The circumstances under which very young children are cared for have changed dramatically in the last 40 years. In the 1950s and 1960s, most children spent their infancy in the presence of family members and came into group care settings much later in their development. usually at age 3, 4, or 5. Even for the children who were in care, the time spent in group settings was relatively brief, most often for just part of the day. In the l990s things are quite different. Increasing numbers of infants and toddlers are being cared for in groups outside their homes for long periods of time each day. Infants as young as 5 and 6 weeks of age can be found in infant care. Six-month-olds in care are commonplace. The National Child Care Survey (Willer et al. 1991), conducted in the United States of America, revealed that 23% of babies younger than 1 year of age, 33% of l-year-olds, 38% of 2-year-olds, and 50% of 3-year-olds are cared for outside their home in regulated and unregulated family child care and in infant/toddler centers. Never in history have so many very young children spent so much time in the presence of nonfamily members. Never before has so much of what an infant imitates and absorbs as he or she begins to forge a definition of self been done in the presence of professional caregivers.

This explosion in the numbers of infants and toddlers in child care has received much attention. In recent years a great deal has been written about the need for quality child care for infants and toddlers. Researchers have addressed the issues of group size, adult-to-child ratio, appropriate environments, separation, caregiver-child interaction, and management policies, with the hope of improving the early experiences of infants. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to the impact that infant/toddler care may have on the child's formation of identity. This oversight has led to policies and practices in the majority of programs that, at best, indirectly support the process of identity formation and, at worst, jeopardize the process by creating environmental, experiential, and developmental obstacles to the formation of a solid sense of self. Why isn't the caregiver's role in identity formation a key component of infant/toddler staff training? Why aren't policies and practices for infant/toddler caregivers developed with an eye toward how they influence each child's formation of identity?

A lack of programmatic attention to identity formation infant/toddler care exists for two reasons. The first is that most infant/toddler care programs are based on inappropriate models. Most out-of-home care experiences developed for infants and toddlers were created by people who were experienced in running programs serving older, preschool-age children. They were used to caregivers serving children who had already formed a "working definition" of self - 3- and 4-year-old individuals who could clearly state "I don't like peanut butter" and "I want to fingerpaint." Infant group experiences were routinely set up to mimic preschool, with yearly movement from grade to grade and attention placed on learning through experience or caregiver teaching. In this model, what is expected is a relationship between two individuals, the child care provider and the child. The caregiver is expected to provide a safe, healthy, and interesting environment; facilitate the socioemotional, physical, and intellectual development of each child; and manage the child care group. This approach goes a long way toward ensuring the provision of quality care, but for infants it does not go far enough. Notions of the caregiver's role in the development of the identity of the individual, as opposed to his role in interacting with individuals, are rarely considered. The issue of an infant learning through imitation and incorporation of caregiver traits is rarely addressed, nor is the influence of group policies on the infant's evolving individual identity, such as the switching of children from one set of caregivers to another when children reach 12 months of age and move into the toddler room.

Simply put, an important distinction between infant/toddler care and preschool care has been ignored in all but the best programs and family child care homes. Preschoolers have formed a somewhat well-developed "working sense of self," with likes and dislikes, attitudes, and inclinations. Infants and toddlers are in the process of forming this preliminary sense of self. Part of what infants and toddlers get from caregivers are perceptions of how people act at various times and in various situations (seen as how the infant should behave), how people act toward them and others (seen as how they and others should be treated), and how emotions are expressed (seen as how they should feel). The infant uses these impressions and often incorporates them into the self she becomes. This notion of the day-to-day influence of the caregiver on a child's evolving identity has often been overlooked in infant/toddler programs. More is happening than tender loving care and learning games--values and beliefs are being witnessed and incorporated.

