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Facilitating Intimate and Thoughtful Attention to Infants and Toddlers in Nursery

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Lived Spaces of Infant-Toddler Education and Care

Abstract

Infants and toddlers have a well-known and distinctive power to stir up deep emotions in adult caregivers. This capacity and the attuned responsiveness of adults has been conceptualised in different ways: maternal reverie (Bion WR, Learning from experience. Heinemann/Basic Books, London/New York, 1962), attachment (Bowlby J, Attachment. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969), innate intersubjectivity (Trevarthen C, Aitken K, J Child Psychol Psychiatry Allied Discip 42(1):3–48, 2001) and reflective function (Fonagy P, Attachment theory and psychoanalysis. Other Press, New York, 2001). At home, the way adults respond to infants and toddlers is likely to be deeply instinctive and thoughtful but driven by strong emotion and shaped by the distinctive values and practices of individual families and their cultural contexts. In early years’ settings, the way practitioners respond is likely to be influenced by some of this, but in quite a different way. This chapter is about Work Discussion (WD), a form of professional reflection in which thoughtful attention can be given to the emotional life of early years’ settings, and the details of individual interactions that make up this life. It draws on the findings of three recent studies of WD in the early years. WD is seen as having a particular contribution to understanding and managing the emotional life of settings in a way that can draw on objective and detailed descriptions of interactions and their contexts combined with the subjective experience evoked by these interactions. Such professional reflection matters for the wellbeing of all in the early years’ community: children and families, staff and external advisers, but most of all infants and toddlers themselves.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I have taken infants to refer to the age range birth to 12 months and toddlers 12 months to around 30 months.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Roehampton, London, UK

    Peter Elfer

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  1. Peter Elfer
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Correspondence to Peter Elfer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia

    Linda J. Harrison

  2. Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia

    Jennifer Sumsion

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Elfer, P. (2014). Facilitating Intimate and Thoughtful Attention to Infants and Toddlers in Nursery. In: Harrison, L., Sumsion, J. (eds) Lived Spaces of Infant-Toddler Education and Care. International perspectives on early childhood education and development, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8838-0_8

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