An Educator’s Guide to Infant and Toddler Development

Understanding and Responding Appropriately

Jennifer Kaywork

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367407230
• eBook ISBN: 9781000761115
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

An Educator's Guide to Infant and Toddler Development is a comprehensive and approachable guide to the growth, learning and development of children from birth to age 3.

Beginning with the foundations of infant and toddler education, environments and family relationships, this essential text explores each category of development in depth. Chapters clearly explain key learning and developmental milestones, provide real-life examples and walk readers through materials and strategies for effective practice. Designed to build effective and appropriate caregiving practices, this resource is packed with reflection questions and fieldwork observations to help students continually grow their knowledge and skills.

Informative, thorough and easy to use, this is a critical guide for students, caregivers and teachers helping young children to learn and grow.

1 Introduction to Infant and Toddler Care

Welcome to An Educator’s Guide to Infant and Toddler Development: Understanding and Responding Appropriately. As a former caregiver for infants and toddlers and a parent, I have been fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time with the 0–3-year-old population. As a current practitioner of early childhood education, I strive to transfer my knowledge and experience to my students so that they will truly understand infants and toddlers. Throughout my professional work, I have realized that this important knowledge and skills should not only be meant for early childhood education students. Parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers would benefit as well. This realization became the impetus for this book. It is my hope that it will provide you with everything you need to know about infants and toddlers so that you truly understand them, can appropriately respond to them and—most importantly—enjoy them!

This book serves many purposes and populations. For undergraduate and graduate students studying early childhood education, this book is a textbook for your infant/toddler courses and will fully explain this population of children to you. For parents, this book is a manual that will tell you what is happening with your children as they move through the first three years of life. For childcare centers, this book is a handbook to follow to both come to really understand children ages 0–3 and then learn what to do as a caregiver for these children. For all of you, this book will fully explain children ages 0–3 and give you concrete ideas about what to do and say with these children to maximize their growth and development.

Throughout your reading of this book, you might come across information that you would deem not important to know based on your role in infants and toddlers’ lives. For example, if you are a parent and you are reading about how a caregiver in a childcare center might work with infants and toddlers, you might think that the information isn’t pertinent to your role as a parent. It is. It is important for you as a parent to know what the caregivers of your children are doing with them all day and, more importantly, what they should be doing. Your knowledge of your infant or toddler’s daily experiences is important to understanding them as people. If you are a caregiver for infants or toddlers in a childcare center and you are reading about how parents could calm their children or guide them, you might think that the information isn’t pertinent to you since you aren’t a parent. It is. It is important for you to be aware of parenting practices because you as a caregiver of infants and toddlers must emulate the home and parents of the children you care for. Any “parenting strategy” can be modeled in a childcare center. Understanding these strategies will also allow you to understand where your infants and toddlers are coming from when they enter your classroom each day. Everything is this book is pertinent to everyone who has any extended period of contact with infants and toddlers. The more you understand them and how to care for them, the better you will be at whatever role you fulfill.

Before you begin your journey to understanding this amazing population of children, it’s important for you to share your own ideas, beliefs and questions. This book will hopefully further shape these ideas and beliefs as well as answer all of your questions. It is recommended that you designate a separate journal or notebook for documenting your answers and ideas throughout the reading of this text. Start by responding to these two questions in your journal:

1. How do you feel infants should be cared for?
2. How do you feel toddlers should be cared for?

Your feelings about caring for infants and toddlers have been shaped by how you have been cared for throughout your life as well as your own experiences with young children. These feelings will change as you learn more about the 0–3 population but will be grounded in these first ideas.

Now you need to think about questions you might have about infants and toddlers. Below is a list of the typical age groupings for children ages 0–3. These groupings are based on stages of child development. Write down any questions you have about each age group. Throughout the book, your questions will be answered, and you can write the pertinent information next to your question:

• Birth–6 weeks
• 6 weeks–3 months
• 3–6 months
• 6–9 months
• 9–12 months
• 1–2 years
• 2–3 years

Now that you have your own ideas about infant/toddler care out in the open and have documented your questions about the 0–3 population, let’s get a general idea of what the care and education of infants and toddlers is comprised of. I would like to begin with the core beliefs from which this book was written. Each one is briefly described for you here and then will be expanded upon throughout the book. These beliefs hold true for educators, parents, caregivers and childcare centers who work with children ages 0–3.

The Care and Education of Infants and Toddlers

Beliefs About Infant/Toddler Care

The following seven beliefs are the framework for this book’s philosophy of infant/toddler care. Why only seven and not a nice round number like ten? Because 8, 9 and 10 are to be filled in by you. The last three beliefs are your own that you will shape as you educate yourself about infants and toddlers.

1. Every experience can be a time for interaction with infants and toddlers
   • Talk to them about what you’re doing, seeing and experiencing. Show them how to do it. Ask them to tell you or show you what they are experiencing.
2. Spend time observing infants and toddlers
   • Watch their actions and listen to their verbalizations. Then respond to exactly what you observe (not what you interpret).
3. Learn how each individual child communicates so you can respond
   • appropriately
   • Always talk to infants and toddlers like they are regular people (no baby talk!) and show your emotions so they learn what they look like.
4. Provide as many sensory experiences as possible
   • Infants and toddlers learn by touching, tasting, smelling, hearing and looking at things.
5. Let infants and toddlers work on solving their own problems
   • A little stress to figure something out is OK. Talk them through it if necessary. And be there to help if it is definitely needed.
6. Be consistent and reliable so you can build a trust with the infant/toddler.
   • This trust is the backbone of the infant/toddler’s entire development. Comfort with those who care for him = comfort with himself and the world.
7. Read to infants and toddlers every day and as often as possible.
   • These early literacy experiences have a profound effect on their knowledge, language and overall ability to communicate effectively.

