Relationship Based Care For Infants And Toddlers

Learn how to create and nurture communities of care for diverse children, families, and practitioners through responsive practice. In this text, the social and emotional worlds of babies and toddlers, their peers, and their caregivers come to life in the everyday moments of infant-toddler care and education. The authors show infants and toddlers as active, agentic, and intentional social partners from the start of life, highlighting their unique capacities for social engagement with both adults and peers. Interwoven within each chapter’s narrative are insights culled from extensive observations, teacher interviews, and video analyses. Part I emphasizes play, peer friendships, and humor as essential elements of infant learning, illustrated throughout with anecdotes of praxis in early care and education settings. Building on these aspects of babies’ ways of being in group care, Part II examines the complex roles of infant-toddler professionals and the critical importance of supportive and caring environments. Readers will explore the elements needed for in-depth and specialized professional preparation, including overarching principles of relationship-based practice. Book Features: Illuminates particular and understudied ways that infants and toddlers actively contribute to their own social learning and development. Shares how teachers learn to engage with and nurture infants’ and toddlers’ social capacities and experiences within child care settings.Uses anecdotes and vignettes from the authors’ research and practice with infants, toddlers, and caregivers to bring their experiences to life.Discusses themes that are important and unique for infancy and toddlerhood, such as play, friendships, humor, and professional love.Presents a unique set of chapters that reveal infants’ and toddlers’ perspectives, while also considering the caregiver’s actions within a responsive care framework.

"This comprehensive and applied textbook clearly describes and respects infant and toddler development through a relationship-based approach to early care and education. Covering not only development, curriculum, and program planning, but also guidance and professionalism, this text promotes a relationship-based model for understanding how infants and toddlers grow and learn in typical and atypical ways. This new edition continues to emphasize the importance of families' and teachers' relationships and responsiveness in interactions with young children, the latest developmental research, an emphasis on child-centered planning, particularly strong coverage of infants and toddlers with special needs, and the effects of culture, families, and quality programs on infant-toddler development and interactions. Readers will come away with a deeper understanding of why, according to the science of child development, certain practices support or hinder an infant's or toddler's optimal development-and how to provide responsive, joyful, meaningful and lasting high-quality care."--Publisher's website.

Focus on the wonder of learning with infants, toddlers, and twos. Use sensitive and responsive interactions and curriculum planning that support their development as effective communicators, problem solvers, and creative thinkers.

The contributors explain the main elements of the RIE approach and show how it can be applied in state-run and independent day care and family homes. Illustrated with examples of good practice in a range of settings, this practical introduction is a resource for parents and child care professionals, as well as those who evaluate child care provision.

For courses in Infant and Toddler Curriculum in Early Childhood Education or Family and Child Studies Departments. Planning relationship-based curriculum centered on individual child observations. This practical book's approach promotes the notion that adult observation and reflective responses to infants' and toddlers' endless learning opportunities as they occur throughout the day is the real root of "curriculum" for this age group. It uses a unique yet universally accepted three-step approach (observe, reflect, respond) to thinking about and caring for young children. Emphasizing a relationship-based approach and reflecting on the child's individuality (including his culture), the authors connect theory and research to contemporary care and educational practices. This text, unlike the authors' other comprehensive development and program planning text, has a focus on practice, while also explaining key concepts and integrating brief references to theory. It helps adults working with infants and toddlers make great use of the world's endless opportunities for learning and relationship building.

The Relationship Worlds of Infants and Toddlers explores the concept of relationships as a core element of early childhood education and care. Taking as its starting point that children from birth to three learn and develop in a network of relationships, it examines what these relationships look and feel like, how they can be fostered and why they are important for children, educators and families who are involved in early years settings. In particular, it examines: Which kinds of relationships are important in early education and care settings? How can we understand the characteristics and meaning of these relationships for individuals and groups? How can we use our understandings to build relationships in early childhood programmes that benefit children, families and educators? The authors approach the topic of relationships in infant-toddler early childhood and care settings from a range of different perspectives. Drawing on real-world examples from their own research, they show how - by understanding the diverse features and functions of the many relationships at play in infant-toddler early childhood programmes - it is possible to create opportunities to strengthen these relationships and enhance the learning opportunities that these relationships provide. Compelling reading for both early years students and professionals this book provides a valuable resource with which to approach the diversity and dynamics of infant and toddler relationships.

"Respect for infant-toddler development, and mindful caregiving practices for this age group, serve as the cornerstones for this textbook. In 1980 when this textbook was first published, infants and toddlers were scarcely mentioned in early childhood education. The existing curriculum focused on preschool children-3-, 4-, and 5-year olds. Society, however, was changing, and more children were entering out-of-home care at a younger age, and preschool teachers were experiencing new challenges. Traditional preschool curriculum, with circle time and group activities, did not fit the needs of 2-year-olds (and younger!). The authors of this book recognized that more specific curriculum was needed, and worked together to address these new and challenging issues in early care and education. The major theme of this textbook-the idea of respectful, responsive, and reciprocal adult-infant-toddler interactions-has been the same with each edition. The philosophy of Magda Gerber and the theory of Emmi Pikler provide the textbook with a unique approach while outlining well-established practices designed to promote infant and toddler well-being. Magda Gerber, a Los Angeles infant expert, came from Hungary. Her friend and colleague, Dr. Emmi Pikler, a theorist and researcher, also from Hungary, had established group care for infants and toddlers after World War II"--