomed

The nursery is a complex socio-educational service in which multiple elements intertwine and must be harmonised so as to guarantee an environment that helps the child to grow, establishing close collaboration with parents. Structural, managerial and organisational elements, pedagogical choices, the professionalism of educators, educational styles, bonds and relationships, responses to needs, all form part of that educational project which answers the family’s request and the child’s needs. But is the nursery a service for the child or for the parent?
The nursery must take on the needs of families, let us think of foreign families with problems of integration, of single mothers, of couples without family support, in order to sustain them, yet it does not replace them; on the contrary, it is built and realised in the relationship with parents. We can therefore affirm that it exists for and with the parent, in a relationship of circularity in which “children and families, educators and social contexts thus represent the poles around which the story of each individual nursery is articulated day by day, a story that finds recognition in those who attend it and in those who organise it”^[6]. The choice to leave one’s child at the nursery, even with the conviction that one will receive great support with the small and large problems concerning the little one’s growth and care, is by no means easy or free of contradictions. “One of the most demanding problems experienced, in our view, at the nursery is the separation of parent from child in the first phases of settling in. There are parents who experience the nursery with suffering, who must adapt to it, who must accept it. All else being equal, the one who experiences greater suffering at the separation involved in the nursery is the parent, especially where the first child is concerned”.^[7] For the mother, entrusting to others the most precious thing she can possess generates anxieties, feelings of guilt and above all fears, particularly in the moments of settling in, when reactions of crying and distress on the child’s part raise doubts about the choice, doubts born of the fear that all this might have more negative than positive effects on the child’s development. The fear of judgement sets in, a fear that pervades both parent and educator, each feeling judged by the other according to the role he or she holds. “The parent is supposed to be endowed with a natural status that confers authority over the child and grants the right to decide on the child’s behalf, yet the parent’s goodness and ability are continually exposed to the judgement of others, and the parent is bound, in a certain sense, to demonstrate continually that he or she deserves the attribute of good parent”^[8]. Even faced with the fear of losing authority, parents are ready to make sacrifices, often financial ones, in order to offer the child occasions for socialisation and relationship and opportunities to gain experience with peers. At the same time, insecurity and the weight of responsibility bring to the surface the need “for support, for dialogue, for sharing, for support of the new identity, for recognition of the new role, the parental one”^[9]. It is desirable that a system should come into being in which nursery and family enter into continuous relationship and in which the interdependence of the two elements is sanctioned by a contract, so as to avoid situations of delegation. Then “the work of educators can only tend to stimulate and reinforce in parents the felt sense of security and competence in their own educational abilities.
This kind of emotional and pedagogical support, offered to parents, is not to be confused with any claim to teach <the job of being a parent> or to pass judgement on whether or not their behaviour is correct”.^[10] Decisive for establishing a good relationship between the two elements of the system are the ways in which the first encounters take place. The moment of settling in at the nursery thus becomes of particular importance, so much so that it demands careful planning. At this point a semantic clarification is called for.
The Zingarelli dictionary, under the entry “to insert”^[11], writes:

“to become part of, to integrate, to adapt; but inserting the child into the nursery is to be understood in a broader sense, one that does indeed include settling in, acclimatisation, the routines of arrival and departure, but also everything that can be done so that the child and the parent feel welcomed. Thus the word welcome encloses within itself all these aspects, but many others too, which highlight the importance and the complexity of the event.
Acceptance, trust, reassurance, affection, attention, care, relationship, well-being, entrusting oneself to the other, listening: these are elements that characterise such an event. The moments of welcome are many and various. One welcomes the family, the child; they are welcomed together and separately, in different ways and at different times. There is the initial welcome, the welcome during settling in, the daily welcome of the child and of the child-parent pair, the periodic welcome of the parents, the symbolic welcome; these are significant and delicate moments that demand of the educator a great professional competence, because they accompany a change that involves both the child and the family.
The first meeting with parents is a most delicate moment, and no single good practice exists for guiding it. Two new realities meet, and no one conversation can ever be identical to another, because every parent is a unique and unrepeatable person. No manual can be drawn up, but particular attention must be given to the handling of times, of spaces, of ways. The style of communication must be tended with care, because “one must know how to instil trust through a communicative style that lets professionalism and humanity, competence and availability, show through together”^[12]

