Twelve to
Eighteen
Months
Fogel
Chapter 9
Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
Overview Chapter 9
• Physical and Motor Development
• Cognitive Development
• Emotional Development
• Social and Language Development
• Family and Society
• Applications: Poverty & Risk
Experiential Exercises
Co-regulating with Baby
Physical and Motor Development
Walking
Around 16 months of age on average, infants
• walk more smoothly
• begin to stand on one foot with help
• begin to walk up and down stairs with help
• take steps that are longer, narrower,
straighter, and more consistent
See a 15-month-old go down the stairs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0CaFQPBako
Picture from: www.juniormagazine.co.uk/news/article.asp?UAN=5
Physical and Motor Development
Walking
Infants perceive how different types of surface
affect their locomotor actions
• They prefer to walk on surfaces that are matte (rather
than shiny) and rigid
— if the matte surface looked like it was moving in waves (on a
water bed), infants shifted to crawling
• 14-month-olds regulated their locomotor behavior
depending upon the steepness of a slope
(research by Karen Adolph and colleagues)
Picture from: www.psych.nyu.edu/adolph
Physical and Motor Development
Hand Movements
1-year-olds begin to discover what properties of
the environment are best suited to support their
motor actions
– matching of motor action with the type of surface is
essential for operating safely and successfully
• in one study, infants did more mouthing and held objects with
both hands at a foam table, but used each hand differently and
used the table to explore the objects at a hard table
– adapting their skills to the properties of objects and
surfaces, infants become more able to use objects as
means toward goals
Physical and Motor Development
Hand Movements
Deliberate tool usage begins around 12 months –
for instance, spoon usage
– Stage1 – infants take the spoon in and out of their
mouths or in and out of their dishes, but these two
repetitive cycles are not connected
– Stage 2 – the outlines of the complete action
sequence emerge but babies don’t pay attention to
how much food gets onto the spoon
– Stage 3 – the action sequence of moving the
spoon from the dish to the mouth incorporates
the function of moving the food
YouTube clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEsII2ZX6N4
Picture from: www.pussreboots.pair.com/blog/2007/05.html
Cognitive Development
• Piaget’s Stage V (12 - 18 months) is called
tertiary circular reactions
— the beginnings of active experimentation & the search
for novelty
• Infants become able to adapt to new situations
– by using tried and true methods
– by trial-and-error, attempting new combinations of
action schemes until they find the one that will solve
the problem
Cognitive Development
Infants of this age seem to have multiple goals
• they examine the techniques available to determine
which are best suited to the particular goal at hand
For example,
• a distant object can be retrieved by pulling the
blanket on which the object sits
• trying to figure out which objects best fit into
particular containers
• following the path of an object and find its
hiding place, even after a long series of moves
or after a 24-hour delay
Picture from: www.ape2zebra.ca/toddler-toys-canada.asp
Cognitive Development
Imitation
12- to 18-month-olds are able to model acts that
are completely different from those seen before
• they will try to imitate complicated actions just for fun
– without understanding the reason for those actions
• these are the origins of role play and
dramatic play
• infants can also infer intentions from
modeled actions & display the same
intentions in their imitations
Picture from: http://s123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/momtohanna/?action=view&current=babyclothdiaper.jpg
Cognitive Development
Imitation
In one study, 14-to-18-month-olds
watched adults operate simple tools
— sometimes the adult said “There!” (intentional
action) after pressing the level and other times
“Whoops!” (accidental action)
— infants were twice as likely to imitate if the action
was intentional: they are not simply reproducing a
mechanical action but acting for a purpose
Baby “talking” on the phone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i_su9rNKrA
Picture from: pediatrics.about.com/.../Pretend-Play.htm
Cognitive Development
Memory
• Infants can recall events for long periods of time
– when they are tested using familiar objects & events
– when they are allowed multiple exposures
– when they can enact the sequence in action rather
than in words
– when there are reminders
• This period is a transitional period for memory
– in the next period, infants develop verbal-conceptual
memories
Cognitive Development
Categorization
Infants develop more advanced categorization
skills during this period
• by 15 months, infants can correctly
form higher-order categories for
familiar objects
• e.g., they can classify animals
together, but they will not include cars
with the animals
Picture from: www.juniormagazine.co.uk/news/article.asp?UAN=5
Emotional
Development
• Infants gain a new sense of
self-awareness & control over
emotional expressions
• After 12 months, they still seek help from adults
in regulating their emotions, but also will attempt
to control their own emotions
Emotional Development
