Observing Infants’ and Toddlers’ Relationships and Interactions in Group Care

Caregiving relationships, and the daily interactions that build relationships, are central to the care and education of children under 3 years. From many perspectives, most importantly, the very young child’s, relationships create a vitally important context for daily experiences and opportunities for development. Perhaps more than any other time in life, for the infant or toddler, who I am with is every bit as important as where I am and what I am doing. Robert Hinde (Towards understanding relationships. Academic, New York, 1979) described the caregiver-infant relationship as a “funnel” for the child’s experience, in which the physical surroundings, people, objects, and events are filtered through the mediating care and protection of the adult. Another influential theorist of early relationships, Alan Sroufe (Emotional development: The organisation of emotional life in the early years. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), has suggested that children’s primary caregiving relationships create lasting impressions, including expectations for the self and the self in relation to others. This chapter is about relationships between adults and children in infant-toddler group child care and the quality of the daily interactions that build those relationships. While close relationships in adulthood can be studied by interviewing people about their significant others, for infants and toddlers it is through direct observations of interactions that insights are gained. The chapter focuses on what is currently known about specific kinds of caregiver-child interactions that are thought to contribute to supportive relationships in child care, and thus to favorable experiences and outcomes for children.