key children

[Guest degplay]

I have an excellent practitioner (level 3) who is fab at her job. at her last supervision we discussed one of her key children. she is a three year old, who has been with us a year now. as a two year old she needed quite a bit of support and spent a lot of time with her key person, sitting on her lap and the practitioner got into the habit of carrying her around on her hip, the child is small for her age and is easy therefore to carry around. this was fine as she was settling in, although one of our policies does state that children should not be carried around. I feel the amount of time the child is now sitting with the adult and being carried around is stopping her form relationships with her peers. I intend to tackle this again at her next supervision. if the practitioner is not in the child settles down and plays with other children, may come over for a reassuring cuddle, but is not carried around and accepts this.. what do you all think, am I right to be thinking she should be stepping back now? would just value others' thoughts as she gets quite emotional and then grumpy before bouncing back to her normal self!

[Guest]

you are absolutely right. she is impeding the child's ability to make friends with peers and other staff, and not giving the rest of the children the time they deserve. they all have an equal right to an adult's time. also if she were to be off for a period of time, the child may not cope. ours come and sit with us/on lap but i would never allow carrying. that's what legs are for!!!!!!!!!!!

[sunnyday]

I would certainly be having a discussion with her - I would want to know what her motivation is - further to that I would insist that she stops this practise.......

[Foreveryoung]

Your completely right in my opinon. We use the key person close relationship obviously as you should do but as soon as it becomes apparent the session is mainly fixated around one staff member yet the child can cope emotionally without that member we straight away start to introduce another adult into the equation and work on small peer groups to help create foundation relationships with others as we feel it is not in the best interests of the child to need/use/ an adult all the time after settling in has taken place it is not supporting the child psed skills to continue it. X