Research within Australia and around the world underscores the short- and long-term negative effects of bullying on children’s socio-emotional health and wellbeing. While there has been a significant increase in the number of studies conducted with upper primary and secondary students, comparatively fewer studies have focused on the prior-to-school and early school contexts. The few studies that have examined the effects of bullying in the early years emphasise its negative effects, with victims and bullies exhibiting psychosocial maladjustment and psychosomatic problems similar to outcomes reported in older cohorts (see Neilsen-Hewett et al., 2017). Bullying poses a significant risk to children’s socio-emotional wellbeing and mental health. A growing awareness of how bullying manifests in early peer contexts is therefore critical in the development of effective, preventative anti-bullying programs. The goal of this chapter is to provide a synthesis of this research, including an overview of the causes and correlates of bullying and its effects on children’s socio-emotional wellbeing.

Through the process of talking to one another, children become creators of their own future as they collaborate and build relationships. Talking Circles are designed to encourage children to ask questions about their lives and how they can make a difference for themselves, each other and their community. This process helps to build the resilience and leadership skills of children. These qualities are important in helping children to consider their world view and day-to-day challenges, which enables them to contribute to their own health and wellbeing.

In this chapter, we focus on a loose-parts, school-based intervention to promote playfulness. The intervention is known as the Sydney Playground Project (SPP). The SPP was developed by a multidisciplinary team, including the authors of this chapter. Key principles in the creation of the SPP were to find ways to enable children to engage in more-frequent, better-quality play, and make the intervention accessible to all children, families and educators (Bundy et al., 2011). There is also now a particular focus on children with disabilities (Bundy et al., 2015; Stillianesis et al., 2022). Goals for children with disabilities include development in areas promoted through play, yet a range of barriers often prevents this group from full participation.

The chapter begins by looking at social inequality, particularly in relation to health and wellbeing. Despite huge improvements in the available resources (think for a moment about the early childhood experiences of your grandparents or parents, who may have grown up before antibiotics were available), internationally we are seeing significant declines in population health and wellbeing, and increasingly larger gaps between the rich and the poor in countries all around the world. The chapter explores how governments are attempting to address social inequality. While early childhood educators are rarely involved at the level of policy, and although it is very important that we advocate at this level, it is necessary to understand how the policy context influences our work. The chapter concludes with practical suggestions for how early childhood educators can contribute to addressing the problem of social inequality.

This chapter explores the ways in which young children develop their self-concept in relation to their body image and discusses some of the influencing factors that condition children to perceiving favourable body images over unfavourable body images. The chapter incorporates discussions relating to ‘thinness’, and goes beyond this aspect to consider the effects of perceived anomalies and injuries on a child’s body satisfaction and positive self-concept. In addition, we discuss ways to support children in developing a positive self-concept in relation to body image, and to promote their wellbeing using the revised Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (V2.0) (EYLF) (Australian Government Department of Education [AGDE], 2022).

This chapter focuses on how to explore opportunities to partner with families in articulating support systems for child health and wellbeing. In particular, it explores how student educators and educators can reach out to families and develop the necessary partnerships to successfully support parents in their parenting and caring roles, with the aim of positively influencing children’s family lives, health and wellbeing.

This chapter focuses on how early years educators can foster health, physical activity and wellbeing through learning in health and physical education (HPE). There are many children attending school in Australia who are educationally disadvantaged, meaning they often derive the least benefit from schooling. They may include children from high poverty contexts, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, rural and remote learners and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. This chapter is organised into sections that provide the background knowledge for promoting health, physical activity and wellbeing of all early years learners, paying particular attention to students with backgrounds who, for many reasons, can be described as educationally disadvantaged.

A safe environment for a child is one that provides freedom from harm and offers a strong sense of security and belonging from which to play, learn and develop. A healthy and safe environment also promotes children’s psychological wellbeing by allowing them to exercise their independence through making decisions and taking on new challenges. Educators are responsible for providing and maintaining safe environments for children in their care, including the development of strategies to prevent injury in indoor and outdoor environments. Injury prevention promotes safety, protects the child and minimises risk. Injury prevention also provides procedures to manage injuries as they occur. By protecting children from hazards, injury prevention offers children the sense of safety and security that allows them to develop to their fullest potential.

Teaching calls on educators to engage in responsive interactions and decision-making as they navigate complex and ambiguous contexts, examine deeply held beliefs and values, and integrate personal and professional knowledge. Such an undertaking requires personal integrity and continuing reflective practice. This chapter considers how mindfulness might become an integral part of reflective practice. Mindfulness can help us attend to the present moment, to the personal, emotional and interactive dimensions of our teaching, learning and leadership, and to the implications of actions for the longer term. Mindfulness can support our ability to connect with and respond to children and make a positive difference to their learning, health, and wellbeing. This chapter offers everyday resources and specific practices to support the development of mindfulness through self-study and self-reflection. Incorporating these into daily practice will assist authenticity, intentionality and agency, and facilitate meaning, wellbeing and purpose.