Psychologically speaking, the infant is not yet an individual but is in the process of becoming one. Mahler (1985) stresses this point so strongly that she labels the caregiver during the first six months of life as being the "outer half of the child's self." This is clearly a different role and responsibility than the role of a preschool teacher. If caregivers see their influence on the identity of infants and toddlers as similar to the influence they would have on 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, they may do a great disservice to the children. These caregivers are ignoring the fact that significant aspects of the way they act are being perceived, interpreted, and incorporated Into the actual definition of self the child is forming. This insight has dramatic implications for practice.

The second reason that identity formation has not been taken seriously as a topic for infant/toddler programmatic development is quite troubling. Infant/toddler care as a whole is not seen as a serious topic. In American society, at least, infant toddler care is not considered a profession. It is seen as care that anyone can do, that until recently was done for no pay as part of daily family life, and that needs no training. Infants are perceived by many parents, politicians, and policymakers as not capable of much and needing only safe "babysitting" while their parents go about their business. From this point of view, careful caregiver selection, training, and management policies are unnecessary, and warnings from the field about the dangers to society of not upgrading the quality of care go unheeded, as does any counsel about the importance of selecting appropriate models to care for the very young because of the incorporative inclinations of the infant. This lack of public attention to the importance of the first three years of life has become so critical that last year the Carnegie Corporation of New York launched a major national initiative to bring to public awareness what they call the "quiet crisis" of infant neglect (Carnegie Corporation of New York 1994). It reports that more that 53% of mothers return to the workforce within a year of the baby's birth, that high-quality care is scarce, and that many infants spend 35 or more hours a week in substandard care. Identity formation is not addressed because infancy as a whole is barely addressed.

Research indicators of incorporation of caregiver behavior

Source and colleagues (1985) have illustrated with a visual cliff experiment and a strange doll experience that 12-month-old children look to caregivers to see if they, the children, should or should not fear objects and experiences new to them. In this study, infants and their mothers were filmed while the children experienced a new task: the children (1) moved toward their mother across Plexiglas suspended 18 inches over a surface; or (2) experienced a new object, an "Incredible Hulk" doll. Some mothers were instructed to smile and act as though everything was all right, and others were to grimace and act as though the situation was dangerous. The children looked to their mothers for advice and showed through their behavior that they took the advice even if they originally had been inclined to act the opposite way toward the action or object. This research highlights the power of the caregiver to influence children's development of fear responses to certain actions and objects.

For a two-year period, Stern (1985) collected videotapes of infants and their mothers engaged in normal, everyday activities. He found that something as simple as the way a caregiver reacts to a child's gaze can influence a child's emotional development. What makes the difference is not one or two reactions but the day-in-and-day-out style of reacting to the gaze and all the other seemingly insignificant contacts with a young child. Take, as an example, the child's development of will. When a baby breaks eye contact, the baby often is giving the message that he or she has had enough contact. If the caregiver pursues the gaze and forces contact, he or she, without even knowing it, might be teaching the child that the caregiver's will is more important than the child's will and that the caregiver, not the child, has the right to display power. Stern believes that these small give-and-take interactions of daily life between caregivers and infants can shape the way children relate to people later in life. Based on his research, Stern concludes that early interactions set the stage for the way children expect relationships to go and that caregiver selection and training should stress "attunement"; For caregivers, attunement can be matching a young child's level of excitement or tone of voice or respectfully leaving an infant alone. The caregiver communicates to the infant, "I have a sense of your feelings, needs, and messages and know the correct next thing to do." When the child senses that other people can and will share his feelings, he can build a more positive sense of self. Stern's research carries the powerful message that "little things mean a lot," that what caregivers do in their seemingly insignificant interactions with infants and toddlers, if they do them somewhat consistently over time, affects child behavior.

Lewis has shown through his research on the onset of embarrassment that the 20-month-old is starting to exhibit signs of a differentiated sense of self, a self that is influenced by the rules of others and one that is capable of feeling shame, guilt, and an emerging responsibility for personal actions (in Libscomb & Wander 1985). If at this time in development the child is in the care of people insensitive or oblivious to these emerging cognitive and emotional constructs, much of what is crucial to a child's development of a healthy sense of self (a sensitive and respectful interpretation of social boundaries by the caregiver, coupled with enthusiastic encouragement for individual initiatives) could be missing. Caregivers at least should be trained to be aware that this growth of a sense of personal responsibility is taking place so that they will not devalue or ignore its occurrence.

