At the recent Little People, Big Dreams Conference in Darwin, I had the pleasure of listening to Lael Stone speak about children’s behaviour, emotional wellbeing and the importance of connection.
One of the messages that really resonated with me was something Lael said early in her presentation:
“Children do better when they feel better.” — Lael Stone
It’s such a simple statement, yet it has enormous implications for how we approach children’s behaviour in early childhood settings.
Lael encouraged us to look beyond what children are doing and instead become curious about what might be happening beneath the surface. She spoke about how children’s external behaviours are often a reflection of their internal emotional state.
A child who is hitting, withdrawing, refusing to participate or becoming easily overwhelmed isn’t necessarily being deliberately difficult. They may be communicating something they don’t yet have the words, confidence or emotional capacity to express. As I listened, I found myself thinking about Aboriginal children and the importance of cultural safety.
Because if children do better when they feel better, we need to ask ourselves a much bigger question:
How can Aboriginal children feel emotionally safe in environments where they don’t feel culturally safe?
Belonging Is More Than Being Included
In early childhood education, we talk about belonging constantly. It’s the first word in our national learning framework, Belonging, Being and Becoming. It’s written into our philosophies, displayed on our walls and embedded throughout our quality improvement plans. But what does belonging actually feel like for an Aboriginal child?
Is belonging simply having their photograph displayed in the room? Is it having an Aboriginal flag hanging in the foyer? Is it participating in an Acknowledgement of Country each morning? These things may contribute to a culturally inclusive environment, but they don’t automatically create a sense of belonging.
Belonging is relational.
It’s about knowing that the people around you see you, value you and understand the things that matter to you. For Aboriginal children, this includes their cultural identity, their connections to family and community, their relationships with Country, and the knowledge and experiences they bring from home.
Imagine a child entering an early childhood service where their family structures are unfamiliar to educators, their ways of communicating are misunderstood, and the people, places and experiences that are important to them are rarely reflected in the curriculum. They may be physically included in the environment, but are they experiencing genuine belonging?
And if they’re not, what impact might that have on their emotional wellbeing?
Cultural Safety Is Emotional Safety
One of the things I appreciated about Lael’s presentation was her emphasis on the relationship between emotional safety and connection. She spoke about the importance of children having adults who can remain present when they’re experiencing big feelings. Adults who don’t immediately judge, punish or attempt to fix everything.
Adults who are willing to listen.
For Aboriginal children, I believe this sense of safety must also include cultural safety. A child needs to know that their Aboriginal identity is not something they have to leave at the door when they enter an early childhood service. They shouldn’t have to choose between belonging to their family and community and belonging to their educational environment. Their culture shouldn’t be treated as an occasional topic or an additional experience that educators incorporate when time permits.
It should be recognised as an important part of who they are. This means creating environments where Aboriginal children can see their families, cultures, languages and communities meaningfully reflected. It means recognising that relationships with extended family and kinship networks may be central to children’s lives.
It means understanding that connections to Country, community and cultural identity can be important protective factors for children’s social and emotional wellbeing. And perhaps most importantly, it means building genuine relationships with families rather than making assumptions about what culture and identity mean for an individual child. Because cultural safety isn’t something educators can simply declare that they’ve achieved.
It’s something experienced by the children and families who enter our services.
Connection Before Correction
Lael challenged us to reconsider how we respond when children become emotionally overwhelmed. She described three broad approaches to children’s behaviour. An authoritarian approach attempts to control behaviour through power, threats or punishment. A permissive approach tries to remove every source of discomfort or disappointment.
A more democratic, relationship-based approach maintains clear boundaries while providing emotional support. What resonated with me was her description of adults remaining calm and grounded while children experience their emotions. Lael compared this to being a tree.
Rooted. Steady. Present.
I think there’s a valuable connection here to relational learning and Aboriginal pedagogies. Within Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing, relationships are fundamental to learning. Learning doesn’t happen in isolation from people, place and community. It happens through connection.
This is something I speak about regularly in my Eight Ways of Learning workshops. We can become so focused on the content we’re teaching, the experiences we’re planning and the outcomes we’re documenting that we overlook the relationships that make meaningful learning possible. The same can happen when we’re responding to behaviour.
We become focused on stopping the behaviour rather than understanding the child.
We ask: “How do I get this child to stop?”
When perhaps the more useful questions are:
- “What is this child communicating?”
- “What might they need from me right now?”
- “Do they feel safe and connected in this environment?”
And importantly:
“Have I invested enough time in building a relationship with this child and their family to understand what safety and connection look like for them?”
This doesn’t mean removing boundaries or allowing children to hurt themselves or others. It means recognising that boundaries and connection can exist together. Children can be supported to understand expectations while still knowing they are loved, valued and accepted.
