Tree Rings View of Child Development

At Wild Hearts, we like to use the image of a tree's rings to think about how a child develops throughout childhood and how to best support them at each stage.

The centre, the youngest part of the tree, is the child in infancy (0-6 months) - at this stage, infants are completely dependent on their primary caregiver(s) and they tend to prefer familiar attachment figures for comfort. During this time, childcare looks more like holistic family support to establish feeding, sleep and parental support systems - nurturing attachment and building or maintaining a "village" around the family.

As the child enters toddlerhood, their sense of self and the world around them continues to expand - other rings are added to the tree. Their world gets bigger, with other people, places and experiences all becoming part of what feels safe, familiar and important to them. Their wider family and community become more important as the child gets older and begins to establish independence and understand their place in the world.

We focus on the Five Pillars of Attachment to foster positive relationships between the childcare provider (Jade) and the children in her care.

These are:

1. A sense of felt safety

2. A sense of being seen and known (attunement)

3. The experience of felt comfort (soothing)

4. A sense of being valued (expressed delight)

5. A sense of support for being and becoming one’s unique best self

Extended family, community figures, friends, childcare settings, school, social and cultural groups, values, rituals and traditions etc. all influence the development of the child through childhood and adolescence, even into adulthood. By providing holistic child-led and family-focussed support in the early years, we ensure a child has a solid foundation of secure attachment from which to grow into a child who is happy, kind, more resilient and curious about themselves and the wider world.