Mosier and Rogoff (1994) have shown that infants learn lessons about their own potency, or lack of it, from their success or failure in using their caregivers as instruments to achieve their own goals. This give-and-take between caregiver and child is not just a cognitive event leading to the child's better understanding of means-ends relationships but an important component of the development of a sense of self. When relating to caregivers who allow themselves to be used as the infant's tool, infants are learning that they are people who are powerful enough to get others to do things for them and can expect things to be done for them.

Howes and Rubenstein (1985), in a study of child care working conditions (adult-child ratio, safety of environments, etc.), found that not only did space and ratio affect traditional definitions of quality, they also affected the relationship between child and caregiver. When environments were safe and when numbers of children cared for were low, caregivers smiled at children more and were much more willing to allow them to explore. There were fewer "no" and "don't" statements and more positive, encouraging exchanges. The study showed that child care policies related to numbers and safety influenced--in addition to what would normally be anticipated--the quality of emotional messages passed from caregiver to child. Messages about appropriate and inappropriate infant and toddler behavior, which of course were available for incorporation, were influenced by child care policy.

As the research reported here suggests, infants and toddlers learn many a lessons from their caregivers. Some of the lessons that may become incorporated into the child's sense of self are

• what to fear;
• which of one's behaviors are seen as appropriate;
• how one's messages are received and acted upon;
• how successful one is at getting one's needs met by others;
• what emotions and intensity level of emotions one can safely display; and
• how interesting one is.

Analysis of infant care policies with identity formation in mind

When identity formation is considered, the planning of group care for infants and toddlers is done in a whole new light, making some policy and practice recommendations quite understandable and others quite inappropriate. Let us now look at child care policies and practices from the perspective of their influence on identity formation. To assist the reader in this exercise, a brief review of Mahler's (1985) theory of separation-individuation is presented in Figure 1, and Greenspan's (1990) stages of emotional development are presented in Figure 2 (both found at the end of this article after the References). The policies to be examined are primary caregiver assignments, continuity of care, group size, responsive curricula, cultural continuity, and use of a child's home language.

Policy 1: The assignment of a primary caregiver to each infant in care

From the first weeks of life, connection with a few special caregivers is critical to a child's developing mutual attunement, preferential links, differentiation of loved and trusted ones from others, and differentiation of self from loved ones and others.

When the separation-individuation process is considered as an important component of the child care experience, it makes great sense to limit the number of caregivers with whom a child must interact each day and to structure his experience -- so that it is easy for him to form an intimate relationship with a known and trusted adult. This is best done by assigning a primary caregiver to each child. Often because of staff turnover, part-time and volunteer staff, or extreme team-coverage approaches, an intimate and secure link between caregiver and child does not have a chance to form. The child struggles in care repeatedly, trying to form caring relationships rather than depending on and using those relationships to make sense of and make their place in the world. How well can a child tune in to a caregiver's rhythms if she is expected to relate to large numbers of caregivers? If a child's "safe and secure base" keeps switching from one caregiver to another, there comes a point when one does not have a safe and secure base from which to venture out and explore the world. How potent can a child feel in exploration when there is no secure base from which to explore? These are the types of questions that should drive policy and practice. They help explain how teamwork should be designed and how primary care should be interpreted. What if a primary caregiver is sick or leaves/ Given our understanding of the emotional work the child is doing, wouldn't this change be traumatic to the infant if care had been given exclusively by one caregiver/ From this vantage point, teamwork is essential, but teams should be kept small and foster the type of relationship building that allows the child the best chance to navigate the separation-individuation process. It should be kept in mind that a primary-care policy best serves the infant not when that care is expected to be exclusive but when it is seen only as primary. From the point of view of impact on emerging identity, it is crucial that there are other relationships the infant can fall back on when the primary caregiver is missing. This way, a secondary attachment is available and the child won't feel abandoned. This definition of primary care is a good example of how policy decisions become more deeply informed through the use of the anchor of identity formation. Rather than developing a rigid program policy - team care versus exclusive care - providers consider the impact of the decision on the child as a way to define primary care. The definition - and, subsequently, the practice of care - benefits from attention to the plan's impact on children's identity.

