ABSTRACT
Using a sequence of yielding, pushing, reaching, grasping, pulling, and releasing movements, a baby communicates what he wants and needs from his parents and expresses how he reacts to what his parents want and need from him. Through these macro-and micromovement fundamentals, baby and parents coconstruct and convey desires, feelings, and intentions. From the ˜rst adjustments of a baby yielding and pushing while on his belly in the ˜rst weeks of life to aid his digestion to the greater complexity of the older infant walking toward a parent to receive comfort, these movements become part of the baby’s efforts to self-regulate and regulate interpersonal relationships. They are essential to character development in that they become the preferred and routine ways we dynamically adjust, making them simultaneously psychological and physical by nature.
