Surviving the Early Years: The Importance of Early Intervention with Babies at Risk

ISBN-13: 9781782202783 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 320 str.

Stella Acquarone

Opis

This book is about the hope underlying the ability to survive the early years.

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is both metaphor and framework of the despair and hopelessness some babies and parents experience in their efforts to hold on and go through difficult circumstances. Their early experiences are not voyages -into a sunny and cheerful sea- some are years-long voyages into horror and weariness--babies born into difficult families, into countries in difficulties or into difficult circumstances.

Some babies born into difficulties are pretty much alone because their mothers might be too ill to look after them, and nurses are too busy to fullfil the maternal function other than changing and feeding them. They may have been born in war zones, or in prisons, or have been in intensive neonatal premature units. Unlike mothers who recall the early years with their babies as a dance of understanding and development, other carers don't recall hearing the music at all. They slog through the early years with only hope as a compass. Like the Ancient Mariner looking for a sail on the horizon, theirs is a poignant search of the horizons for hope in any form.

Different professionals - each expert in their field - address the different difficulties. They show us the connections between traumatic experiences and traumatic consequences of survival, the implications in both the families and in the professionals who, in constant contact and working together, deal with the containment and transformations of those events. This book brings us face-to-face with the wonderful capacities of the newborn and the great potential for parents (both mother and father) and child to continue growing together in a society that cares for them.

Spis treści

Foreword -- Introduction -- Thoughts in Search of a Thinker -- The emotional dialogue: womb to walking -- Sharing joyful friendship and imagination for meaning with infants, and their application in early intervention -- “Happy birthdeath to me”: surviving death wishes in early infancy -- Reaching the Vulnerable at Risk from “External” Circumstances -- Creating a safe space: psychotherapeutic support for refugee parents and babies -- Interventions with mothers and babies in prisons: collision of internal and external worlds -- Talking to, and being with, babies: the importance of relationship in the neonatal intensive care unit -- “Toward the baby”: first steps in supporting parents in early encounters with their infants. A reflection from Poland -- Adoption and fostering: facilitating healthy new attachments between infant and adoptive parent -- In a strange country without a map: special needs babies -- Vulnerable Groups Coming from “Internal” Fragile Circumstances -- Early recognition of autism -- The power of the relationship to awaken positive emotional potential -- Early paediatric intervention: to see or not to see, to be or not to be—with others -- Working in a National Health Service setting with toddlers at risk of autistic spectrum disorder -- Conclusion

O autorze

Acquarone, Stella