Democracy begins in the infant and toddler room: Reflections from the Early Childhood Australia 2025 Conference

Presenting to a room full of early childhood professionals at the 2025 Early Childhood Australia Conference in Perth was a reminder of how powerful our professional community can be. Conferences like ECA are many things, a chance to listen, to talk, and to enjoy that yearly catch-up with people you may not see otherwise. But they are also something more. When you take the time to prioritise those conversations, a space opens between what we know and what we do not yet know. And in that space, ideas shift, practices stretch, and new ways of thinking about our work begin to take shape.

What happens outside the formal session of a conference is often as important as what happens within them. The quick exchanges in corridors, the debates over coffee, the shared dismay at familiar challenges, these moments build the connective tissue of our profession. They remind us that knowledge is not only delivered from a stage; it’s co-created in conversation, curiosity, and community.

My presentation, ‘Right from the Start: Empowering Transitions for Infants and Toddlers’, invited educators to re-imagine the youngest years of life not as a rehearsal for something else, but as a living democracy. The response was encouraging. Many attendees spoke afterward about how deeply the ideas resonated, that they could see their own practice differently, that they had always ‘felt’ something important happening in those small, everyday moments but had not yet found the language for it. Others said it gave them support to slow down, to value routines, transitions and pauses as places of learning, rather than gaps in the day.

That feedback tells me something vital: this work matters because it restores significance to the ordinary. It insists that democracy does not wait for adulthood or elections, it begins right here, on the floor, in the highchair, in the sandpit.

From Readiness to Rights

When we hear the word democracy, we tend to think of elections, voting, or civic engagement. But democracy is also about recognition, belonging, and participation in the ordinary business of daily life even for our youngest citizens.

For too long, early childhood education, particularly in the infant and toddler environment has been framed through a readiness narrative: preparing children for the next stage, especially school. Within this narrative, infants and toddlers are often positioned as ‘not yet’— not yet capable, not yet competent, not yet full participants in their own lives. This forward-looking focus, however well intentioned, risks obscuring their rights and capabilities in the present.

A rights-based orientation can offer us a necessary correction. It asks us to view infants and toddlers not as future citizens, but as citizens now, capable of contribution, meaning making and influence. Every routine, every transition, every small encounter becomes a moment where we either open the door to participation or close it.

Democracy in the Everyday

The question is not how do we prepare babies for democracy, but how do we recognise the democracy that is already happening?

Consider the baby who turns their head firmly away from the spoon. The toddler who begins to bang their cup, inspiring others to join until the room fills with rhythm and laughter. The child who plants themselves on the mat when asked to go outside and is soon joined by two others.

These moments might look ordinary, but they are deeply political. In each instance, children express voice and agency: casting a protest vote, setting an agenda, or forming a coalition. They are doing democracy, negotiating power, influence, and collective action, long before they have ballots in their hands.

In our own Parliament, democracy is performed through debate, deliberation, dissent, and compromise. Members stand, speak, and are heard. Votes are cast; coalitions are formed; outcomes are shaped through dialogue and persuasion.

But if we look closely, there are lessons our politicians in Canberra could learn from the infant and toddler room.

First — the protest vote. Infants and toddlers are unambiguous. When they have had enough yoghurt, you will know about it. No ambiguity, no spin, no opinion poll required.

Second — agenda setting. Children do not wait for a three-year electoral cycle. If they want to change the plan, they say it straight: “Let’s play a new game.” Imagine how refreshing Question Time would be if politicians could cut through with that kind of honesty.

And finally — coalition building. These children know the secret: your voice gets louder when others join in. They do not need backroom deals or party whips, just a shared block tower, a common song, or a united call for “more bubbles.”

The truest parliament of democracy is not in Canberra at all, but right here in our infant and toddler rooms. The best professional development our elected representatives could have would be a day alongside toddlers, they would learn more about protest, persuasion, and coalition-building before morning tea than they do in an entire parliamentary sitting!

Edges as Sites of Participation

Democratic participation in infant and toddler settings rarely happens under the spotlight. More often, it emerges at the edges, in the movement between spaces, the transitions between experiences, and the pauses adults tend to rush through.

At the edges, infants and toddlers learn fairness, turn-taking, and recognition. They come to sense that gestures and pauses have meaning, theirs, and others’ and that participation is something lived, not granted. When we treat these messy, in-between moments as pedagogy rather than interruptions, we teach citizenship. When we smooth them away in the name of efficiency, we teach compliance

Working democratically requires a shift from designing for efficiency to designing for elasticity. The stroll to the playground, the lingering conversation at the sink, the careful putting on of shoes, these are not wasted minutes. They are the minutes when relationships form and learning happens.

Reframing transitions and routines as a democratic and rights-based curriculum is not simply a pedagogical act, it is a political one. It calls for institutional courage. Infants and toddlers cannot be rushed, and systems and leaders must enable and support educators to slow down, to notice, and to dwell in the slow world that children naturally inhabit.

This shift challenges dominant discourses of readiness, compliance, and productivity that still shape early childhood systems. It asks leaders and policymakers to value presence over coverage, participation over efficiency, and slowness over speed. It requires courage to create spaces where the smallest citizens are recognised as co-pilots of their day.

At the edges of routines, at the margins of our attention, infants and toddlers are already reshaping the world. The question is: will we meet them there?

As I left the Perth Convention Centre I thought again about those corridor conversations the laughter, the dismay, the questions that linger. Conferences remind us that democracy is not a topic; it is a practice, a way of being with one another. And that practice has never been more needed. At a time when speed, standardisation, and compliance threaten to flatten what is human in our work, reclaiming the slow, relational, and participatory heart of early childhood education is an act of courage. Across the sector, workforce shortages and exhaustion are real, but so too is the deep commitment of educators who continue to show up, to notice, and to care. It is within these edges and within these gatherings that democracy quietly endures.

Karen has a background in teaching, academia, consultancy, and writing. Her work focuses on pedagogy and the design of environments that foster curiosity, dialogue, and deep engagement with practice. She has a particular interest in infant and toddler environments and the possibilities they offer for democratic participation.