Positive Emotions
Between 12 – 18 months, infants
• show elation – remaining happy over a long period
without the continuation of the stimulating event
• are active in producing & maintaining happy situations
— e.g., making funny faces
• show delight in their own achievements, and become
aware of their own abilities to act on the environment, to
create new means, and to experiment
— an indication of an expanding sense of a subjective self
Picture from: www.wholisticresearch.com/shop/home/m/Shop/c/61/
Emotional Development
Positive Emotions
• Babies continue to show affection
– more from a distance, such as a smile and a wave
• In one study, after a brief separation
– 11-month-olds sought physical contact with their
mothers immediately
– 14-month-olds were more likely to use some form of
signaling from a distance: crying, whining, or raising
their arms as if to ask to be picked up
– by 19 months, the babies were content merely to look
at their mothers before resuming their play
Emotional Development
Negative Emotions
• After 12 months, infants fight back tears
and use other self-comforting behaviors
(e.g., lip biting)
— babies who successfully fight back tears
during separation almost certainly will burst
into tears upon the mother’s return
• Parents are more willing to expose infants to potentially
stressful events
— they are less likely to intervene when the infant has an
everyday problem (e.g., a nonserious fall)
— they are more likely to leave the infant with a babysitter or in
child care and they are more likely to take trips without the
infant
Picture from: flickr.com/photos/tmedina/2222862398
Emotional Development
Negative Emotions
• Separations
– 2- or 3-day separation: relatively few problems
– longer separations: more severe disturbances in
routines and less positive engagement (while the
mother is away and several weeks after)
• Individual differences in coping ability
– infants who are temperamentally inhibited & have
insecure attachments are more likely to show distress
at even minor stresses
– infants with more difficult and withdrawn temperaments
take these separations harder than others
Social & Language Development
The Basic Properties of Language
All human languages – no matter where or
how they are used (spoken, signed, or
written) – share important properties that
distinguish them from other kinds of
communication systems
Social & Language Development
The Basic Properties of Language
Human language has three basic properties
1. Semanticity – the capacity of a language to carry meaning
2. Productivity – the ability of a speaker to express many
different meanings with a relatively small number of words
(using grammar rules)
•
language becomes productive after 18 months, when toddlers
begin to combine words
3. Displacement – enables speakers to describe distant or
absent objects & communicate abstract notions; allows
speakers to discuss past, present, and future
Social & Language Development
The Basic Properties of Language
Language has a characteristic structure & function
– syntax (grammar) is the structure of language: out of all
possible combinations of word order, only a small
number are meaningful
– the study of a language’s social and communicative
function is called pragmatics
Social & Language Development
Theories of Language Acquisition
Learning theory
• Learning theorists explain language acquisition &
productivity with concepts like “delayed imitation” and
“generalization” of learned responses
However,
• Can’t explain linguistic universals of syntax (e.g.,
sentence structure: subject, verb, and object)
• Can’t explain why language is acquired at the particular
time in the infant’s life that it is
Social & Language Development
Theories of Language Acquisition
Behavior ecology theory
• Noam Chomsky: infants are born with a rudimentary
notion of syntactic structure – an innate universal
grammar
• This approach led to an attempt to write down
grammatical rules for infant speech
– the problem is that infant speech could not be easily fitted into
these simple rules: there were too many exceptions
Social & Language Development
Theories of Language Acquisition
Functional theory
• Studies language development in relation to the social
system in which it naturally occurs – a type of interactive
systems theory
• Key milestones are not individual, but achievements of
the parent-infant dyad
• taking turns; paying joint attention to an external object; sharing
meaning of particular gestures, words, and phrases
• Frames for coordinated joint attention are essential
prerequisites for the emergence of language
— a joint focus of attention makes it easier for infants to associate
objects & events with words
Social & Language Development
Coordinated Joint Attention
Research that supports the Functional Theory
• Infants are more likely to acquire the correct object word
if they are looking at the object
– infants who are more skilled in establishing joint attention to an
object acquire language at an earlier age than children who are
less able to jointly attend
• Infants use more words & gestures with mother than with
peers or alone
– adults can use a combination of pointing, showing, and words to
highlight specific features of the object
– the more mothers do this, the more advanced the child’s
language skills
Social & Language Development
Coordinated Joint Attention
Research that supports the Functional Theory
