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In a rush? Here’s a quick breakdown:
When I first met Prerna Richards, I didn’t want to leave the call. With her expertise in neuroscience and challenging behavior, and Famly's deep commitment to improving the lives of childcare providers, we could have talked for hours. We both fully believe in the power of helping educators turn stress into joy.
I knew I had to have another call where I could record it and share it with other early childhood professionals.
Prerna has been in the early childhood sector for 39 years. She has been a director, program director, vice president of a division and is now a keynote speaker, behavior coach and NAEYC consultant.
“I love it, love it, love it. I think the more time I spend in it, the more passionate I become about it, because [it becomes more and more apparent] that what we are doing in the early years matters, and these are such critical years…Also I'm recognizing that so many people don't recognize how important these early years are, so it really reignites my passion for the work that I do.”
Over time she has realized that her true passion is professional development with a very niche focus: neuroscience, challenging behavior, stress and emotions in early childhood - “not just for the children, but also for the staff.” This is what prompted Together We Grow about 6 and a half years ago.
It’s no secret that stress and anxiety in the early childhood profession is a common struggle (in 2022, 45% of childcare staff reported feeling burnt out and stressed and a more recent study shows that it’s on the rise!) While coaching and connecting with various childcare providers over the last year, Prerna saw a strong need for handling and coping with stress in both their personal lives and work lives. So, she “started doing this work with the emphasis on transforming from stress to joy, intentionally and purposefully.
“I read somewhere the other day, the emotional needs of Americans in general is 80 to 90% of us don't have our emotional needs met. Think about that. We are not having our emotional needs met, and it's a thing. It's a part of being human. If your needs are not met, we’re gonna act out.”
Stress commonly shows up in two ways: external, loud, explosive behaviors, or on the contrary, one becomes suppressed and shut down. This is what many refer to as the idea of fight or flight.
Prerna continues to explain that there are three types of stress.
Research shows that chronic toxic stress affects our digestive system and gut health. Prerna shares her personal story, and how a year filled with toxic stress has impacted her physical health and resulted in a medical diagnosis. This was a huge motivator in her decision to focus on turning stress into joy.
“This is the message I want to spread out in the field of early childhood…The work we do in the early childhood field is very demanding, very stressful, and nobody's telling us that chronic toxic stress is going to give us lifetime diseases. So stress is real.”
So how do we avoid toxic and long term stress?
First, let’s talk about joy. Then we’ll talk about how stress and joy relate.
Prerna said that her grandchild summarized joy best, “Joy is something you can’t live without. It makes your heart light and you need it in your life.”
The emotion of joy is actually a direct contradiction to stress.
Prerna has one of the best analogies for distinguishing stress and joy.
Prerna continues to highlight the clear contrast between joy and stress that seems so obvious, but I have never heard it so clearly and powerfully.
As Prerna says, “But if you understand this, I think this is where the magic happens. If you understand that joy is an emotion that stays in the background, and joy is a choice, and joy is an option, and joy has to be invited.”
So now that we’ve cleared up that stress and joy can’t coexist, how do we turn our stress into joy? How do we “make the magic happen?” How do we actively choose to invite joy?
“What we are doing, the amount of stress that is in early childhood programs right now is not working. This is not working. Parenting is hard, teaching is hard. Unless we do something different intentionally and purposefully, and it's a choice [we have] to make.”
I'm sure you've heard terms like, "reducing stress and burnout" or "stress management." Turning stress into joy is a similar concept, but it adds an extra dimension. You’re not just looking to decrease stress, but you’re actively trying to replace that stress with a much more positive, rewarding experience.
According to Prerna, turning stress into joy is a mindshift.
When she says this, she often gets the same reaction:
“I'm already exhausted and tired, and now you want me to watch my mindset in words?!” But then she clarifies that “this is not about being perfect. This is about being intentional and purposeful. It's about quality over quantity. Nobody expects anybody to be fully on 100% all the time.”
I was trying to imagine how I would change my mindset and turn my stress into joy (if you know me, you know I’m quite the stressful, overthinking, anxious type 😂). But, it felt like I would just be “faking it until I make it” (and also if you know me, you know I value genuineness, authenticity and ‘keeping it real’). So how do I train myself to turn stress into joy?
Simply, turning stress into joy and inviting joy into my life didn’t feel too natural to me. Prerna quickly responded, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not faking it,” and laid out tangible steps to facilitate that mind shift.
