Wellbeing has become one of those words that gets nodded through. Everyone’s in favour of it; pinning down what it actually is takes a little more care. The definition this course works with is a useful one: wellbeing is a combination of positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships and accomplishments. Not a mood. Not a wall display. A set of conditions that underpin every aspect of a child’s life, including every bit of learning we plan for them.
Break it down further and wellbeing has eight dimensions: psychological, environmental, financial, physical, social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. That list can look abstract on the page. Lay it over an ordinary nursery day and it becomes very concrete indeed.
The dimensions, at child height
Watch a morning through that lens. The physical dimension is in the fruit at snack time and the run around the garden now the March weather is finally allowing it. Social and emotional wellbeing are in the friendship repair after the squabble over the red bike, and in the key person who notices a child arriving flat and finds two quiet minutes for them. Intellectual wellbeing is the deep engagement of a child who has been mixing mud kitchen potions for forty minutes and is not finished yet. Environmental wellbeing is whether the room feels calm or chaotic to spend six hours in. Even the financial dimension reaches children, through the pressures their families carry home.
Some of what shapes a child’s wellbeing sits inside your setting, and some of it never will. Both halves matter. A practitioner who understands what affects wellbeing, inside and outside the gate, reads children more accurately and judges better when something needs a response rather than a plaster.
Noticing is a skill in itself. A dip in wellbeing rarely announces itself in words; it shows up sideways, in a child who stops choosing the garden, plays smaller than usual, hovers near an adult without asking for anything, or eats differently for a week. Practitioners who know the dimensions have a shared language for these observations, which turns “he’s not himself” into something a team can actually discuss and act on. That shared language earns its keep at handover, in key person conversations, and in the quiet decisions about which child needs a bit of extra warmth this morning. None of it requires a form. Most of it requires a practitioner who is looking, and who knows what they’re looking at.
Wellbeing and mental health are neighbours
The course is clear on this link: wellbeing is closely tied to mental health, for children and for their families. Supporting one supports the other. And because young children can’t build wellbeing on their own, the adults around them, at nursery and at home, are the mechanism. Done well, this work helps make your setting, and the homes your children return to each evening, the most positive places they can be.
None of this needs new resources or a bigger budget. It needs informed adults, which is where training comes in. Our Wellbeing in the Early Years course covers what wellbeing is and the positive elements that make it up, the eight dimensions, what affects a child’s wellbeing, the connection with mental health, and how to support it all within the Early Years Foundation Stage you already work to. It takes around an hour, fully online, on any device.
With spring arriving and a bit of fresh energy about, it makes a good shared focus for a team: one course, everyone through it, then twenty minutes at a staff meeting on a single question. Where does each dimension show up in our day, and where is it missing?
Put wellbeing at the heart of your practice
An hour of NFAQ-accredited online training on the eight dimensions of wellbeing and how to support them within the EYFS.
Wellbeing underpins everything else we do with young children. It deserves better than a nod.