Children Are Watching, Even When We Are Not Teaching
Imagine a preschool classroom where a teacher repeatedly says:
"Why are you always making a mess?"
"Nobody is listening today."
"I have told you a hundred times."
"That child is always a problem."
Later, during dramatic play, a child turns to another child and announces, "You're bad! You never listen!" Where did those words come from? Perhaps the child heard similar expressions at home, in school, or elsewhere. We cannot know from one interaction. But the moment invites us to consider something important:
Children learn not only from what we intentionally teach but also from what we consistently demonstrate.
I recently reflected on a statement that deserves consideration in early childhood education:
What's bad is always available, but so is what's good. The question is: What are we choosing to see?
From an early childhood perspective, I would extend that question:
What are we teaching children to see through the attitudes, language, and behaviors we demonstrate every day?
Our Brains Notice Negativity, but Our Environments Teach Us What to Do with It
Research in psychology and evolutionary anthropology offers insight into why negative experiences attract our attention. Baumeister and colleagues (2001), in their influential review Bad Is Stronger Than Good, found that negative experiences often exert a greater psychological influence than comparable positive experiences. From an evolutionary perspective, recognizing danger has been important to human survival. Noticing threats, remembering harmful experiences, and responding to uncertainty can serve protective purposes.
But that is only part of our evolutionary story.
Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others (2009), describes how cooperation, caregiving, and responsiveness to others contributed to human development. Human beings have capacities for recognizing both threats and opportunities for connection. Our tendencies do not determine our behavior. Culture, relationships, experiences, and intentional choices influence how we respond.
This distinction matters tremendously for young children. A child's developing understanding of the world is influenced by interactions with adults who interpret events, establish expectations, express emotions, and model relationships.
Children are learning what deserves their attention by observing what receives ours.
Negativity Can Become Part of the Hidden Curriculum
Every early childhood classroom has a planned curriculum. Educators organize learning experiences around language, literacy, mathematics, science, social development, and other important domains. But there is another curriculum operating throughout the day. It is communicated through tone of voice, facial expressions, conversations, responses to mistakes, and interactions among adults.
We might call it the hidden curriculum.
Children observe how teachers speak about families, respond to colleagues, manage frustration, and treat people who make mistakes. Consider these everyday experiences:
A teacher rolls her eyes when a colleague asks for help.
A director discusses a family's shortcomings within hearing distance of children.
An educator frequently describes children as difficult, lazy, disrespectful, or bad.
Another teacher responds to a child's mistake with sarcasm rather than guidance.
None of these interactions appear in the written lesson plan. Yet each communicates something about relationships, emotions, respect, and belonging.
Albert Bandura's social learning research demonstrates the importance of observational learning. Children can acquire behaviors by watching others, especially people who play significant roles in their lives. Young children do not always distinguish between what adults intend to teach and what adults demonstrate.
When negativity is consistently modeled, it can become part of what children learn about themselves and other people.
The Language We Use Can Shape a Child's Developing Identity
Consider the difference between these two statements:
"You're always disrupting the class."
And:
"You're having trouble waiting for your turn. Let's practice together."
The first attaches a negative judgment to the child. The second identifies a behavior and provides an opportunity to learn. Both recognize a challenge, but they communicate different expectations. One risks defining the child by the difficulty. The other communicates that the child has the capacity to develop new skills.
Young children are developing their self-concepts, emotional understanding, and ability to navigate relationships. When adults repeatedly communicate negative expectations, children may begin to incorporate those messages into their understanding of themselves.
Similarly, when educators acknowledge children's efforts, encourage problem-solving, and communicate confidence in their abilities, they support opportunities for competence and belonging. This does not mean every child needs constant praise. It means our feedback should be purposeful, specific, respectful, and developmentally appropriate. A child who spills paint does not need to hear, "You are so careless." The child needs guidance: "The paint spilled. Let's get something to clean it up. What could we do differently next time?"
The mistake becomes an opportunity for learning rather than a statement about the child's worth.
What Adults Say About Each Other Matters, Too
Negativity does not have to be directed at children to influence the classroom environment. Imagine two educators talking while children are nearby.
"These parents never do anything right."
"Our director doesn't know what she's doing."
"Nobody here wants to work."
"We have the worst group of children this year."
Adults may see these conversations as ordinary expressions of frustration. And frustration is a legitimate human emotion. However, when negative conversations become routine, they may affect the emotional climate and communicate patterns of blame, judgment, or disrespect. Anthropologist Charles Goodwin's research on professional vision (1994) demonstrated how professional communities learn to notice and interpret particular aspects of their environments. Applied to early childhood education, this invites an important question:
Are our professional cultures teaching educators to recognize children's strengths and possibilities, or primarily to identify deficiencies and problems?