I loved when Prerna says, “the task is the task.” It’s so obvious, but I’ve never really paused to think about that and it’s so true! The items on your to-do list don’t go away and won’t change. So, how stressful or tolerable - or enjoyable - the tasks are is up to you and what you tell your brain.
“The brain just believes whatever we feed it. You know our brain only weighs 3 pounds but it dictates everything that we do.”
Prerna continues to share something that she has learned from all the speaking and coaching she does:
Joy is not only related to what we tell our brains, but what we are willing to say out loud. So many of us are afraid of “recogniz[ing] our strengths, gifts and talents,” and that robs us of joy.
Prerna explains:
Our innate abilities and skills remain constant (just like a task or item on your to-do list remains the same). But, the level of joy we experience is directly influenced by whether we acknowledge, appreciate, and openly express these talents. Again, it’s a mindshift. Nothing about us has changed, but whether we allow ourselves to embrace it openly or hide it and suppress it, will influence our level of joy.
I understood - and completely agreed with - what Prerna was explaining, but it still didn’t feel practical to me.
I haven’t worked in early childhood education, but I’m an aunt of five children under the age of five, and after spending hours with them, I’m ready for a break. It’s a ton of fun, but it’s also exhausting and can bring stress levels up a bit. So I can’t imagine how hard it would be to keep practicing self-talk and actively trying to shift my mind to invite joy into my day-to-day while working with children 5 or 6 days a week, 10 hour days.
Here’s some tangible actions that Prerna recommended.
Have you heard of joy juice? I’ll let Prerna explain!
Prerna talks about how - in many ways - adults are making it so much harder on themselves. Instead of focusing so much on disciplining and correcting, we need to focus on connecting.
“Work in early childhood is very demanding and it's very hard work. There's no two ways around it. You can't dance around it. Being with little humans [is] full on. You don't get a moment, you don't get the luxury of just checking out, right? But what I will say is, what I'm noticing is parents and teachers, we are making it harder for ourselves than we need to.
To help you connect, and not correct, Prerna suggests the following sentence starters:
These simple sentence starters foster connection over correction because it forces the adult to slow down, observe and be present.
When adults are focusing on correcting, they are doing the opposite of encouraging play - even if they don't mean to. Adults might not realize this, but it’s not just taking the joy away from the children, but also from themselves.
“A lot of us are getting very exhausted with young children because children are getting frustrated because they don't feel seen and heard and understood by the grown-ups. The grown-ups are feeling frustrated because the children don't understand and don't follow the rules. And so we're doing this, and, and the stress right now is off the charts.”
Prerna emphasizes that connecting or enabling play doesn’t mean that you are granting permission:
“I'm gonna go over there and I'm gonna ask, I noticed that you're throwing the blocks. What's going on? And he's gonna tell me, oh, so and so knocked it down, or so and so. There's a story, right? I'm allowing that child to express whatever it is that caused them to, oh, I understand your friend threw it away. We can't throw the blocks. I understand that, but the throwing the blocks is not a choice. You see, I'm still holding boundary.”
Prerna introduces another one of her acronyms, KLFF, as a guideline for adults on how to connect, while also enforcing boundaries.
We’ve all had those moments where you’re at your absolute limit, and it is truly impossible to focus on intentionally adding joy.
Here’s a reminder of all the tips Prerna has mentioned throughout this conversation
However, I also asked for some tips specifically for those directors who are constantly wearing a stack of hats at one time.
Here’s a specific example that Prerna coached a director on.
I was chuckling as Prerna told this story because I know how difficult her suggestion would be for me. My reactive brain definitely responds before my calm brain.
And when I told her that, she instantly asked, “What is the definition of insanity?” I knew she was right as I said, “Doing the same thing over and over again.”
What a lot of us are currently doing is fostering a more stressful, less joyful, life so simply, “we have to DSD. We have to do something different.”
If the stress is chronic, and if the stress is too much, then I'm choosing to make a decision that I'm going to do life different…But what I'm realizing is that it's not the outside that is going to change the stress that is inside. It has to come from inside. And yeah, it's the hardest thing to change a grown-up mind. It's the hardest thing, right? We become who we are… And it's really hard to change that, but there's hope because the brain is the most flexible, pliable thing we have and it can be done.”
Please note: here at Famly we love sharing creative activities for you to try with the children at your setting, but you know them best. Take the time to consider adaptions you might need to make so these activities are accessible and developmentally appropriate for the children you work with. Just as you ordinarily would, conduct risk assessments for your children and your setting before undertaking new activities, and ensure you and your staff are following your own health and safety guidelines.
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