ABSTRACT
As an early years practitioner for over twenty years, I have had the opportunity to observe a lot of young children and adults interacting as they spend time together. Nowadays I also work as a psychotherapist with adult clients. Time and again I hear stories of love and care offered to these people as children by nursery nurses, nannies, teachers and playgroup workers, as well as parents. And, of course, I hear the bleaker tales of rejection, humiliation and sometimes abuse at the same hands. Our responsibility as early years practitioners is a serious and important one in human terms; we play a key role in both the intrapersonal and interpersonal development of human beings. Our work with the youngest children has a profound effect on the way they come to feel intrapersonally, or ‘inside themselves’, and on the manner of being they adopt as adults, in interpersonal relationships with others.
