Esteemed among physicians devoted to humanizing medical care, Brazelton's insistent focus has been on two figural relationships: pediatricians' relationships with children and parents, and the parent-child relationship. In his view, nurturing the former promotes the latter, and both promote the healthy development and functioning of children and families. Less heralded is the long reach that Brazelton has had in fields outside pediatrics; this chapter highlights the instantiation of his orientation within early care and education.
The Development of Brazelton's Approach to Early RelationshipsFor several decades, Brazelton has promoted a model of infant and family development that posits satisfying relationships as both a hallmark of thriving in infancy and early childhood and a vehicle for attaining developmental goals. Well situated with like-minded theoreticians and practitioners (e.g., Minuchin's Family Systems Theory [1974], Bronfenbrenner's Developmental Ecological Model [1979], and Sander's Organismic Perspective [1977] on infant development), Brazelton's approach is a model for relationshipsbased practice within pediatrics and beyond (Hulbert, 2003). Brazelton (2000) credits Louis Sander's "model of systems regulation" (1977) as a provocation for his reflection on the contributions of internal biological systems and "external" systems (family, cultural context) to infant development. The Touchpoints framework was developed partially to overcome the limitations of "stimulus-response" paradigms of development (Brazelton, 2000).
Parenting is a powerful determinant of human development, and social‐emotional development in early childhood cannot be understood fully without consideration for how a child is, and has been, parented. However, what constitutes optimal parenting to support social and emotional skill acquisition in children is a matter of considerable public debate. In this chapter, we use a dynamic skill perspective to highlight current knowledge on children's construction of progressively complex and interrelated skills in three domains—emotion regulation, emotion understanding, and attachment. Bearing in mind that children's capacity to form healthy attachments, to regulate emotions, and to understand a wide range of emotional experiences is shaped in part by their developmental contexts, we explore the role of parents in developing these fundamental skills. In addition, we consider the influence of early childhood interventions on social‐emotional development in young children. The chapter concludes with implications of scientific knowledge for policy and practice aimed at promoting children's socioemotional wellbeing.
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