Half way up and unable to move, Santa shouted out that from now on he was prepared to eat his five a day, give up chocolate teacakes and large glasses of red wine, whilst joining the local bootcamp on Clapham Common.

“Ha,” said Rudolf chortling, “we have heard that before – it will take more than the fears of obesity to get him to stick to his diet. Anyway, we all know that one glass of red wine reduces the risk of strokes and dementia. No, the only answer is to get the Health and Safety brigade to ban chimneys.”

“Not on your life,” says Chris Grayling MP, “chimneys, decorations, conkers and common sense are all coming back in 2012.”

Back up the chimney, Santa has decided to trust his team led by super leader Rudolf to come up with a plan to release him.  (Leadership is apparently the modern answer for success; nowadays branded as system leadership, we just have to get it right. And with plenty of precedence for getting it wrong, those committees trying to define leadership will need lots of luck.)

Either way, Santa was always sure of a positive outcome, simply as the key holder to the stationery cupboard – a sure fire guarantee that he would be rescued, as Rudolf and the team knew what else was stored in there (and we’re not just talking treasure baskets here).

Scratching his beard, and now covered in soot, Santa contemplated what his look-alike Karl Marx would make of the current economic situation and Eurozone debacle. What would he say to those camping out at St Paul’s or to all the young people who ricochet from anger to despair?  What hope would he give that we can find a new way of doing things?  Would he mock David Cameron’s call that traditional values will save us? In an optimistic moment Marx said that

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.”

So to be happier we need to be more equal, less acquisitive and more community minded? “Result!” thinks Santa. “My sack will be a lot lighter and I won’t have to carry so many toys.  I can dump all the PlayStations and join Pink Stinks and rail against all the pink packaged toys for girls.  Social capital here I come! I better join a Time Bank, start volunteering and get a load of apprentices into my workshop: I could become the biggest social enterprise in Lapland!”

Getting colder up the chimney, Santa decided to sing to keep himself calm and rapped out his situation, only to bring more soot on his head. “I will submit this song to Simon Cowell,” he contemplated, “and see if I can be the next winner of the X Factor. On the other hand there is always YouTube.”

So let’s all sing out with Santa:

When Santa got stuck up the chimney,
He began to shout.
You girls and boys, won’t get any toys,
If you don’t pull me out.
My beard is black, There’s soot in my sack.
My nose is tickly too.
When Santa got stuck up the chimney,
Aaachooo, achoo, achoo.

When Santa got stuck up the chimney
He began to yell
Oh hurry please it’s such a squeeze
My sack is stuck as well
Oh dear oh dear it’s cold up here
And Rudolph’s nose is blue
When Santa got stuck up the chimney
Atchoo! Atchoo! Atchoo!

There appears a general agreement that men in childcare are a good thing: the government has set a target to increase the number of men working in childcare; at LEYF we show our support for this idea by, among other things, having one of our nurseries led by a male team (8% of our staff are male, exceeding the Government target of 2%). But despite all the positive intentions, I confess to having some doubts about how the argument is phrased, and I feel we are at risk of confusing the reasons why we say we need men in childcare.

A couple of weeks ago I sent David Stevens, manager of our Angel nursery, off to Dublin to the Men in Childcare Network Annual Conference.  It was held in Ireland in the Wicklow Hills and in Dublin city, so I knew that David would have a good weekend come what may. I was right, he did have a very interesting and positive experience and the hospitality was good.  Most importantly, he was pleased to be able to connect and talk with other men interested in childcare, as they also like caring for and teaching young children and see themselves as members of a professional Early Years sector. Interestingly, David was the only man from the UK – his colleagues were Irish or Scandinavian. In any case, the remit of their debate was wide ranging.

Having gone there to represent LEYF, David felt obligated to come and give me feedback.  He was grateful for my insistence that he fly Aer Lingus.  I was worried that if I sent him on Ryan Air he might end up at an airport in the west of Ireland and never be seen again. Our subsequent conversation confirmed some of my anxieties that the debate about us needing men in childcare seems a bit nebulous. David has been examining the issue for a number of years and has given many presentations about the subject.  He comes at it from a very particular male perspective (to help you picture David, he is a shaved headed, tattoo wearing, Chelsea supporting vegetarian) and is clear that getting men into childcare has to begin from the principle that we need men who want to do the job. He also accepts that men are joining a female dominated workforce. We both agree that this type of workforce is not a bad thing, but some arguments make it seem that we need men to be part of the workforce in order to improve our pay and conditions because men won’t work for low status jobs. David and I both agreed that this is a slippery slope, as it undermines the whole sector, patronises those women who have developed the sector and sets men up as being knights on white chargers when in fact we join childcare because we like working with children, do a good job and want to make a difference.

With this in mind, if we are to develop the right strategies to attract the right kind of men, we need to have a better, more informed and intelligent discussion about why we want men in childcare. For example, I had taken the view that we need to share the men out among the nurseries. However, since David has been running his male team at the nursery, I have learned a great deal from him and changed some of my thinking and strategies about how I recruit and deploy men. For example, I no longer place men in a nursery alone if possible, rather place two together. I realised it was unfair to expect one male to reverse significant societal issues – such as family breakdown and some children neither seeing their Dad or having any male role models in their lives. By asking male staff directly, I also found that many disliked being the only man in the team.  They found it a bit scary and at times uncomfortable (easily done, as after a while women tend to forget men are men in the team and just make them part of the group).  Some men cope whilst others don’t, and find being one of the girls a bit much!

