Intake Observation And Assessment

Despite the importance of development during this period and the costs of early derailment of the infantcaregiver relationship, look, there’re a paucity of programs providing services to infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their parents. Do you know an answer to a following question. These experiences with parents begin to determine the answers to such questions as Am I loved or unloved?, Do my feelings and actions get felt and responded to?, Am I a worthwhile person? From birth, infants begin to develop an understanding about themselves, their parents, and the world, based upon their experiences in their earliest relationships. Are others to be trusted or mistrusted?

Attachment theory tells us that the early parent child relationship is the secure base from which children explore and learn about their world, and will serve as a model for future relationships.

Healthy development is at risk, when the attachment relationship is impaired or disrupted.

Emotionally attuned and responsive positive early experiences with parents are essential for infants to come to know the world and themselves as fundamentally good. That the infant’s experience of early caregiving that include failures of the early environment to provide adequate attunement and protection can have an enormous impact leading to depression, recent brain research indicates that actual changes take place in the physical and chemical structures in the brain, limited impulse control and aggression later in lifespan.

Attuned, and available parent, his/her capacity for social relatedness and development along multiple lines can go awry just as when the parent is confronted with the infant’s developmental difficulties, her/his capacity to parent can be challenged, when the infant ain’t met by a warm. Infant Mental Health specialists work within the context of the parentchild relationship to strengthen parental capacity while promoting both an understanding of the needs of infants and young children and their parents’ unique ability to meet those needs. These gaps can derail basic capacities to relate and communicate, share attention and self regulate. Essentially, the emotional and behavioral challenges seen as children grow older are often associated with gaps and lapses in the foundation of their development. Developmental disturbance can disrupt the formation of empathy and comprehension of the world around and the capacity to communicate thoughts and feelings with words, play and identical symbols.

It can’t be separated from the context of the parent, even though the infant’s contribution to the relationship with his parent is great. Infant parent relationship will suffer when infants won’t display behaviors or characteristics which elicit responsive caregiving as can be the case with some premature, ‘drug exposed’ or those that have developmental challenges. Infants are surprisingly competent and endowed with predispositions toward attachment promoting behaviors. They are not the blank slates they have been once thought to be. That said, the infant’s capacities to execute these signaling behaviors have roots across developmental domains. Infants possess an amazing repertoire of social and emotional capacities that are designed to give their parent information about their ‘well being’ and to actively behave in ways that modify and regulate the behavior of their parents. They come into the world with remarkable capacities to establish and regulate these relationships. Recent neuropsychological research has shown that infants are born with their brains wired to be engaged in important nurturing and protective relationships.

Did you know that the term Infant Mental Health is a slight misnomer as well as includes Early Childhood Mental Health.

It is practice driven.

The Institute for Parenting Post Master’s Program in Parent Infant Mental Health, Developmental Practice and Trauma is a ‘2year’ intensive training program designed for clinicians, supervisors, and consultants. Now this program is unique in its theory and research to practice emphasis, its grounding in infant and early childhood development, its cross disciplinary scope and its practitioner practicality perspective. Rooted in the relational context of the work, the course of study embraces the complexity of the children and families served as well as the systems in which service is delivered.

Program offers what the IMH clinician really needs to know to do the work.

Its focus is on the mental health and relational dimensions of development that unfold in the context of other related domains of development, all of which are intimately and inextricably interlaced in infancy.

IMH practice focuses on the development of ‘0 5’ year olds within the context of the early parentchild relationship as the foundation for healthy socialemotional, cognitive, language and even physical development. However, infant Mental Health Practice is an interdisciplinary field that represents a dramatic shift in clinical practice. Notice, iMH offers ways of conceptualizing early disruptions in the attachment process, and of organizing interventions.