Vol 2 Issue 1
Focus on play
IN THIS ISSUE:
- Honouring the intimacy and privacy of the parents’ relationship with their unborn baby
- Infant Massage: Is the Medium the Message?
- Playing with the Text: The importance of sharing books with babies
- Creative play spaces: Finding the space for play
- The Incredible Years®: Promoting attachment and infants’ brain development
Author: Alexandra Smith
Description: The first part of this article considers tensions that arise when scientists and policy makers use this knowledge to judge a woman’s capacity to mother even before her baby is born. The second part of the article describes how practitioners might support mothers and fathers in using relaxation and reflective imagination.
Description writer: Childbirth Educator
TAG: Attachment and early relationships
Author: Jennifer St George
Richard Fletcher
Description: In this brief paper, we tease out the specificities of fathers’ play with infants and young children and suggest some developmental benefits for children. An understanding of how fathers’ playfulness facilitates children’s attachment and development may help parent educators find more opportunities to include fathers in their practice.
Description writer: Jennifer St George, Senior Research Academic, Faculty of Health and Medicine, The University of Newcastle, Australia
Richard Fletcher, Senior Lecturer, Family Action Centre, Faculty of Health and Medicine, The University of Newcastle, Australia
TAG: Fathers
Author: Deborah Cogan Thacker
Description: This article considers the wealth of recent research on reading with infants and pre-schoolers. The way in which early book-sharing events happens is the final focus, as it is not only the opportunities the books provide, but the way that adult mediators shape and support these early experiences, that can embed a love of language and an awareness of the power and comfort of stories.
Description writer: School of Humanities, University of Gloucestershire
TAG: Babies’ and toddlers’ social, emotional and cognitive development
Author: Frances Brett Senior Lecturer
Description: Play and creativity are terms that we use freely but may mean different things to different people, dependent on context or the phase of life we are experiencing. For a child, play may be their predominant mode of engaging with the world.
Description writer: Centre for Early Childhood, University of Worcester
TAG: Play, Babies’ and toddlers’ social, emotional and cognitive development
Author: Sibylle Janert
Description: All parents suffer with the pain inflicted by their children’s emotional challenges, especially the expression of aggressive or unhappy feelings. If this is seen as ‘just behaviour’, the child’s core message or struggle remains un-understood, resulting in further unhappy feelings, and more difficult behaviours.
Description writer: Autism Home Consultant, MindBuilders
Author: Angela Underdown, Dana Shai
Description: This paper will address infant massage as an intervention to support early parent-infant relationships beginning with an introduction outlining the theoretical and research context for supporting early relationships.
Description writer: Angela Underdown Deputy Director, Warwick Infant and Family Wellbeing Unit
Dana Shai Research Unit Director, Ziama Arkin Parent and Infant Relations (PAIR) Institute, Herzliya, Israel
TAG: Attachment and early relationships
Author: Caroline White, Carolyn Webster-Stratton
Description: The Incredible Years® (IY) parent series provides an interlocking, comprehensive and developmentally based set of programmes for parents of children from birth to 12 years of age.
Description writer: Caroline White Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Head of CAPS Early Intervention, Manchester, UK
Carolyn Webster-Stratton Incredible Years Programme Developer, United States
Author: Anne Cresswell
Description: The Incredible Years (IY) programme is cited by NICE guidelines as a gold standard intervention, but what is it like to deliver parenting groups in the real world? The need for fidelity to the programme, as well as support and supervision for staff, is key.
Description writer: Parenting Team Manager, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust
Author: Kay Cram, Shona Gore
Description: In theories of practice and learning that impact on the transition to parent education, we explore social learning and the role of communities in supporting parents.
Description writer: Kay Cram,Birth and Parent Educator, Associate Lecturer, University of Worcester, UK
Shona Gore,Birth and Parent Educator, Associate Lecturer, University of Worcester, UK
TAG: Antenatal education for birth and early parenting
