Wellbeing in the early years: The Leuven Scale
{{centre}}
Wellbeing in the early years: The Leuven Scale
{{justify}}
Emotional wellbeing refers to ones ability to experience, express, and regulate emotions. This includes the ability to be aware of others' emotions, and use this awareness to foster close relationships, all the while letting emotions guide the exploration of their environment to foster learning and growth. In young children, this is a fundamental but largely tacit process, as the skills to comprehensively understand, express and discuss emotions come with later development.
At Komodo, we are often asked by schools how they can best support the emotional wellbeing development of their younger students, who, depending on age and a myriad of other developmental factors, do not always possess the ability to identify and regulate their own emotions. There is a magnitude of research based approaches to undertake when wanting to measure a child's wellbeing and development. One of these tools is the Leuven Scale, which can easily be used by parents, teachers or any other person who is spending time with a child to get an overall gauge of the child’s emotional wellbeing.
The Leuven scale is a 5-point scale that allows those working directly with children to measure a child’s emotional wellbeing and involvement based on behavioural observation. According to the Leuven Scale, created by a team of researchers led by Dr. Ferre Laevers at Leuven University in Belgium, wellbeing is a spectrum, and as a result, can be difficult to measure. A child can display very high or very low levels of wellbeing, or may fall somewhere in between.
Children with perceived high wellbeing often appear to be in their element, are at ease, confident and resilient, leading them to be able to explore, experiment and be creative, fostering healthy development. Observable behaviours in children that signify wellness include concentration, creativity, adaptability, effort, enthusiasm, engagement, persistence, accuracy, alertness, expression (verbal and non verbal), openness, spontaneity, receptiveness, flexibility, confidence, assertiveness, protectiveness, enjoyment and satisfaction. Children who display these characteristics often continue to develop higher levels of self confidence, self esteem and resilience, leading to overall higher levels of wellness. As wellbeing is a spectrum, a child can display these characteristics mildly, indicating moderate wellness, or more intensely, indicating higher wellness.
In contrast, children with perceived low wellbeing are children who appear to be disconnected to or distressed by their environment. Disconnected children appear withdrawn, isolated and checked out. In contrast, distressed children may appear fearful, clingy, anxious and reactive. In both instances, these children find it challenging to explore, play or engage with others in appropriate ways. Again, the more the child displays these symptoms, the higher their level of internal distress or disconnect they may be experiencing. In contrast, only somewhat displaying these symptoms can indicate lower but still moderate levels of wellbeing.
It is important to consider what characteristics a child displays most of the time, as there are some days where external factors will influence wellbeing on a singular day. For example, a child who is usually lively and engaged may present as low and withdrawn after a bad night's sleep. While teachers are not mental health professionals, and at times seeking out professional intervention is advised, there are simple steps teachers can take to monitor and support wellbeing in the early years, such as observing how children are presenting and engaging with their environments; taking time to regularly observe these signs within an educational setting can be an indicator of which children may need more support.
Additionally, wellbeing enhancement can come from anyone and anywhere. Whether its teachers, parents, or other key people in the child's life, role modelling ones own ability to regulate emotions, normalising emotions and encouraging healthy expression of emotions encourages children from an early age to be aware of emotions. This process can be facilitated with resources such as the Zones of Regulation and the Emotion Thermometer. These formative experiences and exposures are the building blocks for wellness in later life. Just like their bodies, children's brains are a developing muscle, one which continues to develop well into early adulthood. Young brains have a lot of neuroplasticity, meaning children learn things with speed and ease. The more they engage in something, the more solid that becomes in their mind. Therefore, when a child's emotional wellbeing is encouraged in such a way, they have a strong foundation for developing wellness.
Tools and frameworks such as PERMA-V, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and The Leuven Scale are helpful ways to introduce direction in your wellbeing journey. Here at Komodo we are passionate about helping educators understand and improve the wellbeing of their students, if we equip them with skills for emotion recognition and regulation from a young age we can plant the seeds for a strong sense of self and understanding of wellbeing that will long term produce resilient, empathetic and kind humans.
{{justify}}
Check out the downloadable resource below to learn more about how to observe your students placement on The Leuven Scale and what that means for their behaviour and wellbeing.
If you would like to learn more about managing wellbeing in your school talk to our team today.
{{CTA}}
