Picture a child at the edge of the room. He isn’t causing trouble. He isn’t asking for anything. He is simply there: lining up the cars along the windowsill, again and again, while the busy, cheerful life of the nursery flows around him.
He is safe. He is fed. He is, on paper, included.
But is he seen?
I have walked into a great many nurseries in my life, as a principal, as an inspector and as a visitor. And I can tell you that the true measure of a setting is not how it cares for the confident, chatty child who runs to greet you at the door. It is how it cares for the child who doesn’t.
Inclusion is not a policy. It is a promise.
Every setting has an inclusion policy. Every setting says it welcomes children with special educational needs and disabilities. But I want to say something uncomfortable: a child can be on the register, in the room and in every photograph, and still not truly belong.
Inclusion is not about where a child sits. It is about whether the adults around them have taken the trouble to understand them: what delights them, what frightens them, how they communicate, what they are trying to tell us, and what they can do.
That last point matters enormously. Too often, children with additional needs are described only by what they can’t do: can’t sit still, can’t share, can’t talk yet, can’t cope with change. Read enough of those descriptions and you stop seeing a child at all. You see a list of problems.
I refuse to accept that. And I believe every practitioner who chose this work refuses it too.
Seeing the child, not the label
At the heart of all my work is a simple idea I call the Influence of Noticing: what adults notice shapes what they think, what they do and the culture they create, and that culture shapes children’s lives.
For children with SEND, this is not abstract. It is everything.
- If we notice only the behaviour, we will respond with management. If we notice what the behaviour is telling us, we will respond with understanding.
- If we notice only the delay, we will see a deficit. If we notice the tiny steps forward, we will see a child who is learning, in their own way and at their own pace.
- If we notice only the diagnosis, or wait for one, we may lose months of support. If we notice early, and act with care, we can change the course of a child’s life.
The little boy with the cars may be telling us a great deal. He may love order in a world that feels chaotic. He may be finding comfort in repetition. He may be waiting for someone to sit beside him, line up a car of their own, and wait to see what he does next. That is where inclusion begins: with one adult who notices, and wonders, and stays.
Why this matters now
More children are coming into early years with additional needs, and many settings are stretched to breaking point. Waiting lists for assessments are long. Specialist support can be hard to reach. Practitioners, many of whom trained during the Covid years with little hands-on experience, are often left to work it out alone.
I understand the pressure. But the child cannot wait for the system to catch up. The early years are when support makes the greatest difference, and the people with the greatest opportunity to notice are the ones in the room every day: you.
What a truly inclusive setting does
- It notices early, and records what it sees with curiosity, not judgement.
- It talks to families, who know their child better than anyone, and who may have been worried for a long time.
- It adapts the environment: quieter corners, visual timetables, predictable routines, time to process.
- It builds on strengths, using a child’s passions as the doorway to learning.
- It values every form of communication: words, signs, gestures, pictures, and the meaning in behaviour.
- It supports staff, so that no practitioner feels they are facing a child’s needs alone.
- It celebrates progress of every size, because for some children, a single shared glance is a triumph.
Three questions for your setting this week
- Is there a child in your setting who is present, but not yet truly seen?
- When you describe a child with additional needs, do you start with what they can do?
- Does every member of your team feel confident to notice, and supported to act?
To every practitioner who has sat beside a child at the edge of the room
You may never know what that moment meant. To you, it was five minutes on a busy morning. To that child, it may have been the first time an adult stepped into their world rather than asking them to step into ours.
That is inclusion. That is what it means for every child to be seen.
My book Every Child Seen: Inclusion, SEND and Belonging in Early Years Settings supports practitioners in including children with SEND, neurodiversity or additional needs, focusing on what each child can do and how settings can make sure every child belongs. It’s Book Five in the Strong Foundations series.
Get the Belonging and Participation Snapshot free. Join Nursery Matters and I’ll send it straight to your inbox, ready to print as many copies as you need. Complete it with the people who know a child in different situations, to see where joining in is easy, where it needs support and where it’s out of reach.