Policy II: Continuity of Care

Not only should caregiver assignment be examined but so, too, should the practice of switching infant and toddlers from group to group be questioned with regard to its impact on children's identity formation. If a child needs strong bonds with caregivers during infancy in order to feel secure enough to venture out on his own, why switch caregivers at all during the infancy period? Children need to feel connected enough to their caregivers to fall back dependently on those traits of the caregiver the child knows he can count on. Why not have children stay with the same caregivers for the first 36 months of life? Wouldn't this practice help ensure that a child's messages are received and understood and provide the clarity of definition needed so that the child, toward the end of infancy, could clearly differentiate self from caregiver while at the same time fall back dependently on those traits of the caregiver the child knows he can count on? Why rupture attachments? What type of message does that give the child about enduring relationships? Having infants change groups two to three times during infancy runs counter to what both Mahler and Greenspan say the child needs. Why not instead develop policies and practices that try to keep children and caregivers together in familiar environments so that the child will have the emotional climate to work through the development of identity, rather than having to repeatedly form new relationships while at the same time trying to define self.

Having young infants, toddlers, and older infants switched to different groups as they grow older is a common practice, but the practice is usually based on economic and staffing logic rather than on what is best for the child. Movement of children to different groups and different caregivers during the infancy period often is driven by concerns about adult-to-child ratio (based on lower ratios for younger children) and the varying compensation rates for care. This seems like putting the cart before the horse.

Policy III: Serve infants in small groups

When groups grow too large, intimacy between caregiver and child suffers. Much as been said in the United States of America about adult-to-child ratio, but little attention has been paid to total group size. Yet keeping groups small promotes personal contact between children, quiet exploration, and on-to-one attention from a caregiver. In contrast, as the number of infants in a group increases, so does the noise level, the stimulation - the general confusion. This oversight, serving large numbers of infants in a group, occurs throughout America. Why? Because the infant is not seen as sufficiently different from the preschooler to warrant different treatment. Awareness of the importance to infants of developing a strong relationship with their caregiver, the importance to their developing sense of self to be heard an understood by those around them , and their need to feel protected enough so that they are encouraged to explore - all lead to the conclusion that small groups for infants work better than large groups. Because the total number of children in a small group is manageable, the caregiver can respond to every child's needs and interest. Instead of the confusion of too many people, small groups offer comfort and a sense of belonging to everyone in the group.

Mahler's notion of the crawler and toddler practicing independence by moving away from but keeping within eyesight of a trusted adult and Greenspan's notion of purposeful communication assume that the trusted adult (1) is able to see the infant's cues from afar, (2) makes eye contact and provides emotional support from a distance, and (3) is available if the child needs to return for emotional refueling. All of this is difficult to do in large groups.

Policy IV: Responsive curricula rather than intellectual stimulation

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. But what of the messages that this approach gives the developing self? One possible message is, "You don't know what to be interested in or how to do things. You need adults to show you haw to think and what to think about."

Experts in the field of early development and care have increasingly come to recognize the importance of infants and toddlers having the freedom to make learning choices and to experience the world on their own terms. This approach is healthy intellectually and emotionally. Rather than teaching specific lessons, the focus is on facilitating natural interests and urges to learn. This is done by providing infants and toddlers with close and responsive relationships with caregiver; by designing safe, interesting, and developmentally appropriate environments; by giving infants uninterrupted time to explore/ and by interacting with infants in ways that emotionally and intellectually support their discovery and learning.

