ABSTRACT
In the interactive space between a mother and a baby, an infant observer comes to have an experience of watching relationships unfold and a child’s mind and personality come into being. While always challenged by the task of remaining in a non-initiating, non-intervening observational mode, the observer has the luxury of being profoundly affected without having to do anything more than the hard work of staying present to her own feelings and to what is going on in the room. This chapter explores an intermediate area, that of a participant observation. This application of a Young Child Observation was in a preschool setting for children who had been unable to negotiate what was required in a more ordinary preschool. In the participant observation, Karen Block, a student in an Infant and Young Child Observation programme, initiated volunteer work in a classroom two mornings a week where she assisted the teacher and interacted with the children.
