Workaversary
By Colin Denby Swanson, MFA MBA
Executive Director, Mainspring Schools
This is my 7th “work-aversary” – the anniversary of joining Mainspring’s staff.
I’ve shared previously that I first came to this remarkable organization as a foster-adopt parent in 2014, when my son was two. His teachers met him with joy every day, even when he had long stretches of challenging behaviors and needs. Moreover, they met me with joy every day, even when I was a tired wreck of a human – and had my own challenging behaviors and needs. The community of Mainspring caregivers filled me back up when I felt like I had run out of fuel.
Today, my son is 11, and he still says that “Mainspring feels like home.”
I’ll say right up front that foster care is hard and complex. It is built upon systemic inequities. Family separation is traumatizing for kids and caregivers. There is a lot of privilege and pain in the use of the possessive "my" when referring to kids who were in my care. Adoption is not a panacea, either. I am grateful every day that my son’s birth mother decided to trust me to raise her child.
My foster mentor had 45 children; at a training, I met a woman who had fostered 200. These folks are the Olympic athletes of the fostering world. In contrast, with just four, I never graduated from being a community T-ball player.
Of my four, I enrolled three at Mainspring. One returned to birth parents. My last kiddo left my home for a kinship placement – in other words, a member of the bio family but not the mom or dad. The folks at Mainspring supported each of us.
It had been a wrenching and difficult case. A CPS worker called late one evening to ask if I could take a two-month old for an emergency placement. She said, “Yours is the only foster home that is available for an infant within 90 miles.”
Our home wasn’t even technically available. The highs and lows of fostering were intense. So my license and I were, like Ross and Rachel, “on a break.”
But I was open to flattery.
When my very first kiddo arrived at my house, he didn’t eat, sleep, or talk. He’d witnessed or been victim to significant violence, even as a toddler. If he nodded off at all, he’d jerk awake, screaming, drenched in a cold sweat. Nighttime had just been regularly unsafe. My other two foster kiddos were newborns. They didn’t eat, sleep, or talk either, but for different reasons.
“With your experience,” the CPS worker assured me, “a little ol’ two-month old will be a piece of cake.”
It was not a piece of cake.
The baby arrived with more severe physical and emotional trauma than I had imagined was possible for that age. He’d been confined to his car seat pretty much 24/7. His head was misshapen from leaning against the padded interior. His neck was stiff and rotated from torticollis. Without any physical movement, his back and hip muscles had frozen up. He couldn’t tolerate a swaddle or a baby carrier. Bouncers merely made him mad. Once he experienced being held, he refused to be set down for any length of time - but he could only be held vertically without pain. He slept for 30-40 minutes at a stretch during the night, and not at all during the day. He would scream so hard and for so long that I honestly worried he was going to have a stroke.
As with my other kiddos, Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) therapists were a crucial support. This baby had two of them as well as a host of medical specialists. And he had Jen as his teacher in Mainspring’s Bluebonnet classroom.
Today, Jen has been at Mainspring for 18 years. She has worked exclusively with infants for half that time. She’s really good at it. She is a phenomenal educator for our tiniest learners.
Some of you may be thinking, “What do you mean, ‘education?’ This is just child care.”
No.
At least 85% of brain development happens before the age of 3. And by “brain development,” I don’t mean the number of brain cells but the growth of synaptic connections between them. Up to a million synaptic connections per second in the first year. The synaptic connections that are utilized most often are the ones that grow. The synaptic connections that are not utilized are pruned away.
If all the brain's energy is spent on basic needs, if the synaptic connections about food and safety are the only ones being utilized, then they are the only ones that will thrive. Not language centers. Not the ability to regulate emotions. Not executive functioning skills. Just plain survival.
We generally assume that education “starts” at age 6 or 7, when a child starts school. We think of education as reading, math, learning facts. But education is actually a nervous system experience that starts with a child’s earliest moments – in that it is the capacity of the brain to flourish.
By the time the child is school-age, their synaptic connections are pretty much established. Can they still grow new ones? Sure. Can they repattern old habits or fears? Sure. But it's harder. The open window is really before traditional school.
Education builds brains by building trust. Even the Latin root “educare/educere” relates to the idea of nourishment, drawing from the inside out. Nourishment is about safety. Not objective safety. Felt safety.
Education starts with play, because the brain can not be in play and fear at the same time.
It starts with teachers like Jen. She makes play look easy. And it’s not.
The two-month old foster baby saw his ECI therapists on alternating weeks. Jen continued their strategies for his neck and spine mobility on days between appointments. She held him, comforted him, emphasized eye contact, engaged him in mirroring and serve-and-return conversations, and scaffolded his ability to self-soothe. She helped him learn to play.
His learning exploded.
He pulled up to standing at 6 months. He began to strengthen his neck and move his head. He eagerly looked for my son each morning and made happy cooing sounds when they saw each other. He formed ferocious attachments. In fact, everything he did was ferocious. He grew at an astonishing rate.
Eight months in, a biological family member’s home study was approved for a kinship placement. CPS decided to move the baby to their home. We were fortunate to have a couple of weeks to make the transition happen. I was sad and relieved. We had been through so much, a long walk through fire. I still felt very protective about him, but I was also really tired.
The family was impressed with Mainspring’s trauma-responsive environment. They decided to keep the baby enrolled at Mainspring. They also wanted to support the baby’s strong connection to my son and figure out what a relationship with me might look like. For this I was deeply grateful. I was also deeply challenged. The foster system can set up divisive feelings between foster and biological family members, each of whom may believe they have the child’s best interests at heart. But in our situation, we navigated through the transition and their first year together with the help of Mainspring’s Director of Family Services, who modeled respect and support in profound ways for everybody.
For 12 months, the baby built his sense of continuity and stability in the infant center, and then in a one-year old classroom. He got to see his “big brudder” every day. I got to see his parents relish their new role in his life, and go through a legal adoption process, and make plans for their future. We spent time at Mainspring’s monthly Family Suppers together, making crafts and sharing food. So, in fact, we built trust through playful engagement.
Today that baby is 8 years old. He’s thriving in school. We still are in touch. The family keeps a picture of my son in his room. The boy wakes up every day and looks for him.
I still feel the impact of Mainspring’s mission, vision, and values every day. I am so grateful for the deep educational work that our teachers and staff do with children and families. I've been one of those families.
This place changes lives. It changed mine.
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#earlychildhoodeducation #nonprofit #fostercare #leadership #workaversary
Originally posted on LinkedIn.
