ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how an awareness of the young child’s regulatory and multisensory processing can be used to support the child and the parent-child relationship. A vital aspect of building a secure attachment includes parents being able to accurately read their baby’s arousal/behavioral states. The baby’s shifting states of arousal, from deep sleep to awake to alert to distress, greatly affect the baby’s ability to stay interested and engaged with her environment. In addition, the parents’ ability to soothe their baby as the baby shifts from state to state greatly affects their sense of successful parenting. A review of research and literature that focuses on the role of regulation, first attained in early infancy by achieving a homeostatic state, is included. This chapter also introduces Tortora’s Embodied Parenting program, which teaches parents how to attend to their baby’s and their own nonverbal cues and integrates practices from different cultures using dance and music to soothe and engage babies, supporting their developing attachment relationship.
