ABSTRACT
Building and supporting healthy relationships is the cornerstone of home visiting practices for many reasons. This chapter explores the Collaborative for Understanding the Pedagogy of Infant/toddler Development (CUPID) Competency Building and Supporting Relationships. According to CUPID, home visitors should possess: Expanded knowledge of the importance of secure attachment, the centrality of parent–child relationships for children’s development, and the co-constructed nature of family relationships and systems. The actual back-and-forth interactions between parents and their children provide the setting within which child development takes place. The parent–child relationship is important for the overall family system because the interactions that occur within one relationship reverberate to all other parts of the system. Knowledge in human growth and development assists the home visitor in understanding the role of attachment in child development. Home visitors can use their knowledge of human growth and development to recognize when parents may need help learning to read their baby’s cues, which will increase sensitivity.