The caregiver's role as facilitator of learning is best understood when we take into account the inherent urge of infants to explore and direct their own learning. From the point of view of this child care model, infants are seen as ready and motivated to learn from birth on. At birth they are able to absorb information from the sights, sounds, and scents around them. This urge to explore springs forth at the moment of birth.

Responsivity starts with watching infants and using information obtained to guide interaction. This way, messages the child receives about appropriate and inappropriate behavior optimize child initiative and minimize adult-directed activity. Caregivers thus help infants in their pursuits to

1. gather knowledge of the physical properties of objects as they mouth. bang, and shake toys;
   
   
2. put these objects into relationships and categorize them as they learn, for example, to recognize and anticipate a toy that will make a rattling sound;
   
   
3. develop an understanding of who they can trust and rely on for getting their needs met;
   
   
4. become aware of the rules of the road in getting along with others, as their tug on another child's toy is rebuffed; and
   
   
5. build their motor skills and language skills as they use their bodies as tools for exploring and communicating with the world around them.

When the caregiver respects these pursuits, she also respects the children and teaches indirectly. A strong sense of self is supported when she provides a thoughtful variety of toys matched to the infants' level. She eases with words the frustration of infants and supports them as they struggle with new challenges. She gives labels to the objects, sounds, and feelings that infants experience, and she guides the infants' first interactions with others. When a caregiver trusts that infants and toddlers learn through this responsive approach, she gives them control over their own learning. Thus, through responsivity, a caregiver does more than attend to intellectual games and tasks; she also considers how the child thinks about himself as a learner.

Policy V: Cultural continuity and common language-- Inconsistent guidelines with regard to common language between caregiver and child and cultural background

Culture is the fundamental building block of identity. Through cultural learning, children gain a feeling of belonging, a sense of personal history, and security in knowing who they are and where they come from. But what happens when infants and toddlers are cared for by caregivers from a different culture, particularly if the caregiver's culture is the dominant culture and the child comes from a minority one? When infants are cared for by caregivers from a different cultural background, particularly by a caregiver from the dominant culture, very often the child has his background either subtly or blatantly challenged. This is done often from the best of intentions. Different ways of doing things are often seen as strange. A child may become torn between how he is expected to behave at home--not to make such a mess-- and how he is expected to behave in care--to touch and feel most anything. Issues of feeding, sleeping, toileting, and the like often become issues of conflict between home and care settings, with the young child caught in between. So with grounding in family and culture being key to identity formation, what types of policies about culture should be enacted? First, the child care experience should be in harmony with the culture of the home.

Therefore, caregivers should pay great attention to incorporating home practices into care. They should talk with parents and uncover their preferences. Patterns of care should give the child a sense of connection with the home and, more importantly, communicate that where she comes from is respected and appreciated. Staff should reflect the culture of the families served, and the environment should include pictures and objects from home. These connections are important for the infant. Particularly if caregivers come from the same cultural background as the families and children served, the children will have an easy time incorporating their own cultures and values and beliefs into their emerging definition of self. When cared for by caregivers either ignorant of or resistant to his culture, the child will be getting the message from the caregiver that something is wrong with the way his family does things, and he may be set on a path that eventually leads to the rejection of his own cultural identity.

This is particularly true when caregivers and families do not speak the same language. The obvious difficulty is that the caregiver may miss both direct and subtle messages given by the child. This directly threatens the child's estimates of personal potency. "I can't get people to understand me" "I am frustrated in my efforts to communicate." What is also harmful are the subtle messages given about the incorrectness of home language. "Not agua. Water." 'We say 'bye bye.' Wong Fillmore (1991), in a study of language-minority children who attend early education programs, found that a vast majority of them had lost facility with their home language by the time they were 10 years old. Many rejected their home culture completely, and some could not communicate with their own parents because they no longer spoke a common language. Wong Fillmore documents children torn between the pulls of family and the dominant culture and suffering identity crisis in the process.

