Traditional views of child development have suggested that infants and toddlers should be stimulated to foster their intellectual growth and development. In this view of development, adults hold the key to teaching relatively helpless infants how to receive and organize information about the world. In support of this approach, countless educational toys and materials have been designed to teach babies specific lessons.

Increasingly, however, experts in the field of early development and care have come to recognize the importance of infants and toddlers having the freedom to make learning choices and to experience the world in their own terms. This approach is consistent with the attitude of respect toward infants and toddlers that is the hallmark of the Program for Infant/Toddler Caregivers.

The approach to infant learning taken by the Program for Infant/Toddler Caregivers does not focus on teaching specific lessons. Rather, the focus is on facilitating natural interests and urges to learn. This is done by providing infants with close and responsive relationships with caregivers, by designing safe and interesting and developmentally appropriate environments, giving infants uninterrupted time to explore, and interacting with infants in ways that emotionally and intellectually support their initiations in discovery and learning.

Infants are ready to learn from birth on. At birth, they are able to absorb information from the sights, sounds and scents around them to store it, to sort it out, and to use this information to explore more precisely the world around them. This urge to explore springs forth at the moment of birth. The caregiver’s role as facilitator rather than teacher is best understood when we take into account this inherent urge to explore and to direct one’s own learning.

Caregivers best develop their facilitator role through observation of infants at play and through study. Observation gives them the information they need to respond to infants in ways that support learning. Study, helps them learn what to look at in the child-temperament stages of development, the child’s natural cognitive interests, etc. and in themselves - their personal hot spots and blind spots, temperaments, styles of engagement, etc.

In watching infants during the first three years of life, we see them gather knowledge of the physical properties of objects as they mouth, bang, and shake toys. We see them cluster these objects into crude functional groups and categorize them as to how they might use them. We see them develop an understanding of who they can trust and rely on for getting needs met. We see them become aware of what the rules of the road are in getting along with others as, for example, their tug on another child’s toy is rebuffed. And, we see them build motor skills and language skills as they use their bodies as tools for exploring and communicating with the world around them. This is their play. Yet, each of these activities reflects learning.

When caregivers respect this play, they are teaching indirectly. They teach by providing a thoughtful variety of toys matched to the infant’s level. They teach by easing with words the frustration of the struggling infant, and by supporting infants through new challenges. They teach by giving labels to the objects, sounds, and feelings infants experience and by assisting the infants’ first interactions with others. Thus, through preparation, play, and sensitivity to infants needs during routines of care, the caregiver teaches and the infant learns. When caregivers trust that infants learn through play, they give infants and toddlers control over their own development. Through facilitation, many valuable lessons are learned, not the smallest of which are lessons in self-esteem.

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