• Mothers who emphasized single words in their speech
had children who were more likely to speak clearly and
not run their words together
– e.g., “That’s a dog; look at the dog”
• 14-month-olds’ participation in shared book reading
predicted language skills at 18 months
• 15-month-olds who were better at joining in frames for
joint attention were more socially competent at 30
months
Early language example from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTwzvR-GMgc
Social & Language Development
Coordinated Joint Attention
• At the beginning of the 2nd year, infants begin to
take the initiative in creating joint attention
• They follow their mothers’ line of vision
• They use pointing to direct their mothers’ interest to
something they want
• They imitate parent’s words more consistently
• Research:
• If the mother is asked not to respond to the infant’s
requests, the infant will repeat the request using more
exaggerated movements or will change the form of
the request (e.g., by replacing a gesture with a word)
Social & Language Development
Coordinated Joint Attention
• After 12 months
• infants begin to use gestures in combinations to
communicate more complex meanings
• intersubjectivity expands: infants become more aware
of the relationship between self and other
• Metacommunication
• communicative acts that refer to the
communication in the relationship
itself
Picture from: www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/Dads.html
Social & Language Development
Conventional Gestures & Words
After 12 months, gestures and words become more
conventional – they represent an action or object using a
ritualized manner of expression
Social & Language Development
Conventional Gestures & Words
• Between 10-16 months, infants begin to use
words to communicate intention
– one manifestation of this is the onset of naming – the
intentional use of a gesture or word to refer to a
specific object or event
• Infants learn about 1-3 words per month, first for
– objects (car, shoes, teddy, cup)
– social interaction (hello, no, yes, bye-bye)
– simple concepts (gone, more, there)
• They seem to prefer objects and events for
which they already have a word
Social & Language Development
Conventional Gestures & Words
• Babies can be taught conventional gestures
(“sign language”) prior to having acquired the
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKAquX8s30
words
– parents report that infants can learn the signs easily
and appear to enjoy using them
• Early words are used like conventional gestures
• they are like the conventionally used adult word
• they are used consistently in similar situations
• they are not yet used as symbols
Social & Language Development
Conventional Gestures & Words
• Overextension – using a word for instances not
included in the adult’s definition
– e.g., all vehicles are “cars”
– reflects an active attempt to try to categorize objects
• When adults use only the adult word
consistently, the child soon picks up the correct
name
Social & Language Development
Production & Comprehension
• Comprehension comes before production
• 13-month-olds can understand about 50 words, but
infants cannot speak 50 words until about 19 months
• the earliest instances of word comprehension have
been found at 10 months, for objects that are salient
& very familiar
• By 17 months, infants acquire word meanings
easily – sometimes after a single exposure
• it may be from overheard conversation and not
necessarily speech directed to the infant
Social & Language Development
Production & Comprehension
• Individual differences
• Some children do not have noticeable lags between
comprehension & production; but others do
• A small percentage may suffer from a speech or hearing
disorder
• Some children may be overly cautious about speaking out
• Lags in production may be related to the amount of explicit
naming done by caregivers
• Currently, there is no complete explanation of
what accounts for these individual differences
Social & Language Development
Production & Comprehension
• Children with high linguistic comprehension
show high levels of gestural production
• Even though they hesitate to communicate with
words, they have articulated a rich array of
symbolic gestures
– deaf children develop a large number of gestural
signs that signify objects and actions at ages similar
to when hearing children develop linguistic names
Social & Language Development
Production & Comprehension
• The young child’s speech may be an important
part of the process of concept formation
• One study showed that infants pay closer attention to
objects after adults label novel objects for infants
• In complex ways, the acquisition of language
may place the infant on a fast track toward
conceptual and cognitive development
Social & Language Development
Communication with Peers
• About 77% of peer play is parallel play, but
peers increasingly respond contingently
– a peer will show or give an object after a verbal
request or visual regard from another infant
• Interacting with adults vs. peers
– joint attention occurs much less during peer play
– with adults, toys can be objects of a request or an
offer, or the subject of naming and labeling routines
– with peers, toys are the major focus of attention &
serve as vehicles for the initiation and maintenance of
social interactions
Social & Language Development
