Relationships in Early Childhood

I watched this video tonight:  "The Power of Relationships in Early Childhood."





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bas3pr6AXM


Through their interactions with their primary caregiver, infants develop exceptions, patterns and patters.  How they are treated is the information they have of how they should feel.  It defines their core. They will elicit what they expect.

Positive:  Trust.  Competence.  Confidence.  Flexibility.  Capacity to relate.

Factors:  Temperament.  Constitutional contributors.  How do they experience stimulation?  What do they make of the relationship?  What is the right amount of stimulation for one is not the same for another.

Intrusion vs. comfort. Frustration. No predictor.  A hard to soothe baby is not predicted to have poor development.

Parent may feel less competent.  Parents ability to adapt:  effect on development.

Capacities of Babies:  actively seeking stimulation. -- Primarily:  Faces.  Perfect vision at a certain distance.

Preferred sound:  familiar voice;  high pitched;  mother/daddy--eeze.  Across genders and cultures the same:  sing-song, repetitive, high-pitched.   Babies attend to all that is human.  They learn to tell differences between different humans.

By three months of age, babies have developed different expectations, depending on with whom they are interacting.

Babies don't know how to distinguish between good and bad caregiving.   They only know what they receive, which shapes them.

Empathy is the capacity to put ourselves into the place of another.  First we must know how we feel.

Babies:  I have the capacity to relate and can form intimate, emphatic relationships.  Learned through the behaviors of others.  My positive expectations are met.

Impediments:  A parent does not meet needs.  The child only knows its experience.  Expect what they receive.   Self-doubt.  Adults are not there when you need them. I am not a good expressor of my needs. The world is not a good responder to my needs--is what is learned.

Book:  Mental Health Consultation in Child Care--Transforming Relationships among Directors, Staff and Families.  

See also this slide show:  "Ordinary Magic:  the power of relationships to build a better brain."
http://www.evelynwotherspoon.ca/evelynwotherspoon.ca/Events_&_Slide_Handouts_files/ACSLPA%202013.pptx.pdf