To address these issues, Wong Fillmore and others who have studied culture and child care recommend a caregiving setting for infants and toddlers where their home language is spoken and the culture is consistent with family life (Far West Laboratory & the California Department of Education 1993). This is done by hiring and advancing staff from the culture served.

Conclusions

With just the least bit of attention to issues of identity formation, caregivers can improve infant care outside the home. With child care policy decisions based on this child-focused topic, many of the common faults plaguing infant care today would become glaringly apparent. Too often the child is the last part of the staff-management-parent-budget-child equation to be considered. Having an orientation that acknowledges the caregiver's role in an infant's identity formation would place the infant and the infant's work in proper perspective. It would make clear that those who care for infants and toddlers participate either knowingly or unknowingly in the creation of a sense of self and that attention must be paid to this unique responsibility.

References

Carnegie Corporation of New York. 1994. Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children. The report of the task force on meeting the needs of young children: New York: Author.

Far West Laboratory & California Department of Education. 1993. Essential Connections: Ten Keys to Culturally Sensitive Care, prod. J.R. Lally. Interviews with L. Wong Fillmore, C. Brunson Phillips, L. Derman-Sparks, and Y. Torres. Sacramento: California Department of Education. Videocassette.

Greenspan, S.I. 1990. Emotional Development in Infants and Toddlers. In Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Social-emotional Growth and Socialization, ed. J.R. Lally, 15-18. Sacramento: California State Department of Education.

Howes, C., & J.L. Rubenstein. 1985. Determinants of Toddlers' Experience in Day Care: Age of Entry and Quality of Setting. Child Care Quarterly 14: 140-51.

Libscomb, J., & B. Wander. 1985. Life's First Feelings. Nova Series, prod. WCBH Boston. Interview with M. Lewis. Deerfield, IL: Coronet Films & Video. Videocassette.

Mahler, M. 1985. The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant. Franklin Lakes, NJ: Mahler Research Foundation Library. Videocassette.

Mosier, C.E., & B. Rogoff. 1994. Infants' Instrumental Use of Their Mothers to Achieve their Goals. Child Development 65 (1): 70-79.

Sorce, J.R., R.N. Emde, J. Campos, & M.D. Klinnert. 1985. Maternal Emotional Signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of one-year-olds. Developmental Psychology 21 (1): 195-200.

Stern, D.N. 1985. The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. New York: Basic.

Willer, B., S.L. Hofferth, E. Kisker, P. Divine-Hawkins, E. Farquhar, & F.B.Clantz. 1991. The demand and supply of childcare in 1990:Joint findings from the national child care survey 1990 and a profile of child care settings. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Wong Fillmore, L. 1991. A Question for Early-childhood Programs: English first or families first? Education Week, 19 June.

Figure 1. The Separation-Individuation

I.  Pre-Separation/Individuation (birth to 3 months). First few weeks of life--child seeks and establishes connection with mother and "tunes" to the mother's rhythms. Next few weeks--child engages in mutual attunement and reciprocity. Mahler assumes that the child is in symbiosis with mother (unable to differentiate self from mother/feeling of oneness).

II.  Differentiation: Psychological hatching (4 to 9 months). Differentiation begins in earnest around 4 to 5 months. At this point the child doesn't focus solely on mother when in the mother's presence but begins to focus on other things, objects, other people when in the mother's presence. By 5 months, attachment takes place. The child has formed a preferential link with mother or other significant caregivers. Exploratory body movements help the child to identify his or her own body boundaries. By 6 months, the child explores both the mother and nonmother. This examination and comparative scanning helps to sharpen the child's definition of the mother. By 7 or 8 months, the child's more sophisticated movement skills and intense interest in the environment set the child on journeys away from the loved one. This child can sit up by self and move around by self. The child is fully "hatched." Stranger anxiety shows up now as the child becomes aware of the concept of stranger. As the child learns to differentiate loved one from other, a deeper sense of attachment takes place. By 8 to 9 months, the child shows distress when mother is absent. The assumption is that the child retains an image of a loved one when absent or a memory of a pleasant or contented feeling state when in the loved one's presence. This is a clear sign of the awareness of differentiation: a sense of self as separate from loved one.

