A new program for parents and
infants is coming to Pittsfield,
Massachusetts. The Hello It’s Me Project shines a spotlight on these
tender new relationships, investing resources around the birth of a baby with
the long-term goal of building a healthy community from the bottom up.
When world-renowned child development
researcher Dr. Ed Tronick spoke in the spring of 2018 for an
audience of a wide variety of practitioners in Berkshire County who work
with children and families, he began with a quote from Steven Hawking, “One
of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. . . .Without
imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.”
Perhaps best known for developing the Still
Face Paradigm, an experimental manipulation designed to demonstrate
the young infant’s tremendous capacity for connection and communication, Dr.
Tronick shared his decades of research, revealing not only the inevitability,
but also the necessity of imperfection in human interaction.
In contrast to the expectation of a kind of
mythical idealized attunement, he found, through detailed microanalysis of
interactions in our primary love relationship, that healthy, typical
parent-infant interactions are in fact mismatched 70% of the time. Through
the repair of these moment-to-moment mismatches we develop sense of agency and
hope, a sense that “I can act on my world to make it better.”
Psychologist Dr. Jayne Singer continued the
afternoon presentation for the community, sharing the Touchpoints model,
developed by Dr. Tronick together with pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton,
who passed away in March 2018 at the age of 99.
Touchpoints offers a way to apply the core concept of mismatch and repair
beyond infancy in a range of clinical settings.
Pediatricians, early intervention specialists,
educators, child protection workers, home visitors, literacy advocates from
Berkshire United Way, and others from across Berkshire County engaged in lively
discussion. Bringing home the importance of investing in early relationships,
Dr. Singer showed a picture of a newborn infant, saying, “This is early
literacy.” She encouraged audience members to suspend certainty inherent in
being the “expert” and to instead create a space for listening with curiosity.
On the Saturday and Sunday that followed this
event, another group gathered for a Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) training. While
the medical model of care often puts the professional in the role of expert,
this intervention seeks to shift that mindset, mobilizing parents’ unique
capacity to tune into and respond to their newborn. The 18 neurobehavioral
observations of the NBO are not an assessment or evaluation. Rather, they offer
a frame in which to support parents’ earliest efforts to get to know their
baby.
Community practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines learned from Dr. Claudia Gold and Dr. Kevin Nugent, who developed the NBO, about
listening to a baby’s earliest communications. On the second day the group
devoted time to thinking together about how to collaborate to provide a holding
environment for vulnerable families such as those struggling with opiate
addiction. We acknowledged the need to support all families, recognizing the
“normative crisis” of the transition to parenthood and the need to destigmatize
asking for help.
Dr Gold is collaborating with the Family Birth Center at
Fairview Hospital, supporting the efforts of the maternity nurses, who have all
been trained, to incorporate the tool into routine care. As Doreen Hutchison,
RN, vice president of operations and patient care wisely observed, “We want parents
to go home with their baby feeling confident that they know their baby best.”
The Hello It’s Me Project will offer NBO
training to all nurses on the Mother-Baby Unit of Berkshire Medical Center with the aim of
integrating the NBO into routine care of newborns and their family. Partners in
the project include Berkshire Obstetrics and Gynecology where the program
will be introduced in the prenatal period. Recognizing critical role of home
visiting in promoting health parent-infant relationships the trainings will be
offered to Healthy
Families, Pediatric Development Center, and Parents as Teachers, and Berkshire
Nursing Families with the aim of integrating the NBO into their respective
programs. Recovery coaches in FIRST (Families In Recovery SupporT) Steps
Together, a peer recovery and parenting support program for pregnant and
parenting women with current or past opioid use disorder, will attend the
trainings. The first two of three annual trainings are scheduled for September
2019 and March 2020.
The
NBO bring the idea of “play,” with its inherent imperfections, into parent-infant and sibling relationships right from
birth. Many parents today are burdened by an
expectation of perfection. When we can protect time to listen to parent and
baby together, we convey the idea that, in contrast to a “right” way, they will
figure things out together. Growth happens through repair of inevitable
mistakes we make along the way.