If we really want men to join us in the sector, we need to talk to them a bit more and perhaps develop the argument more coherently.  We need to think carefully about what we are asking from men, since in our zeal to increase the number of men in childcare, we may find ourselves inadvertently driving them away. Men have a tremendously important  role to play in providing children with a well rounded experience. But to expect them to readdress the gender imbalance, provide positive role models for children who had negative or no experience of men in their family and rebuild trust with women who may have been hurt or abandoned by their child’s father is asking too much.

Instead, let’s start sensibly. As women we need to welcome men into the team as colleagues and equals, not to be a particular role model.  As women who lead a female dominated sector, let’s gather our confidence and experience to lead a sector where men can play a part, but where women still lead the charge. If we think that by welcoming men into the sector we will change pay and conditions, and suddenly be seen as a more viable option, we are doing our selves a disservice.

Early Years has a history and a heritage that is female dominated.  It has a pattern of great women leaders.  It has room for men, but they are men not superheroes.  We need to encourage them because we want team members for both sexes, and we want a range of skills and interests that can be best achieved by men and women together.  We need to temper the debate for men in childcare with a rational and considered understanding of what men can do to add value.

If you have any direct experience or thoughts on how we can improve the current gender imbalance, only for the right reasons and in the right way, David and I would love to hear from you – so please use the comment box below, or drop David a line directly.

This week the chancellor announced that the government will extend the free entitlement of 15 hours of nursery education to every disadvantaged two-year-old over the next four years. This expansion will be funded by an additional investment of around £300 million per year so that by the end of 2015 about  40 per cent of all two year olds (130,000) will benefit from the new entitlement.

Good job for Mr. Osborne and a possible sop to many disenchanted women who are bearing quite a lot of the brunt of the ongoing economic slump.

The arrival of more two years olds under the free offer may be good news for many settings, especially as the grant for two year olds currently covers the real costs of provision, unlike the grant for the three and four year olds.

The rationale for providing places for those two year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds must be predicated on the research, showing how good quality childcare can improve the child’s life chances and pay dividends to the child, the family and society as a whole. It’s clearly an investment with a serious social return. Sarah Teather MP tells us that

Our priority is to increase social mobility by helping children from the poorest backgrounds in their earliest years. High quality early education is the key to making a difference early on in a child’s life. It’s crucial for their healthy development and means they’re not falling behind before they have even started primary school.

Sarah Teather MP

However, the most powerful words here are good quality. There is also a raft of research that demonstrates what good quality needs to look like, only it’s not always either interpreted or applied consistently. Ofsted still find that the lowest quality childcare remains in the poorest and most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It’s shockingly unacceptable.

One aspect of quality is the ability to understand the developmental stages of children.  For two year olds this means recognizing and celebrating the twoness of two.  There has been an inclination to overly focus on education to the detriment of care (yes I know the two are integral, but I fear not everyone knows that!), pushing small children into an inappropriate and unsuitable curriculum or environment.  Two year olds are just recent babies, and this needs to be considered as we welcome them into our nurseries and help them become independent and confident little people. It’s a skilled and sensitive role for those adults working with this group of children, and one not to be underestimated.

The experiences children receive in their early years are crucial to overall brain development. When a child has an experience, connections are formed between brain cells; so the cells are dependent on experience to create these connections. After eight months a child exposed to a nurturing and stimulating environment may already have 1,000 trillion connections created; so again these connections physically grow and develop the brain.

As such, it is primarily the early experiences and warm and consistent parents, who cuddle and talk to their children and provide fun learning experiences, that largely determine the basic strength and function of the brain’s wiring system and so promote healthy brain development for their children. By contrast, babies who do not receive consistent and caring responses to their cries, or those whose cries are met with abuse, develop brain connections to prepare them to cope in that environment. As a result their ability to learn and respond to nurturing and kindness may be impaired.

The brain organizes through a ‘use it or lose it’ process: the brain eliminates or strengthens connections in an effort to become more efficient. So, experiences that are repeated frequently lead to brain connections that are retained. It is Repetition That Makes Strong Connections. And consistency is key. The brain feels comfortable when it knows what to expect. When children learn, through repetition, that a parent (or care provider) will be there for them when needed, they can relax and feel safe.

In short, providing loving interaction, adequate amounts of sleep, healthy nutrition, time playing outdoors, physical activity, lots of creative play and exploration contributes to a child with a healthy brain.

To further explore this crucial aspect of development in the early years, we are starting a working group of staff at LEYF who care for and really understand two year olds.  We have already learnt from the Two Year Old pilot that we need to set simple benchmark assessment, help people revisit their understanding of what it means to be two and figure out a way of engaging parents to better understand and support their two year olds at home. But we cannot stop there.

If you have any thoughts or specific experiences in relation to this topic, please do add your comments below.