Infancy and Early Childhood Development

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Families have a great effect on the development of infants and young children. The interaction between parents and infants is characterized by synchrony: a harmony of gesture, expression and timing that can make arly nonverbal play a fascinating interchange. Even in the earliest months synchrony is a partnership. Infants adapt their social and emotional expressions (smiling, cooing, looking) to match or complement the caregiver's gestures and/or expressions, while the adult modifies the timing and pace of his/her intitiatives to go along with the baby's readiness to respond. This coordination is not always constant. Much of the time the caregiver and infant are reestablishing synchrony after babies experience fussy periods or the mother becoming distracted. So infants learn to socialize during these periods of parent-child interaction and they are learning remedy social encounters that are not going well. When initiation and repair are difficult, it is usually because the caregiver regularly overstimulates the baby who wants to pause or ignores the invitations of the baby to interact. If the infant is constantly ignored he/she will not respond. Infants who have an overly stimulating caregiver do not respond to the caregiver turning away from him/her , crying or falling asleep. An example of such a situation is:
A mother and baby girl would look at each other and the mother would go into high stimulating behaviors, producing a profusion of fully displayed high intensity facial and vocal social behavior. The baby girl quickly turned away and her mother did not interpret this as a signal to lower her level of behavior, nor would she let the baby self- control the level of behavior. The mother simply continued the overstimulating behavior adding tickling and touching. The baby closed her eyes to avoid contact and only reopened them after she moved her head to the other side. The baby did not smile at all during these interactions. Although this example represents a common occurence , such situations can eaily be repaired most often through spontaneous interaction between the infant and caregiver

Attachment between parent and child becomes apparent toward the end of the first year. Secure attachment is one in which the infant derives comfort abd confidence as evidenced by attempts to be close to the caregiver and by readiness to explore the environment. Secure attachment tends to predict curiousity, social competence and self-assurance later in ...