If you spend enough time in education, you start to see a pattern. We latch onto an idea, roll out a series of INSET days, laminate an acronym on a poster, reduce it to four key sentences that can be stuck to a lanyard and then move onto the next initiative a year later.
Is it any wonder that nothing really changes? This isn’t progress.
In the last five years, awareness of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma and attachment has developed. But the way schools respond often feels like quick-fix buzzword bingo.
We have trauma-informed practice. Trauma-aware practice. Trauma-sensitive practice. Trauma-responsive practice.
Yet with so many variations and no shared definition, the meaning becomes diluted to the point where little changes.
Now the word “belonging” is everywhere, the latest umbrella term meant to cover trauma, attachment, neuroscience, behaviour, wellbeing and everything else we can squeeze under it.
But when a word is used too freely, it frays at the edges.
No silver bullet
And here’s the thing: there isn’t a silver bullet. Tidy uniforms, rewards trips and smiling corridor photos don’t create belonging. They create a pretence of belonging.
Belonging is something felt, a quiet, internal certainty that “I am safe here. I am known here. Even when I’m not perfect, I’m still welcome.”
And the research is clear. Belonging isn’t just a nice idea. It changes outcomes – academic, emotional, social, long-term.
One famous study used a tiny intervention to show students that social difficulty is normal and temporary.
Nothing dramatic – just reframing. Years later, those students had higher grades and stronger wellbeing. Why? Because they stopped interpreting every bump as a sign they didn’t belong.
The same principle applies in schools. How quickly we interpret difficulty as evidence a child isn’t school-ready, or that we can’t meet need, rather than what it usually is – a plea for safety and connection.
Overcomplicated
This isn’t just education. As the psychologist Ethan Kross puts it: “One of the ways we can shift from the outside-in is through our relationships with other people.
“We can build our own curated board of advisors – people who listen, empathise, normalise our experiences, and help us broaden our perspective.
“Emotions are contagious; we can catch them within seconds from the people around us. Being attentive to how we impact others emotionally, and how they impact us, is essential to managing our emotional lives.”
This is the heart of relational belonging. Our nervous systems communicate long before our words do. Children feel us. They catch our calm or absorb our chaos.
Now, it might just be me, but I think we are overcomplicating what belonging is, or at least forgetting how it feels when a sense of belonging is removed. Belonging comes from being made to feel genuinely welcome, whoever you are.
And yet for some reason we still try to manufacture belonging.
Being quiet isn’t belonging.
Compliance isn’t belonging.
Behaviour charts don’t create a sense of belonging.
Belonging is simple
Some children shout or run or lash out, not because they want to be difficult, but because their body is telling them they’re not safe enough to stay.
What creates a sense of belonging? As I type that line, it seems a ridiculous question to ask. Isn’t it obvious?
It certainly isn’t posters, behaviour policies, one-off INSET days or reward systems. It is about a cultural shift, about a commitment to an unwavering vision that applies equally to ALL children.
It’s about relational inclusion. It’s about relationships and it’s about people. People who notice. People who attune. People who remember. People whose presence settles a child’s nervous system.
When we feel like we don’t belong, we can’t concentrate on anything else. This is a normal way to feel. Belonging is a very human emotion. Research tells us belonging is powerful.
Children show us belonging is simple. If we see them, hear them, know them and accept them for who they are, everything changes.
And when that happens, they try, they learn, and they come back tomorrow. Not because of a sticker chart. But because they belong.
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