III.
Practicing: Being at a distance from loved one but not alone (10 to 15 months). At about 10 months, the child becomes fascinated with the ability to stand, move away from loved one, play on her own, and explore attributes of people and others. The child seeks contact with loved one from a distance. Being looked at by the loved one from a distance is important, facilitates the child's continued interest in the outside world, and gives the child the emotional strength to be separate. When the child is away from the loved one for too long, he or she will return. Mahler calls this "emotional refueling." Giving this attention, at the demand of the child, is important. In order for the child to go out in the world without high levels of anxiety and fear, the child needs to know that the loved one is there to comfort when tired, to soothe the bumps and bruises, and to intervene when there is danger. Practice of this type with bumps and bruises and relatively long periods of operating on one's own sharpens further the child's sense of self as separate and individuated. Upright walking at about 12 to 15 months increases the child's sense of separateness. Long periods of independent practice and exhilaration with locomotor mastery seem to happen without much awareness of loved one, but the practicing child still seems to sense mother as part of himself. Brief periods of separation from loved one are tolerated, and connections and interest with others are also seen. The child of this age learns coping skills for the loss. At this age, play is a powerful distraction.

IV.  Rapprochement: Approach and sharing (16 to 24 months +). As the toddler's intellectual and motor skills grow, so too does his awareness of separateness from loved ones. This awareness increases his need to have the loved one share all objects, new skills, and experiences. At 16 months, the child brings most things that are of interest to show loved one. As the child gets older, things are brought not only to show but to play with together. Shared participation in play at this time with loved ones, other adults, and other children provides opportunities for further clarification of individuation. Much is made about having things done "my way," communicating clearly about ownership and possession. Rapprochement period often contains conflict between budding autonomy and need for help and sharing. Impatience and frustration with the loved one's effort often is part of the sharing. The child wants things to be magically made well by the loved one, and feelings of helplessness and rage sometimes ensue. Increased awareness of separateness becomes periodically coupled with awareness vulnerability. Acceptance by the loved one of confused and conflicting messages from the child during this stage is very helpful. As the child moves toward 24 months, she seems to get more and more gratification from doing things with others and on her own. Clearly understanding that "I built the tower!" the child takes pride and credit for accomplishments. Awareness of one's own developmental level comes at this stage. This age child understands her similarity and difference with young infants. By being able to think symbolically, the 24-month-old child can "carry" in her head a memory of a loved one when the person is not there and also a memory that she will return as she has done in the past. Maternal image has been incorporated.

Source: Condensed from M. Mahler, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (Franklin Lakes, NJ: Mahler Research Foundation Library, 1985), videocassette.

Figure 2. Greenspan's Stages of Emotional Development

I.  Regulation and interest in the world (birth+). During the first stage, up to about 4 months, babies are learning to take an interest in sights, sounds, touch, smell, and movement. Babies are also learning to calm themselves down. We find that even during the first weeks of life, children respond to care differently. For example, some babies are especially sensitive. In addition, babies differ in their abilities to understand the messages their senses take in. The ability to make sense of a caregiver's sounds, learned during the first two to three months of life, varies from baby to baby. It is very important for caregivers to detect these individual differences because they are the basis for babies developing an interest in the world. Learn what is special about each infant's way of dealing with sensations, taking in and acting on information, and finding ways to organize their movements to calm or soothe themselves, and then act accordingly. What you do early is important.

II.  Falling in love (4 months+). By 4 months of age, we are in the second stage of emotional development, a stage in which the baby needs to be wooed into a loving relationship. Babies differ in the ways they act during this stage also. There are the more passive, "laid back" babies who need to be sold on the human world and those who eagerly reach out and embrace their caregivers. Caregivers who are not afraid to feel rejected, who don't take a particular baby's lack of interest as a personal insult, can do this baby a world of good. You can try many different "wooing" tactics based on a sensitive reading of what the baby shows she likes and doesn't like. Facial expressions, holding positions, types of touch and pressure, and sounds can all be used to communicate your part in the falling-in-love process.