Communication with Peers
• In one study, a novel toy was introduced into play
between adults and infants & between peers
– in the infant-adult interaction, the infant pointed to the
toy and looked at the mother, requesting the toy’s
name & wanting to use it
— when the same toy was
introduced between two
peers, they just looked at
each other and laughed
Picture from: http://lh5.ggpht.com/_DTkDZzT0UTo/Rynv7amW_BI/AAAAAAAAAHg/7aOH0rywIVE/200710-31-Halloween+044.jpg
Social & Language Development
Communication with Peers
• When mother and a peer are both present
• infants are more likely to initiate play with a peer
• they are more likely to seek physical contact and
show negative emotions like distress and anger with
their mothers
• In one study, 10- and 14-month-olds were more social
and less negative to peers when their mothers were
out of the room (in their co-op nursery school)
Social & Language Development
Communication with Peers
• Friendship can be shown to exist as early as 12
months of age
• Friends are more likely than nonfriends to
– touch and lean on each
other
– initiate interactions with
each other
– show positive affect with
each other
Picture from: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_t2MXVO32jMQ/SCkO37PSc4I/AAAAAAAABZ0/CTn01TRJtrI/DSC_5419.jpg
Social & Language Development
Self-Awareness
• Sense of a Subjective Self – between 9-12 months,
infants develop a sense of being a subject who can feel
and experience and who is different from other subjects.
• Between 12-18 months, this sense of self is elaborated
– infants exaggerate facial expressions & other social actions as if
to explore their own subjectivity in relation to another person
– they communicate more intentionally: they will persist when their
gestures or words are not understood
– they discover that they have some emotion regulation skills of
their own (e.g., lip biting to control their distress)
– they will look toward someone for confirmation of an
achievement, but they will also smile, jump, or wave their arms
to recognize the achievement for themselves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsHG8EMtID8
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
When an infant has a long-term or permanent
challenge, a systems approach predicts that this
infant will affect the entire family and that the
family’s response to the infant will affect the
infant’s own development (p. 448)
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Parents, siblings, and other relatives of infants
with special needs
– almost always experience a chronic sorrow or
depression—a feeling that the child will never fit into
their lives or dreams
– may feel an emotional rejection of the infant that may
result, in part, from a lack of knowledge about the
infant’s condition
– experience difficulty adapting & find most of their
interpersonal relationships strained
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Parents may be in a state of high emotional
arousal much of the time
– the shame and guilt they feel at being the “cause” of
the problem are coupled with the extra difficulties of
caring for the child
• these may include extra doctors’ visits, financial difficulties,
and special difficulties, housing or equipment needs, care
arrangements, clothing, and transportation
– a parent may swing between the extreme attitudes of
either wanting to abandon the child or trying to
overprotect the child
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Siblings
– may have trouble with peer relationships, become
restless & disobedient, display temper tantrums, or
live in a state of emotional misery
– part of the difficulty is that the added stress on the
parents reduces the amount of parental time and
emotional energy available to them
– parents also worry about these potential effects on
the siblings
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Grandparents
– the feedback a mother receives from her own mother
may make her feel less supported and affect her
ability to care for the baby
– in one study, maternal grandmothers were less
supportive of their daughters if the daughters had
infants with special needs rather than typically
developing infants
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Effects on the parents’ marriage
– Most of the research on the effect of a child with
special needs on marital discord has shown that there
is little or no effect
• marital discord that could be directly traced to the child
amounted to only 4% of the cases studied in a sample of 243
children with a rubella-related birth defect
– for almost 2/3 of families, having a child with special
needs brings the couple closer together
• the parents collaborate more on child-rearing issues than do
parents in families without an infant with special needs
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Effects on family interaction patterns
– changes in family routines, lack of vacations and
other out-of-home visits, a limited social life, and
parents’ neglect of other children
• these problems only occurred in about 25% of a sample of
243 children with a rubella-related defect
• some of these families had experienced similar disruptions
even before the infants’ births
– the more serious disabilities requiring more care and
adaptive equipment result in the biggest impacts on
parental and family life