Think about these beliefs. What do they mean to you? Do you know what each of them looks like?

Caregivers and Caregiving

As infant/toddler educators, we call our teaching “caregiving” because we are “caring” for the children. This goes beyond “teaching” them. Therefore, throughout this book, you will see teachers referred to as “caregivers” and teaching referred to as “caregiving.” But what does this caregiving look like?

In the first three years of life, relationships with responsive and reciprocal adults are essential and are considered the building blocks of healthy development. These types of relationships help infants and toddlers make sense of the world, take in all of the information that is coming at them and then assimilate and understand it better. Social competence, emotional development and academic learning are all fostered when infants and toddlers have responsive and reciprocal relationships with adults. These types of caregivers also provide predictable responses that the children come to trust; they read the children’s cues and respond to their needs. Every interaction matters and has an impact on the children’s lives. Infants develop their first sense of self through their observations of those who care for them.

In order for this to happen appropriately, the caregivers must not only understand the children in front of them but also how to appropriately respond to and care for them. Infants and toddlers deserve care and education that is respectful, responsive and reciprocal:

• To be respectful is to respect the infants and toddlers’ needs, their space and their communications. Adhering to specific needs is especially important for infants, who lead the way in these interactions. Overall, infants and toddlers tell us what they need, and then it’s our job to respond to it appropriately
• To be responsive is to respond to infants and toddlers’ actions, emotions, communications and needs. This is especially true for infants because they cannot fulfill their own needs. Toddlers can begin to respond to their own needs with your guidance
• Reciprocal means to have “synchronous interactions.” In these interactions, caregivers respond to infants and toddlers and then await their response to you. Think of it like a “dance” of back and forth interactions and communications between caregiver and child. These types of interactions give infants and toddlers a sense of security in their classroom environment, and they come to trust their caregivers and the environment. The children know that they are being cared about as much as they are being cared for, which is an important feeling for their emotional security (Gonzalez-Mena & Eyer, 2017)

Picture that you are a baby playing on the floor. Suddenly, someone grabs you from behind and, next thing you know, you are flying through air to the changing table. You are plopped down and wondering, “how did I get here?” or “what are we doing?”

How do you think that baby feels?

How about disrespected? Unsure?

Always remember that you don’t want any “babies flying through the air.” It sounds silly, but it will help you remember when you are about to grab an infant or toddler and “do” something to her without preparing her. Always tell infants and toddlers what you are about to do to them or with them. Let them know what is going on so they can be ready and trust you and your actions. This is very respectful and comforting. They should always know where they are going and what is about to happen. They also see that you understand and are responding to their needs (changing, hunger, etc.). And remember to respond to what they need, not what you think they need. This may require some troubleshooting by you as the caregiver but find out exactly what they need.

The Growth and Development of Infants and Toddlers

This book will describe the understandings and capabilities of children from ages 0–3 based on what I call a “typically developing child.” It is important to remember that not every child does everything at the exact same time, so don’t worry if a child you are observing isn’t exactly meeting the criteria I describe. As long as he reaches it at some point around the age group, he is doing just fine. I describe the growth, development and learning of children ages 0–3 as “climbing a ladder.” Everyone starts at the bottom and works their way up. The ladder is not a one-way climb. We can also take a few steps down and relearn something or reexperience something. Although the rate or speed of development varies for each child, the general order that children ages 0–3 learn skills is generally the same.

The quality of a child’s life in the first three years has a profound effect on the rest of their lives. All of children’s experiences in these years affect how their brain develops and how they grow as a person. This development and growth continues through the early childhood years.

The first three years of life are a time of constant emerging skills—skills that children are working on or just mastering. It is a time of figuring out the world and what it does. As caregivers of children ages 0–3, knowledge and recognition of these emerging skills is necessary. It is also important to remember that life experience has a lot to do with what skills young children acquire and when they acquire them. The concept of “nature versus nurture” is discussed often in early childhood education. Nature is the biological traits that you are born with. This comes from your biological parents and includes characteristics such as your physical stature and appearance. Nurture is your life experiences. Both influence how children grow and develop. Nurture has a larger effect on growth and development versus nature. The experiences you have in the world from the day you are born decide how you act and approach life as well as how much and what you learn. Infants and toddlers learn from every aspect of every ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Introduction to Infant and Toddler Care
• 2 Caregiving as Infant and Toddler Education
• 3 The Infant and Toddler Environments
• 4 Partnering With Families
• 5 Perceptual Development and the Five Senses
• 6 Physical Development
• 7 Play as Learning
• 8 Attachment
• 9 Social Development and Interactions
• 10 Emotional Development
• 11 Language and Literacy Development
• 12 Cognitive Development
• 13 Early Intervention
• Index