The same question applies to how leaders view teachers.
A director who consistently searches for mistakes may create an environment where educators become hesitant to take initiative.
A leader who recognizes strengths while providing meaningful feedback may support greater confidence, collaboration, and professional judgment.
What leaders consistently notice, discuss, and reinforce can become part of the organizational culture.
Negativity Is Not the Same as Accountability
There is an important distinction that we must make. Recognizing negativity does not mean denying challenges, suppressing uncomfortable emotions, or pretending that everything is wonderful.
Early childhood educators experience real pressures: inadequate compensation, staffing shortages, demanding schedules, complex family needs, and insufficient professional support. These conditions deserve serious attention.
It would be unreasonable to tell an overwhelmed educator simply to "be more positive" without examining the circumstances contributing to that stress. Likewise, children need permission to experience sadness, anger, disappointment, and frustration. Healthy emotional development is not about eliminating uncomfortable feelings. It is about helping children recognize, express, and manage those feelings appropriately.
There is a difference between saying, "Stop being negative," and asking, "What is making this difficult, and what support would help?" There is also a difference between holding someone accountable and humiliating them.
Positive leadership does not ignore problems. It addresses problems without diminishing people.
Five Ways Educators Can Interrupt the Cycle of Negativity
Changing established patterns requires more than good intentions. It requires reflection, practice, and supportive professional cultures.
1. Notice the language you use.
Pay attention to words such as always, never, bad, difficult, and impossible. Ask whether your language describes a specific situation or places a permanent label on a person. Instead of "He never listens," try, "He needs additional support following multistep directions." Language influences how we frame challenges and consider solutions.
2. Model constructive responses to frustration.
Children benefit from observing adults manage difficult emotions. An educator might say, "I'm feeling frustrated because our plan isn't working. I'm going to think about another way to solve this." This demonstrates that frustration is manageable and that problems can lead to thoughtful action.
3. Be intentional about what receives attention.
Are children receiving more attention when they make mistakes than when they demonstrate kindness, persistence, or cooperation? Notice when a child helps a friend, approaches a problem creatively, or shows patience. Rather than offering vague praise, describe the behavior:
"You noticed your friend needed help and brought another chair. That helped everyone join the activity."
Specific feedback helps children recognize the value of their actions.
4. Examine how adults speak about families and colleagues.
Professional disagreements and concerns should be addressed respectfully, with attention to confidentiality and appropriate settings. Replace assumptions with curiosity.
Instead of "That family doesn't care," ask, "What might be making communication difficult, and how can we strengthen our partnership?"
This shift encourages understanding without dismissing legitimate concerns.
5. Create a culture of reflection rather than blame.
When something goes wrong, replace "Whose fault is this?" with questions such as:
What happened?
What might have contributed to the situation?
What did we learn?
What support or changes would improve the outcome?
These questions preserve accountability while making room for professional growth and collective problem-solving.
Teaching Children to See the Good Begins with Adults
Children deserve more than cheerful classrooms decorated with positive messages. They deserve environments where kindness is demonstrated, mistakes are treated as learning opportunities, differences are respected, and difficult emotions are handled with care. They deserve teachers who recognize their developing capabilities. They deserve leaders who support educators rather than simply evaluating their shortcomings. And they deserve families and professionals who understand that the emotional messages children receive can influence how they come to view themselves, others, and the world.
As educators, we cannot control every message children encounter. But we can become more intentional about the messages we contribute. We can recognize problems without becoming consumed by criticism. We can identify areas for improvement without overlooking strengths. We can acknowledge difficult realities while creating opportunities for hope, belonging, and meaningful change.
A Final Reflection
What's bad is always available, but so is what's good. The question is not whether children will encounter negativity. They will. The more important question is what they will learn from watching us respond to it.
Will they learn to blame or to understand?
To ridicule mistakes or to solve problems?
To search for shortcomings or to recognize possibilities?
To tear others down or to help them grow?
Every interaction is an opportunity to demonstrate the attitudes and behaviors we hope children will develop. And perhaps that is one of the most important responsibilities we carry as early childhood professionals:
We are not simply teaching children how to interpret the world. Through our everyday actions, we are demonstrating what kind of world we believe is possible.
Before we ask children to demonstrate kindness, respect, cooperation, and empathy, we must ask ourselves:
What are they seeing us practice?
Because children may not remember every lesson we teach, but the patterns of interaction they experience can leave lasting impressions.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall.
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606–633. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100
Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1c84czb
About the Author
Victoria Long-Coleman, Ph.D., MBA is the Founder and Principal of Early Childhood Innovations. An early childhood educator, leadership, coach, author, speaker, she focuses on strengthening educators, developing leaders, and translating research into practical approaches that improve early childhood systems.
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