Nurturing Children and Families (Building on the Legacy of T. Berry Brazelton) || Developing the Infant Mental Health Workforce

✍ Scribed by Lester, Barry M.; Sparrow, Joshua D.

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2010
• Weight: 536 KB
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 1405196009
• DOI: 10.1002/9781444324617.ch24

✦ Synopsis

The responsibility for fostering nurturing relationships and repairing disruptions during infancy and early childhood is not just the province of mental health professionals. A pediatrician who helps a mother notice her baby's engaging smile can mitigate that mother's anxiety and help her see her baby more clearly. A caring, consistent, childcare teacher can ease the pain of a toddler and parent struggling to understand each other. A physical therapist trained to help a father accurately interpret his baby's looking away as a request for a break -rather than a sign of annoyance with the father -increases the father's pleasure and the baby's sense of competence.

Through his observations, research, and clinical wisdom, T. Berry Brazelton first supported infants' relationships with their mothers and later fathers and elaborated concepts that are at the heart of infant mental health.