Abstract
Imagine a baby crying. Her lip quivering. Her cheeks red. Her little fingers clenched in fists, arms drawn up to her chest. Her mother comes to her murmuring, “It’s OK. It’s all right, little one. You’re OK.” The baby stops crying as her mother lifts her to her shoulder, nuzzles her cheek, suffuses her with a glow of loving looks and words and touch. It would be hard to imagine this picture and not to know first the distress and then the comfort felt by the infant. We know by both our instincts and the study of infancy how rich a subjective experience infants enjoy. The literature on infant development is filled with descriptions that speak to us of the child’s experience of interaction with the parent, of the child’s development of trust, of the child’s joy in learning about the workings of the world. We are keenly aware of the depth and range of feelings of infants and their parents as they learn their unique, synchronous dance of relationship.
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Petersen, S.H., Pawl, J.H., Lieberman, A.F. (1995). The Experience of Attachment in Infants with Disabilities. In: Eder, R.A. (eds) Craniofacial Anomalies. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2466-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2466-2_6
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