and above all not to be in a hurry to know and to speak, for the encounter with the other is nourished day after day.
The first meeting will help to reinforce the idea that the mother in particular has of the nursery, an idea that initially depends on the environmental and cultural context, but that is later built out of the relationship that comes to be established with the nursery itself. For this reason the family must feel welcomed, reassured; it must understand that it will receive answers to its own needs, but above all that the child will be offered “tools for organising the mind (…) words to express meanings and emotions, contexts to prompt activities of exploration, of communication, of play, of routines”^[13], and that the child will live meaningful experiences of an emotional, cognitive and social kind and that, above all, this will be a place of care which represents the truly defining aspect of the nursery. Communicative style and listening are the elements on which we shall dwell, because they are decisive in the relationship and in the encounter between family and nursery.
According to the philosopher Chauchard, the human being is an I in dialogue, and dialogue is learned so that communication is not reduced to mere flows of information. Communication gives substance through meanings, purposes, values: “to make oneself understood is not only to transmit contents, but also to ensure their affective resonance”^[14]. For this reason, the educator today is asked to possess a great communicative competence, the only thing that can ensure the birth of a pedagogical alliance between nursery and family in order to answer the child’s need for development, growth and care.
Communication is the sharing and understanding of a semantic universe, which requires effort and toil, the overcoming of obstacles and prejudices, the sharing of a specific language in order to give meaning to the account of those daily experiences, to the child’s behaviours and progress; otherwise one may confuse words with things; one may be unable to verify abstract terms against concrete events; one may confuse facts with inferences that call for value judgements; one may be incapable of drawing out concepts, of assessing and of listening.

The capacity to listen

Listening is the capacity and the willingness to open oneself to the other, to understand the other from the linguistic, mental and expressive point of view. To open oneself to the other is that empathic sensibility which makes you look at the other without prejudice, which puts you in a position to feel-with the other and yet not, for that reason, to merge into the other. It is a thinking that feels the feeling of the other, but one that “does not presume that the I who is the subject of empathy and the I who is the object of the empathic act merge into an undifferentiated unity; rather, it leaves the subjects in a condition that may be defined as one of intimately relational separateness”^[15].
To be in a state of listening consists in being always turned towards the other with the intention of establishing a relationship with the other. Unfortunately our age reveals us to be ever less capable of establishing an emotional bond with the other and of cultivating the encounter with the other, which is the condition for building relationships and giving life to bonds founded on trust and mutual esteem. Listening demands as much effort as speaking does, yet today, more than in the past, we are inclined not to listen, and the reasons are various. An obscure message is without doubt “a message that resists listening, that renders communicative reciprocity impossible. A hermetic tongue, a communicative style that prizes words nowhere to be found in the dictionary, or a confusingly convoluted way of building sentences, are explicit declarations of a total lack of interest in the listener. It is taken <for granted, in good faith or bad, that a common code exists, that the semantic reference is shared>, giving rise to an egocentric, rigid communication, indifferent to the difficulties of the one who listens”^[16].
The difficulties are bound up with the cultural and social context from which families come, today amplified in nurseries, as in other settings, by the presence of families of different nationalities. Different worlds, different cultures, different religions, different languages, which oblige the educator to a flexibility in establishing with each one a relational and communicative style. For communication accustoms us to taking the other into account, helps us to overcome egocentrism, accustoms us to tolerating different points of view. And dialogue is the courage to meet the other not in order to conquer the other by imposing one’s own thought, but in order to create a shared thought. For the person of dialogue, to use Baldini’s words, has respect for the other, tries to understand the other, listens to the other’s reasons, and his distinguishing mark is to listen just as well as, or better than, he speaks. It is an attitude acquired through a willingness to put one’s own authenticity at stake and through the ability to recognise the possibility of rethinking the ways and the instruments of interpersonal communication.
Communication requires certain indispensable techniques in order to make listening, too, flow smoothly; otherwise listening becomes laborious and useless, with the risk of falling into a communication that does not communicate. Parents, for their part, need to understand what the nursery is, how it works, how it is organised, the very sense of that organisation, which educators and which role, with particular emphasis on the educational one. This is an element that escapes parents, more attentive and anxious as they are about the satisfaction of primary needs. From the very first meeting we must establish a climate of ample willingness both to listen and to communicate, these being indispensable elements for the relationship between persons and between communities of persons.
The relational dimension is one of the aspects that characterise the figure of the educator, because only relationship will allow the realisation of an alliance between school and family, an alliance necessary to guarantee the child care and formation. Active listening, empathy, a positive climate: these are the preconditions for decentring one’s own point of view and managing to see events from the perspective of the other, setting prejudices aside. And prejudice is overcome by understanding the experience of the other. Communication will then be not merely an exchange of information, but a set of elements that set metacommunication in motion, made up of information, assessments and comments that give meaning to the relationship^[17].
A relationship made also of silences, in order to give voice to the actions, the feelings, the attitudes and the emotions that non-verbal communication is able to arouse. Often the things we feel and live are more important than those we recount; and so, in the encounter with the child in particular, a pedagogy of gestures and movements is an indispensable prerequisite for entering into relationship. Only in this way can we lay the foundations for the realisation of a quality nursery, one whose constant commitment is the growth, the development and the formation of the child, as well as the response to the needs of parents.

