Personal Skills & Attributes

Working with children is interesting and varied. It is a job that requires careful planning and preparation, personal skills and attributes. These include skills of communication, problem-solving and the ability to work with others, here are some popular characteristics which you’ll find useful to have:

Adaptability
Every day you will find yourself changing plans due to the unpredictability of children, so be prepared to be flexible and change the structure of your day on a regular basis.

Creativity
A young child’s mind is naturally inquisitive, but you also need to trigger curiosity to help develop their learning process, as a nursery teacher or early years practitioner you’ll have a responsibility to prepare children for primary school.

Patience
Probably the most important characteristic, from feeding time to story time most duties within a nursery nurse will require patience.  At times you may feel tired, even exhausted, it’s at this point your patience will be tested!

Responsibility
Looking after babies and young children carries enormous responsibility, as you implement the daily routine of physical, emotional, social and intellectual care for children placed in the nursery.  As well as report writing for each child at the end of the day.

Resourcefulness
You never know what a day will bring, staying calm and resourceful to all types of situations is essential.

Working around children it’s also useful to have a good sense of humour!

Do you think you have the right personal skills and attributes?  Find out more about what it takes to become a teacher here.