Misunderstood Activity – Self-Care to Avoid Burnout
One concept within the courses I am currently teaching in the Early Childhood Education department is the importance of self-care. This concept is often times misunderstood in the field of ECE, as educators are so focused on ensuring that the children in their care are well taken care of, that they often times forget to take care of themselves first.
The analogy I give to my students if of an airplane that is ready to go down. I explain that in order to help the child sitting next to you, the flight attendant will explain that if the plane were to go down, you need to ensure that you put your air mask on before you put one on the child, because if you fail to help yourself first and pass out, then you are no good to that child. Compassion fatigue and burnout are right in this field and there is a high turnover rate, so self-care and wellness are key.
Some students come from a place where they feel that as long as they love working with children, that burnout will not happen to them. Others have worked with children before and feel that since they haven’t get experienced burnout, then it also won’t happen to them in the future, while others have voiced that they are, in fact, current burnt-out. It is important for me to help to equip them with skills and tools that they can use once they are in the field so that they can utilize those tools in order to promote their own self-care and wellness.
In order to show up for the children in our care, we have to first show up for ourselves.
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