Notes

^[1] M. Manini, V. Gherardi (2005), Gioco, bambini, genitori. Modelli educativi nei servizi per l’infanzia, Rome, Carocci, p. 33.

^[2] B.Q. Borghi (ed.) (2006), Star bene al Nido d’infanzia, Parma, Edizioni Junior, p. 44.

^[3] M. T. Bassa Poropat, L. Chicco (2004), Il nido come sistema complesso. Percorsi formativi e di intervento nell’ottica della qualità totale, Bergamo, Junior, p. 51.

^[4] A.L. Galardini (2007), Crescere al nido. Gli spazi, i tempi, le attività, le relazioni, Rome, Carocci, p. 159.

^[5] E. Catarsi (2012), Nonni e bambini nei servizi per l’infanzia, in M. Corsi, S. Olivieri, Progetto Generazioni, Bambini e Anziani: due stagioni della vita a confronto, Pisa, ETS.

^[6] B.Q. Borghi (ed.) (2006), Star bene al Nido d’infanzia, Parma, Edizioni Junior, p. 45.

^[7] B.Q. Borghi (2007), Nido d’infanzia 1. Buone pratiche e problemi degli educatori, Trento, Erickson, p. 65.

^[8] A. Bondioli, S. Mantovani (eds.) (2001), Manuale critico dell’asilo nido, Milan, FrancoAngeli, p. 205.

^[9] R. Bosi (2002), Pedagogia al nido. Sentimenti e relazioni, Rome, Carocci, p. 36.

^[10] N. Bulgarelli (1997), L’interdipendenza nido famiglia, in P. Bertolini (ed.), Nido e dintorni, Florence, La Nuova Italia, p. 63.

^[11] N. Zingarelli (2001), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna, Zanichelli Editore, p. 917.

^[12] B.Q. Borghi (2007), Nido d’infanzia 1. Buone pratiche e problemi degli educatori, Trento, Erickson, p. 78.

^[13] R. Bosi (2007), La cura nella scuola dell’infanzia, Rome, Carocci, p. 20.

^[14] L. Pati (1984), Pedagogia della comunicazione educativa, Brescia, Editrice La Scuola, p. 73.

^[15] L. Mortari (2011), Il sentire della cura, in Pedagogia Oggi, no. 1-2, p. 46.

^[16] M. Baldini (1988), Educare all’ascolto, Brescia, Editrice La Scuola, p. 59.

^[17] M. De Santis (ed.), Dimensioni della professionalità degli educatori per la prima infanzia, Perugia, Margiacchi Galeno.

Mina De Santis is professor of General Didactics and of Design and Organisation of Early Childhood Services at the University of Perugia. Her most recent monograph is Il laboratorio. Per una didattica ludica della formazione (Rome, Aracne, 2016), which offers the chance to acquire analytical criteria of design for developing an active teaching practice that reworks human culture in an original way – mina.desantis@unipg.it