The Role of Country, Culture and Community in Regulation
When we talk about emotional regulation, we often focus on individual strategies. Breathing exercises. Calm-down corners. Sensory tools. Feelings charts. These can all be useful when they’re responsive to the individual child. But I wonder whether our conversations about regulation have become too focused on the individual child and not enough on the relationships and environments surrounding them.
For Aboriginal children, opportunities to connect with Country, culture, family and community can support a broader sense of identity, belonging and wellbeing. Think about the opportunities that exist when children spend time outdoors with familiar, trusted adults.
When they return to the same places and develop relationships with their surroundings. When they hear their home languages spoken. When they participate in cultural experiences alongside family and community members. When they see Aboriginal people represented positively in books, photographs, learning materials and everyday conversations.
These experiences aren’t simply additional cultural activities.
They can contribute to children feeling grounded, recognised and connected. Of course, we must avoid treating Aboriginal culture as a therapeutic intervention or assuming that one cultural experience will regulate every Aboriginal child. Cultural connections are personal, relational and shaped by family and community.
But surely, when we’re thinking about children’s emotional wellbeing, these connections deserve a much more prominent place in our conversations.
We Need to Listen Differently
Towards the end of her presentation, Lael spoke about three things young people had told her they wanted from adults. They wanted adults to listen without judging. They wanted adults to listen without immediately trying to fix things. And they wanted adults to listen without becoming emotionally caught up in the situation themselves.
I found this particularly powerful. It also reminded me of Dadirri, the practice of deep listening shared by Aboriginal Elder Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann. Dadirri comes from a specific Aboriginal cultural knowledge system and should be respected as such, rather than reduced to a generic mindfulness strategy. However, Miriam-Rose’s teachings about stillness, patience and deep listening offer an important invitation to reflect on how we engage with children.
- How often do we genuinely make space to listen?
- Not just to children’s words, but to their silences, gestures, movements and ways of being?
- How often do we observe without immediately interpreting?
- How often do we allow children time to communicate in their own ways?
- And how often are we so busy managing the environment that we miss what children are trying to tell us?
For me, this is where emotional wellbeing, cultural responsiveness and relational pedagogy intersect. We cannot truly understand children if we’re unwilling to listen to them.
And we cannot listen meaningfully if we’re not prepared to question our own assumptions.
What Can Educators Do Differently?
If we want Aboriginal children to feel safe, connected and supported, there are some practical questions we can begin asking within our services.
1. Examine whose identities are reflected in your environment.
Can Aboriginal children see their families, cultures and communities represented in authentic and meaningful ways? Is this representation part of everyday practice rather than reserved for significant dates?
2. Strengthen relationships with families.
Ask families what helps their children feel safe, settled and connected. Learn about the important people in children’s lives, their preferred ways of communicating and the experiences that bring them joy.
3. Reflect on your behavioural expectations.
Are you interpreting children’s behaviour through a narrow cultural lens? Could a child’s communication style, need for connection or way of participating be misunderstood?
4. Prioritise co-regulation and connection.
When children are overwhelmed, focus first on safety, calm presence and relational support. Save complex explanations and problem-solving for when children are ready to engage.
5. Create opportunities for connection to Country and community.
Work with local Aboriginal families and community members to explore meaningful, ongoing opportunities for children to build relationships with place, culture and community.
6. Listen to children in multiple ways.
Recognise that children communicate through play, movement, drawing, observation, silence and relationships, not just spoken language.
7. Reflect on your own emotional responses.
When a child becomes upset, what happens inside you? Do you feel compelled to stop the behaviour immediately? Can you remain present without judging or escalating the situation?
And importantly, consider how your own experiences, cultural background and beliefs about behaviour might influence the way you respond.
Belonging Before Behaviour
As I reflect on Lael Stone’s keynote, I keep coming back to the relationship between belonging and behaviour. We often expect children to regulate their emotions, participate cooperatively and engage positively with others. But are we giving them the relational and cultural foundations they need to do those things?
For Aboriginal children, feeling safe is not simply about having predictable routines and calm educators. It’s also about knowing that their identity is valued. That their family belongs. That their culture belongs. That their ways of communicating and learning are respected. And that the adults around them are genuinely interested in understanding who they are.
Perhaps the next time we find ourselves responding to a child’s challenging behaviour, we could begin with a different question.
Not simply, “How can I help this child regulate?” But: “What have we done to help this child feel that they truly belong?” Because children shouldn’t have to behave in a particular way to earn connection, acceptance or belonging.
Those things should be the foundation from which everything else grows.
This article was inspired by Lael Stone’s keynote on understanding children’s behaviour and emotional wellbeing at the Little People, Big Dreams Conference, hosted by Child Australia in Darwin, October 2026. The reflections on Aboriginal children’s cultural safety, identity and belonging are my own.
