ABSTRACT
[…] In all but a very small proportion of families, parents (and carers who fulfil that role) are the agents who provide the context of each child’s first learning. Writers such as Trevarthen (1993) and wide-ranging analyses of many research studies (e.g. the Carnegie Corporation of New York 1994) show the formative role of the parent’s engagement with the child. This offers both the stimulus that presents the child with something new to deal with, and also the response which shapes the child’s learning from the encounter. To give an example:
Two babies, Eleanor and Mark, are cousins. Mark is 18 months old and Eleanor is three months. They live quite close to each other and to their grandmother, whose daughter is Eleanor’s mother; and whose son is Mark’s father. The grandmother is delighted to help the young families by caring for the children when she is free. She finds the babies fascinating in their differences and similarities. One thing that particularly interests her is that she can always calm and reassure Eleanor by singing to her the songs that she sang to her own children when they were little, but she has noticed that, at the same age and now, Mark’s response is not the same. He responds to the songs and comfort strategies that his own mother and her mother use, which she herself, his paternal grandmother, has now learned. The babies have learned to be comforted in different ways.