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Resolution of these challenges usually means
– a realistic assessment of the
child’s abilities and limitations
– continued feelings of sadness –
but about the child rather than
about the effect on the parents
– a recovery of parents’ selfesteem
• Most (75%) parents report the growth of feelings
of love, joy and acceptance over time
Picture from http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2194924/Ehowbabyexample-main_Full.jpg
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• The parent-child interaction
• The amount of disruption of the parent-infant
interaction depends on the severity of the disability
• The mildest effects are seen in premature infants,
many of whom would not be classified as disabled
• mothers are often overindulgent and
overstimulating in the first year
• premature infants who were delayed in smiling
were smiled at less by their mothers
• many of these differences disappear after the first
year
Picture from: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2201/2077124126_a30f4ef276.jpg
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Prematurity
– by age 3 years, differences between preterm and full-term
groups are typically absent
– more subtle effects may persist until early and middle childhood
(e.g., in emotional maturity, language skills, perceptual-motor
functioning)
• In preterm groups, as for full terms, individual differences
are best predicted by
– security of attachment at 1 year
– the severity of birth complications independent of prematurity
– the infant’s history of illness during the first years of life
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• More serious disorders
– one study of 110 special-needs infants (with Down’s
syndrome, cerebral palsy, and developmental delay) found
that the infants smiled and vocalized less than a
matched sample of typically developing infants
• 33% of the special-needs infants never smiled in the first 2
years (by age 3, 80% had smiled)
• they also cried more at older ages than the controls
– children with cerebral palsy are likely to receive less
maternal warmth if they are not walking by 3 years of
age than if they walk earlier
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Down’s syndrome babies
• tend to be slower to develop than typical infants
• parents tend to interrupt the infants’ vocalizations
more than with typically developing infants, even
though the Down’s infants vocalize less
• most 4-month-olds will cease smiling and gaze away
a their mother’s “still face,” Down’s infants actually
gaze longer and may even smile
• this suggests that Down’s babies may be overstimulated by
social interaction and find it easier to express themselves
when mothers are relatively quiet
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Down’s syndrome babies
• maternal attention-directing strategies during object
play are usually less successful & coordinated joint
attention episodes are less frequent
• mothers are likely to respond less & attempt new
interactions less than mothers of typically developing
infants
• The prognosis for Down’s syndrome infants is
better when there is high family cohesion and a
sensitive mother-infant relationship
Picture from: http://pmhealth.blogspot.com/2008/02/who-has-down-syndrome-babies.html
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Down’s syndrome babies are less likely to be
securely attached than typically developing ones
• may be due in part to their cognitive deficits and inability to
understand the strange situation
• Infants with neurological disorders are more
likely to be insecurely attached than other
special needs infants
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Blind and deaf infants
– have sensory but not cognitive or motor deficits
• Blind infants
– are delayed by up to 1 year in communicative skills
– do not use gestures (e.g., pointing, showing, or giving), do not
seem to be oriented to external objects, and show few intentional
behaviors during the 2nd year
– do not pretend play or use spoken language until 3rd year or later
– do not imitate adults
• Parents feel less attached & are likely to interact less
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Blind infants’ parents
– feel less attached &
are likely to interact less
– difficult to establish coordinated
joint attention
– tend to overcompensate,
which further delays the child’s initiative taking
• Once language begins to be acquired in the 3rd year,
blind children become more socially oriented
– they do require an environment in which others remain visually
attentive to them and can pick up their sometimes subtle cues
Picture from: http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_visspring99-13.jpg
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Deaf children
– most forms of coordinated joint attention are visual –
the deaf child can observe parents, imitate, gesture,
and produce typical facial expressions
– deaf children may be somewhat delayed compared to
hearing children
• Deaf mothers of deaf infants & hearing mothers
of hearing infants are rated as more sensitive
than mothers in dyads in which either mother or
infant is deaf
– the matched dyads also spend more time in episodes
of coordinated joint attention
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• What can be done for special-needs infants?
