The psychomotrician’s role in nursery 

Translated by Jeremy Damond

The psychomotrician’s work in nursery is « transversal » : It results of the collaboration of the nursery direction (in accordance with the nursery pedagogic project), the childcare staff (childcare assistants, educators, nurses, psychologists), and a direct work with the children, both individual work or group work (observation, games, awareness, specific meet and greet for handicap children). 
The psychometrician also can, at some points, have to meet and exchange with the parents if a specific demand is expressed. 

 
The psychomotrician’s role and place with the nursery staff

The psychometrician’s work at the nursery is complementary with all the other childhood’s professionals ’s works : He brings a different and necessary approach and vision.

First of all, the nursery’s psychomotrician closely collaborate with the nursery’s manager and brings a « psychomotor » lecture and vision on the pedagogic projects of the establishment. He gives advices, He shares remarks and suggestions based on his knowledge and  experience.

Further more, the psychometrician put, on a constant bases, an exterior, different and complementary look, on the children’s evolution and on the actions to settle at the nursery.

The staff can express to the psychomotrician : Specific demands, remarks and observations regarding the reception, support, development and integration of children, especially regarding the handicap ones. The psychomotrician has to be flexible and reactive to be able to respond to the staff questions and to intervene the best efficient way to any situations.

He can « advice » the staffs, and guide them to adjust their actions if it’s necessary.

The psychometrician’s actions also have a « pedagogic » purpose to the other professionals. He shares his knowledge, like for exemple the understanding of the child’s tonic organisation, his psychomotor development (which is unique to each individual), his behavior (bites and aggressiveness which is normal at their age), to enhance the frame and evolution of the children, especially for the handicap ones, inside the nursery.

The psychomotrician’s role and place with the children

The nurseries can welcome children until the age of 6, but due to the admissions to preschool, they are mostly under the age of 3. At this age, children acquire a huge amount of sense-motor skills.

The psychometrician's role is to assist their discoveries. He directly intervenes with the children, in all sections, and participate to the activities. He is guiding them, supporting them and also trying to assure their potentials by using specifics situations, materials and a careful choice of words.

More specifically, the psychomotrician has a particular attention to children’s tonus, to their sensorial development awakeness, cognition, motor, corporal and psycho-affective and to their behavior based on the interactions with others and their environment. His observations allow him to evaluate the child’s skills and his needs. It seems very important that the psychometrician participate to all different activities with them : his observations are through interactions and relationships. The staff observations enrich the psychomotrician’s ones.

The psychomotrician can also follow, more in particular, some children, as exemple the handicap ones. To help them into their nursery’s integration, to stimulate their discoveries and psychomotor development.

The psychomotrician's actions to the nursery’s children can be qualified as « educative ».

To conclude, The staffs’s daily investments are necessary to be able to offer the richest psychomotor experiences to the children. The psychomotrician’s interventions brings support, advices and precious tools to make them happen.
The psychomotrician leads brainstorming sessions with the others about what could be established, based on the analyzes on children needs (at precise time), space, time, equipment and necessary support. He also thinks about the actions’s evolution that could be done.