Collective Reading Group notes from today

April 3rd 9:15am – 9:45am Collective Reading Group:

Tiny human geographies: babies and toddlers as non- representational and barely human life? (Holt & Philo, 2020)

Participants: Diana (Sitka Place), Cinder (Cedar Place), Kelcie (Acorn Place), Paty (Maple), Leanne & Kowisara (Juniper Place), Mary & Crystal (Willow Tree Place), Sadaf, Narda

Thanks to everyone who joined online today! Today’s discussion was a reminder of what slow reading-pausing-discussing-unpacking words-listening (to each other’s reflections on moments from practice) offers, in terms of nurturing a new ‘collective reading practice’ or ‘habit’ into existence. Whether we read a single paragraph or work through a whole page, we pack a lot into these 1/2 hour sessions! Looking forward to picking up again on page 7 next Tuesday.

Notes from today:

We began with a brief recap of last week’s discussion. Some stand-out points/questions in conversations thus far and from last week:

–Why, in a subdiscipline concerned with the agency of children, are babies and toddlers largely absent? (p.3)

–Babies and toddlers tell us something more aboiut what it means to be human in a lively and agentic world (p.3)

–discussions of societal tendencies to see babies and toddlers as “out of place” in so-called adult spaces as culturally determined (as a Euro-Western-North American phenomenon which is different from other places in the world)

–Ildikó’s question (and enthusiasm about considering): What happens if we follow children’s ways of moving, knowing, feeling in the world? What does this do to ‘us’ as educators. How might it shift our practices? What else could we learn? (to move with children instead of simply defaulting to managing behaviours, etc.)

Brief discussion/clarification today on terminology:

• ethnographic research: as a qualitative method of study (often in social behavioural sciences) for collecting data to draw conclusions on how societies and individuals function (*taken from a quick search on the internet). Within ‘human’ research, ethnographic research often involves interviews as a form of data collection. Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose are Environmental Humanities scholars we have drawn on in the past, who use ethnographic methods in their multispecies research (following, documenting, and learning with flying foxes, crows, etc. about the places we co-inhabit in as a multispecies spaces).
• mother-baby assemblages: a gathering of coming together of humans-creatures-prams-materials-forces that creates something new in virtue oftheir ‘togetherness’. More than the word ‘coupling’ (1+1 = 2, for example ‘a mother pushing a baby in a baby carriage’), an assemblage invites a rethink of the ways particular bodies come together and do differently in virture of their ‘coming togetherness’. For example on page 6 of the reading:

  Babies themselves exert their will and desires in the world ... babies approach city life with a very different sense of sociability to that of adults ... mother-baby assemblages can destablise received understandings ... a line of flight from normative ways of being ... . (Boyer 2018a, 49)

Thoughts/reflections/offerings as we moved through page 6:

-In response to the line the “responsibility that adults usually feel for child welfare, which always limits and constraints child agency (Vanderbeck 2008), at the same time positioning babies and toddlers as, so it seems, these particularly incapable, necessarily dependent barely-humans.” (Holt & Philo, 2022, p. 6) Kelcie made connections with tensions that occasionally come up with feeding babies. Reminded her of moments when a baby is telling them “I’m not hungry” Who defines what’s necessary in those moments? How does a ‘child’s agency’ meet with the obligation of meeting a child’s basic needs? These moments often become a question of ‘how’ versus one set of rules for every child in every situation. We don’t force children to the table, but how do we offer them food? “Look! this is waiting for you when you are ready” She shared moments when other babies tug at sleeves of the child who hasn’t eaten, trying to help get them to go eat. This led us into a new consideration “who is understood as being the ‘care-er’ versus the ones who are solely ‘cared for’?” Power dynamics of normative ages and stages disrupted. How we understand these things also speak to our image of the child.

-Diana shared ‘sticky situations’ where we use to give children less choices. In the past it may have been “time to put your coat on” whereas now more often the approach might be inviting them to put it on. She expressed discomfort with looking at cold children who may have refused to put their coat on. Where is the line?

-this took us into ethics, the role of the educator, and discussions about top down approaches which have potential to promote a disconnect between mind/bodies. There is so much change happening in society right now. Rather than looking at is as a “we ONLY do things ‘this’ way or ‘that’ way” the question of ‘how’ becomes more important. How we offer jackets, how we offer food, how we open up opportunities for young children to make decisions for themselves, of course without jeopardizing keeping children ‘safe’. What about the importance of cultivating a sense of ‘consent’ from the youngest of ages, when it comes to bodies? How might we rethink the ways power gets distributed within a centre? The language we use to communicate with children matters and shapes how children (at any age) learn to respond and treat each other. Sadaf and Mary contributed to this conversation too.

-we finished page 6 and wrapped up with the term “strange otherness” 🙂

Thanks again everyone for fascinating discussion.

Hope to see you again next week – we only have a couple of pages left in this piece and will be moving onto the Pro-D Day reading after that.

Best,

Narda