– The more parents treat their infants as if they were
typically developing children with special problems,
the better off the children are in the long run
• in one study, the frequency of social
interaction in the early part of the first year
predicted the child’s competence at age 2
• several studies have shown that if mothers
keep asking many questions, it can have a
marked effect on special needs infants’
social & communicative development
Picture from: http://www.plan.ca/belong/uploaded_images/beautiful_baby_cdss-756468.bmp
Family & Society
Infants with Special Needs
• Success has been obtained with intervention
programs
– designed to educate parents about their child’s disability
– that provide emotional support and a supportive network
(other parents with similar problems)
– that teach parents how to respond
to and anticipate the needs of their
individual children
Picture from: http://www.hurstwic.org/activities/albums/recent/pix/baby_and_mom.jpg
Family & Society
Nonparental Child Care
• National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (NICHD) study of early child care
– began in 1991
– studied 1,364 children nationwide
• 76% Caucasian Americans; 13%
African Americans; 6% Hispanic
Americans; 5% other minorities
• from a wide range of income and
education levels
• using a wide variety of child care,
including center child care, child care
homes, and in-home care from
relatives or nannies
Picture from: http://www.solopop.com/daycare2.jpg
Family & Society
Nonparental Child Care
• NICHD study results
– on average 33 hours of nonmaternal care per week
– most infants placed into nonmaternal care prior to 4 months
– when they first entered care
• half of the infants were with the father or grandparent
• 20% were in child care homes
• 8% were in a child care center
– mothers with higher incomes and those who had an economic
need to work were most likely to place their children in child care
– after the first year, there are an increasing number of children in
center care
Family & Society
Nonparental Child Care
• The effects of child care depend on
– the quality of care
– the quality of the family environment
Picture from www.tallaghtcreche.ie/our-rooms/baby-room.asp
Family & Society
Nonparental Child Care
• High-quality child care
– low ratios, trained caregivers, good facilities, etc. (p. 456)
– better caregiving from staff
• Correlated with successful outcomes for children
– children are more securely attached to their caregivers
and their mothers and more competent with peers and
with adults than are children in low-quality care
– children score better on school readiness & on
cognitive and linguistic abilities, have fewer behavior
problems
Family & Society
Nonparental Child Care
• The quality of the family environment
– Children in high-quality child care under age 1 did better in school
at 8 & 13 years than others, but this was partly due to the fact that
children who entered child care early had two professional parents
– An Israelian study found that preschoolers’ social competence &
communicative skill were more related to positive parent-child
interaction than to early child care experience
– NICHD study: if mothers were depressed and/or not contingently
responsive to children, childcare children had lower scores on
social & cognitive tests, and had more behavior & attachment
problems
Family & Society
Nonparental Child Care
• Conclusions from research:
– for children who come from supportive and loving
families, placement in high-quality child care does not
adversely affect development & may even enhance it
– child care after 12 months is not harmful & might be
beneficial
• child care infants are more cognitively & socially advanced
and are more likely to show independence in compliance to
rules
• infants older than 12 months are able to adjust to repeated
separations from their mothers
Family & Society
Child Care & Attachment Security
• A number of research studies have reported that
– infants are more likely to be insecurely attached when
they have been in child care for at least 4 months
before their first birthday (more than 20 hrs/week)
– in early child care samples, the proportion of secure
attachments across all studies is 57% (vs. 65-75% in the
U.S. on average)
– the difference in security between early child care &
home care infants is small but statistically significant
Family & Society
Child Care & Attachment Security
• Most at risk for insecure attachments are boys who
– are difficult and/or fussy
– are insecure-avoidant
– have mothers who have strong career orientations, work full
time, and express less anxiety about being separated from their
infants
• In general, the quality of the mother-infant relationship is
a stronger predictor of insecure attachments than the
child care situation
– Insensitive mothering coupled with low-quality child care
accounts for most of the reported insecurity of attachment
Family & Society
Child Care & Attachment Security
• When the mother is insensitive, a high-quality
child care experience can be beneficial
– social and emotional competence in preschool is
predicted by the security of attachment to the
substitute caregiver and/or the quality of the early
care, not by security of attachment to the mother
• This was found for infants in the U.S. and in
Israeli kibbutzim in which the child’s primary
attachment is with the metapelet
Family & Society
Child Care – Earlier or Later?
