Thriving and surviving? The incredible problem of constructions of normality and Otherness in early childhood settings

This article explores what it means today for children to survive, thrive and reach their full potential – aspirations set out nearly 25 years ago as rights in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Espoused in the principles of the early childhood curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, the spirit and intent of these aspirations are undermined by a range of normalizing strategies endemic to The Incredible Years behaviour management programme imported to promote effective management of challenging behaviour in young children. We draw here on the philosophies of Julia Kristeva and Michel Foucault to question the normalization and consequent othering of children and childhoods, problematizing what it is to be ‘normal’. We confront government ‘solutions’ for education driven more by economic rationality than by educational concern for the complexities of the early childhood context. Our analysis of the normalization of childhoods and the government of teachers as ‘behaviour managers’ culminates in a rupturing of normalizing networks and highlights possible resistances and openings, towards surviving and thriving, and potential.