Utilizing narrative storytelling, this user-friendly guide describes the principles of early relational health with direct application to day-to-day work with infants and parents. Practitioners on the front lines with young children and families often feel great pressure to know “what to do” in a broad variety of challenging situations. Drawing on both developmental science and extensive clinical experience, Dr. Gold provides evidence that the exact opposite—a stance of not-knowing—helps us find our way into another person’s experience, offering the greatest opportunity for connection, growth, and healing. Gold presents a model of “listening in” with an intentional suspension of expectations and a willingness to be surprised. The paradigm of listening in functions as a kind of superpower to enhance teacher–student, professional–parent, and parent–infant relationships. This resource will be important reading for a broad variety of practitioners including early childhood educators, home visitors, pediatricians, doulas, and mental health clinicians, as well as policymakers, parents, and other caregivers of young children.
Book Features:
Summarizes the key advances in our understanding of brain science, child development, and infant-parent mental health.Emphasizes lessons from real-life interactions between infants and caregivers as communicated through detailed clinical vignettes.Offers practitioners a model for listening that is rooted in the concept of cultural humility and the idea that even in sameness there is difference.
“Each reader will take away something unique to their professional and personal journeys. But I imagine that most readers will catch a sense of wonder and encouragement about this beautifully human thing we call ‘relationship.’”
—From the Foreword by Junlei Li, senior lecturer in early childhood education, co-chair, Human Development and Education Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education