• Attachment
– Under the age of 1 year, infants appear to be more
sensitive to the effects of child care quality & the
availability of attachment figures within the child care
setting
• More hours in child care under age 1 is related
to lower school readiness scores at age 5
– hours in child care after the age of
1 year is related to higher school
readiness at age 5
Picture from: http://www.babies-and-sign-language.com/images/daycare-communicate-eachother.jpg
Family & Society
Child Care – Policy & Practice
• The U.S. is one of the world’s wealthiest nations,
but subsidizes child care for less than 10% of
children under 6 years
– compared to 100% in Sweden, 90% in France, and
50% in Israel and Hungary
• More than half of young children in the U.S. are
in second-rate child care situations
– substandard facilities, poor staff training, and high
staff turnover
– licensed child care facilities account for only 25% of
out-of-home care
Applications
Poverty & Risk
• In the U.S. in 2005, 18% of children under age 5
were living in poverty
• The fastest growing poverty group is femaleheaded single families
• Childhood poverty rates are lower in other
countries, and they have declined since 1980
– in 1980, the U.S. childhood poverty rate was 17%
– it was 10% in Canada, 8% in West Germany, 5% in
Sweden, and 11% in the United Kingdom
Applications
Causes of Poverty
• Single parenthood
– a single adult has reduced earning power
– many single mothers, it is not advantageous for to work outside
the home because of the added costs and risks of child care.
• Diverse populations
– in the U.S., poverty level varies as a function of race & ethnicity
– the percentage of African American children living in poverty is 3
times as high as for Caucasian children, and the rate for
Hispanic children is twice as high as for Caucasian children
– the poverty rate of Caucasian children alone is higher than in
most other wealthy nations
Applications
Causes of Poverty
• Lack of public support for families
– at least 25% of U.S. families living below the poverty level
receive no benefits, while almost 100% of poor families receive
benefits in Canada, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
– in over 75% of poor U.S. families, one or both parents work
• of the remaining 25%, 15% have parents who do not work because
of illness or disability or because they are past retirement age
• The economic system
– some alternatives to welfare might help
• e.g., better tax credits, a higher minimum wage, better child care
alternatives, and better medical care; parent education & job
training, community support & intervention
Applications
Effects of Poverty
• Poverty breeds mental and health risks
– increased & continuous stream of stressful life events,
including job loss, worry about bills, eviction, illness,
alcoholism and drug dependency, marital discord,
assault, arrest, and imprisonment
– poor children receive lower-quality prenatal care,
lower-quality day care, and lower access to informal
and formal support systems
– these factors lead to increasingly dismal cycles of
loss, stress, and despair & are compounded with
racial and social-class prejudice
Applications
Effects of Poverty
• Parents
– less emotionally available & affectionate, harsher, and
more likely to punish minor child misbehavior
• Children
– more depression, low self-esteem
– poor peer relations, social withdrawal, deviant behavior,
aggressiveness (particularly boys), and lowered
aspirations (especially girls)
– more infectious diseases
– do less well in language, school & cognitive
development
Applications
Effects of Poverty
• Conclusion
– Children under age 3 are disproportionately
represented in poverty rates & may suffer more from
the effects of poverty than older children
– Even small amounts of community support can have
lasting positive effects on families and children living
in poverty
– Without intervention, some of the effects of early
malnutrition, disease, abuse, and neglect may be
irreversible
Experiential Exercises
Kinesthetic empathy
Part I: Walking
body inter-relationships
1.
2.
3.
move only one part of body, keeping other parts still
coordinate different parts with each other
have the left leg shake and the right arm rotate, etc.
space – taking up a lot of space with arms & legs
extended vs. contracted & small
sequencing – try different walking sequences such
as extending arm and leg on same side of body
vs. opposite side
shape – rounded, straight, snake-like
Experiential Exercises
Kinesthetic empathy
Kinesthetic empathy – the ability to feel another’s experience
simply by watching their movements
• First, the leader demonstrates some common states (e.g.,
sadness, haste, anger) with his or her body, and students:
guess the feeling being demonstrated
• Then, students try posing
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Proud
Dejected
Determination
I’m cool
Vigilant
Toddler
Talk about what each of these felt like
Experiential Exercises
Kinesthetic empathy
Part II – Leader & Follower
•
Triads of: witness, walker, and follower
•
In silence, the walker walks around; the follower tries to
match the walk; and the witness observes. Change roles.
•
Using kinesthetic empathy, discuss the experience of
following and being followed in triads, sharing about what it
was like to “be” the other person
•
General discussion
• how do parents use these skills with their babies?
• how can this method be used in treating infants and young children
with difficulties?