Along with the establishment of values and belief systems, the early years, from birth to 12 years, are increasingly recognised as the crucial time in which the foundations for life are laid, with significant consequences for educational success, resilience and future participation in society. The formative years are the years in which the capacity for carers and educators to make a difference can and does have profound effects. Carers and educators need specialist preparation because they are required to promote and teach health and wellbeing and to have the skills and knowledge to understand and manage the plethora of issues related to young children. Around the world, including in Australia, early years education is undergoing significant reform as the potential for educators to improve children’s quality of life is better understood. These reforms herald health and wellbeing as central constructs of this agenda. This chapter explores the concepts of health and wellbeing and shares some of the initiatives that have put health and wellbeing on the agenda for early years learners in contemporary times.

Children are faced with a rapidly changing world that is having a significant influence on their health and wellbeing. These changes include alterations to our food supply, new approaches to the marketing of food and other lifestyle factors that influence children’s food consumption. The early years represent a pivotal period in the establishment of food literacy – that is, dietary education, behaviours and preferences – when children are forming their tastes and preferences and are most receptive to health messages. Food literacy is a relatively recent concept that has emerged over the past decade (McManus et al., 2022), and early years settings, schools and caregivers are ideally placed to assist early years learners to develop positive attitudes towards, and knowledge about, healthy food. This is also relevant to schools because healthy children are better learners, and evidence suggests that a holistic approach to education that includes health and nutrition has wide-reaching benefits for children and educators.

Executive functions refer to the higher-order skills we use to engage in purposeful and goal-directed behaviours (Carlson et al., 2013). ‘Purposeful’ means that we call on these functions when we have a goal in mind. Developmental psychologists compare the brain with a bustling airport, referring to executive functions as the mind’s ‘air traffic control’ system (Center on the Developing Child, 2011). In the same way that an air traffic controller manages the arrival and departure of several aeroplanes at the same time, the brain’s executive functions enable us to manage a lot of information. Executive functions help us to focus and resist distractions, to think before acting, and to cope with frustrations and rules simultaneously. Young children use executive functions in all aspects of their everyday lives, such as remembering the rules of a game, resisting temptations or impulsive reactions, waiting their turn, staying focused, recalling routines and respecting different points of view. This chapter begins by defining executive functions and their role in children’s learning. It then describes how educators work across the early years to promote executive functions. The final section of the chapter lists questions that may help early years educators to reflect on the ways in which they support children’s emerging executive functions.

This chapter focuses on a diverse group of vulnerable learners–children with special educational needs (SEN). These children are at high risk of developing social and emotional problems because their presenting conditions negatively influence growth in two critical areas of functioning: attention, planning and problem-solving; and language and communication (Stormont, 2007). It follows that delays in these areas routinely create the conditions for reduced opportunities to engage, interact and learn with others, and also the increased likelihood of developing challenging, unsafe and socially inappropriate behaviours.In this chapter, the Pyramid Model (Hemmeter et al., 2016) is recommended as an evidence-based, multi-level framework for promoting children’s social–emotional development in the early years while preventing problem behaviours. Next, we discuss aspects related to decision-making about (1) what to teach and (2) how to teach. We then highlight the critical importance of resilience and the need to develop a sense of connectedness and social understanding in children with SEN. Finally, we argue the case for partnering with families in order to strengthen SEL outcomes of these children across school, home and community environments.

This chapter investigates friendships and children’s wellbeing in the early years of schooling. Having a friend, and being a friend, is closely connected to children’s health and wellbeing in the early years. Friendship safeguards children from social isolation and is associated with academic attainment and social success. In early childhood, children most often make friends through play, having common interests and doing shared activities.Using children’s direct accounts and visual representations of their friendships, we explore characteristics of friendship and the strategies that children use to make friends and manage disputes as they negotiate their social and emotional relationships through play and shared spaces. Three aspects of friendships are evident in the children’s accounts: friendship is enduring; friendship is a mutual relationship; and friendship involves an emotional investment. This chapter provides educators with an understanding of the important role of friendships in young children’s everyday lives, and to their happiness and wellbeing in the early years.

When children are effective communicators, they have a strong sense of identity and wellbeing, are connected to their world and are confident and involved learners. Supporting the development of effective communication in the early years also assists children to become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community, which is the ultimate goal for education in Australia, as articulated in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, 2019). In this chapter, we define communication and distinguish between different types of communication. We describe stages in the development of communication skills in the early years, explore the key achievements associated with each stage, identify features that may indicate reasons for seeking help, and suggest strategies for stimulating and supporting communication development across the early years.