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Dear colleagues,
I hope the break brought you joy, rest, and renewal, and that you found yourselves nestled in connection with supportive people—whether family, friends, or chosen community.
After the hustle and bustle that the holidays bring for many of us, I've been thinking about silence. Admittedly, the introvert in me craves silence after many joyous days of socializing… but I’m not talking about the comfortable kind that comes after sinking into our favourite cozy spot after a long day, or the peaceful hush of naptime. I’m talking about the kind of silence that happens when we're asked, "How are you?" and we say "Fine" even though we're not.
January has a way of amplifying that silence. The ‘new-year-new-you’ rhetoric is everywhere, but the darkness, cold, and post-holiday slump makes this a relatable and important time for conversations about mental health. Blue Monday and Let’s Talk Day are, after all, right around the corner.
I have a personal relationship with anxiety and depression, and my first memories of these big feelings are from a time before I started Kindergarten. I’ve spent decades learning about what I need to stay well and leaning on various supports when necessary (three cheers for therapy!), but I often go back to Little Vanessa’s early days and think fondly of the caregivers who were able and available to hold space for my feelings, worries, and wonders.
Mental health isn't just about tough times or diagnoses, though. We all have mental health. Every single one of us, at every age, all the time. Just like we all have physical health that exists on a continuum (some days we feel strong and energized, other days we're fighting off a cold), our mental health shifts and changes too. It's about how we're doing: our capacity to regulate emotions, our sense of safety and connection, our ability to show up in relationships.
Those caregivers who held space for Little Vanessa weren't "fixing" me or solving a problem. They were supporting my mental health by creating conditions where I could feel safe, seen, and connected even when things felt big and overwhelming. That's what we do every day in early childhood settings - we're actively supporting the development of children's mental health through every interaction, every moment of co-regulation, every time we help a child make sense of their feelings.
So, when I think about all of you working with our youngest learners, supporting the development of their mental health every single day, I am reminded that mental health is relational. Especially for young children, we can't separate their mental health from ours. They're woven together in every interaction. Dr. Jean Clinton reminds us that relationships are the active ingredient in child development.
But relationships require two nervous systems, and both of them matter.
So how do we tend to both nervous systems? How do we support children's mental health when ours is stretched thin by short days, long winters, and the weight of this work?
Sometimes it starts small: noticing your own signs of dysregulation (mine are holding my breath and clenching my jaw). Finding your people - the folks who get it - and actually reaching out. Naming what's hard, not just to vent, but to problem-solve together.
And sometimes it's about noticing our professional friends who might need an extra hand right now, if you’ve got the bandwidth to offer it. The colleague who's quieter than usual. The one juggling a lot at home. Small gestures matter: checking in with genuine curiosity, offering to cover a break, picking up an extra double-double on the way to work to signal "I see you." We can't fix everything for each other, but we can show up.
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