III.  Purposeful communication (8 months+). By 8 months, the babies need experiences that verify that their signals are being read. Dependency (reaching out), assertiveness, curiosity, and even aggression are now part of a give-and-take, cause-and-effect pattern whereby caregiver and baby "read" and respond to each other. Sometimes the amount of exploration and excitement generated by new and different experiences during this period can lead to the caregiver overstimulating the infant. Experienced caregivers are usually involved in constant "signal reading." They know when to do more with the infant and when to do less. While neither overstimulating nor understimulating, caregivers also model how purposeful communication should go. By respecting the infant's messages, they model respect of others for the infant

IV.  The beginning of a complex sense of self (10 months+). By 10 to 18 months, babies need to be admired for all the new abilities they have mastered. They have organized these abilities into schemes to get things done and make things happen. They are inventive and show initiative. By acknowledging the child who completes such a complex action, we contribute to that child's developing sense of self. When we engage in complex play with the child and intellectually expand it, we model new ways for the child to grow. Lots of imitation happens at this point in development, and so does the beginning of pretend play. By allowing for and taking part in early games and imitation play, we help children expand their sense of themselves as complex, organized persons.

V.  Emotional idea (18 months+). By 18 to 24 months, children are able to create images in their minds, as evidenced by their pretending to be someone else. During this stage, caregivers can be of great help if they assist children to express their feelings as emotional ideas, rather than just acting them out. Make-believe play is wonderful for this purpose because children begin to use words and gestures to label their feelings. Caregivers can provide young children a safe way to put into words their curiosity about sexuality, aggression, rejection, and separation through make-believe play. This expression of emotional ideas is very releasing to a child but sometimes uncomfortable to adults. If you find that you are having trouble letting children put these feelings into words, turn to another caregiver for help. You might be quite comfortable allowing children to explore competition and anger but find that you cut off imaginative play about closeness and separation. By getting help with your "hot spots" and "blind spots," you will open up more emotional areas to the child for his exploration.

VI.  Emotional thinking (30 months+). When children are about 30 months old, their emotional development involves shifting gears between make-believe and reality. Young children are beginning to have the ability to reason about their feelings instead of being able to act them out only in pretend play. During the stage of emotional thinking, setting limits and discipline become very important. However, limit setting must always be in balance with empathy and an interest in what the child is feeling. Here, too, the caregiver needs to look at herself. Some of us who are very indulgent are great on the pretend-play side but very weak on the limit-setting side; some of us who are law-and-order people are great on the limit-setting side but very weak on the make-believe-play and empathy side.

Source: Condensed by permission, from S.l. Creenspan, "Emotional Development in Infants and Toddlers" in Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Social-Emotional Crowth and Socialization, ed. J.R. Lally (Sacramento: California State Department of Education, 1990), pp. 15-18. Originally published in S.I.. Greenspan, First Feelings: Milestones in the Emotional Development of Your Baby and Child (New York: Viking, 1985). Copyright by S.I. Greenspan. Discussed more fully in Infancy and Early Childhood: The Practice of Clinical Assessment and Intervention with Emotional and Developmental Challenges (Madison, CT: International University Press, 1992).

¹ J. Ronald Lally, Ed D., is director of the Center for Child and Family Studies. Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development in Sausalito, California. He also directs the Program for Infant/Toddler Caregivers, a video-based training program. He is one of the founding members of Zero To Three and is the author, with Alice Honig, of Infant Caregiving: A Design for Training. This article was first presented in Mav 1994 at an international symposium on early childhood education in Berlin. The Neue Entwicklungen in der Kleinkindpadogogik symposium proceedings, edited by W. Tietze, Department of Psychology, University of Free Berlin, are in press.

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