About Choosing Belonging
About This Space
Choosing Belonging is a reflective and evidence-informed space dedicated to early childhood inclusion, disability, equity, and belonging.
This site was created for early childhood educators, families, child care leaders, students, and advocates who believe that inclusion must be more than good intentions. True inclusion is about dignity, meaningful participation, relationships, access, and the everyday experience of being valued.
The writing and resources shared here are shaped by research, professional practice, lived experience, and ongoing learning. As an early childhood professional, inclusion advocate, doctoral student, and parent, I write from the intersection of scholarship, practice, and real-life experience.
Choosing Belonging is grounded in the belief that children should not have to earn belonging by being easy, quiet, compliant, or able to fit into systems that were not designed with them in mind.
Every child communicates, participates, learns, and connects in different ways. The responsibility of adults is to become more responsive, more reflective, and more willing to change the environment around the child.
Land Acknowledgement
Choosing Belonging is written from Langley, British Columbia, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish People, and wishes to acknowledge its growing relationships with the q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), Máthxwi (Matsqui), and se’mya’me (Semiahmoo) First Nations.
I acknowledge this with respect and humility, recognizing that conversations about inclusion, belonging, equity, and children’s rights must also include reflection on land, history, relationship, and responsibility.
For me, choosing belonging means continuing to learn, listen, and reflect on how early learning spaces can honour children, families, communities, cultures, and ways of knowing with greater care.
Mission
The mission of Choosing Belonging is to support early childhood educators, families, and child care leaders in thinking more deeply about inclusion as an ethical practice.
This space invites reflection beyond the question of whether a child is present in a program and toward deeper questions:
Does this child feel seen?
Does this child have meaningful ways to participate?
Does this family feel respected and heard?
Are the environments, routines, and expectations helping children belong, or are they asking children to carry the weight of exclusion?
Choosing Belonging offers blog posts, reflection questions, educator resources, and practical tools to support conversations about children’s rights, disability, behaviour as communication, family partnership, educator beliefs, leadership, and inclusive program practices.
This site is not about perfection. It is about reflection, growth, and honest questions. It is about noticing where children and families may still be excluded, even when intentions are good. It is about asking how early learning spaces can become more responsive, more humane, and more just.
At its heart, Choosing Belonging is about one belief:
Belonging is not something children should have to earn. It is something adults have a responsibility to create.