Stage 1 - Love & Affection

For this series we will be sharing lessons learned from the book Ages & Stages shown below. This book informs parents on how their child’s mind and emotional needs are growing and changing across different stages of development to help parents understand what they can do to help their children grow and learn effectively and establish realistic expectations for parents.

Out of respect for the author and publisher we cannot share all information from the book but the goal of this series is to glean helpful information parents may not have been aware of and provide ideas for application to help them become better parents. We will provide key takeaways, bulleted lists, and quotes from the passages but encourage our readers to go and purchase this book for themselves to receive the full value of this book.

• Order the Book

  For this series we will be sharing lessons learned from the book Ages & Stages: Tips and techniques for building your child’s social, emotional, interpersonal, and cognitive skills (Amazon).

• Age Breakdowns

  Stage 1: 0-18mos

  Stage 2: 18-36mos

  Stage 3: 36mos-6yrs

  Stage 4: 6yrs-9yrs

• Stage 1 Topics

  1. Emotional Health

  2. Cognitive Development

  3. Family & Peer Relationships

  4. Personal Growth

  5. Character Formation

Emotional Health

• Love & Affection

• Joy & Anger

• Managing Fear

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Love & Affection

“The parent-child relationship during infancy and toddlerhood has an exceptionally strong and lifelong influence on children’s emotional development. In fact, there is growing biological evidence that infants need responsive care from their parents and caretakers in order for the parts of their brains that control emotions (love/affection/joy/anger/fear) to develop properly.”

Key Concepts:

• The author explains that making children feel loved is the single most important task of a parent. Children learn how to love by being loved.

• Trust is the seed from where love grows. Children are constantly assessing the people around them and their environment for trust. They remember if hungry cries are answered with food or scowls, if they are picked up when they cry, and are constantly reading your facial expressions and tone of your voice when you interact with them.

• Babies who receive warm responses during periods of hunger or distress learn that they are important and loved and that people can be trusted. Babies whose cries for help go unanswered or met harshly will become wary and distrustful of others. They may lack confidence and feel unworthy of warm responsive attention.

Tips to Apply:

1. Consistently and immediately respond to your baby’s cries of distress. *Don’t worry about fostering independence, that time will come. For now, in the context of helping your child’s emotional development from 0-18mos, when they get upset hold them and lovingly reassure them.

2. Physical Touch & Play are important. Touch fosters feelings like safety and security when around the caregiver and fun and stimulating play activates the pleasure centers of the brain helping them to associate happy feelings with the caregiver.

3. Try to avoid changing school or childcare providers often. Children at this stage need consistency, warmth, and security when developing these parts of the brain at this stage. Kind and familiar faces are instrumental in this development.