Have you been wondering about something for a long time, and suddenly, you read and hear a new phrase and say to yourself, “That’s it! That’s what I’ve been thinking all along!”
From John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s pioneering work on infant attachment and the field of infant and early childhood mental health led by Berry Brazelton (Touchpoints) and Ed Tronick (Still Face experiments) to the widely popularized “serve and return” metaphor by Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, the importance of relationships as a foundation for lifelong development is among the oldest and certainly the most enduring ideas in the relatively modern science of human development.
Building on that rich legacy, a new “early relational health” framework is emerging from professional disciplines across family support and home visiting, early learning and care, maternal and child health, pediatric primary care, and many others. When I first heard the phrase “early relational health” a few years ago from our colleague Dr. David Willis, I thought that it made sense. But I also wondered if we need another new phrase for the oldest idea in developmental science. Some of my colleagues in Infant Mental Health worried that a new term might even sow confusion for policymakers and other stakeholders.
But as I worked closely with colleagues across different fields and began to understand the concept of “early relational health” more concretely and specifically, I kept hearing the “That’s it! That’s what I’ve been trying to say!” reaction from people from all walks of life - child care providers, mental health practitioners, teachers, social workers, home visitors, pediatricians, community advocates, and parent leaders. There’s something about early relational health that runs deeper than job descriptions or disciplinary boundaries. It is a growing and evolving framework that not only takes relationships seriously (that alone deserves credit!), but it takes seriously the well-being of people on both ends of the relationship (e.g., children and parents, families and professionals) as well as the community ecosystem that surrounds the human beings in relationship with one another. Even in our Simple Interactions work, we have been trying to say in our own words the principles that underlie the early relational health framework.
What I like most about “early relational health” is that it is not telling us something we don’t already know. It is trying to remind us of something we’ve always known, and it has the potential to unify many different helping professionals in their common mission of strengthening human relationships around children, families, and communities.
Rather than standing on the sidelines, we have an opportunity to help articulate and shape this emerging framework in ways that value simple, everyday interactions and respect the often unsung work of the helping professionals. Over the past few years, we joined the effort to develop and communicate this idea from our Simple Interactions perspective. Supported by the Burke Foundation, and after two years of collaborative conversations with many wonderful colleagues and parent leaders, our team at Harvard Graduate School of Education - led by Thelma Ramirez with contributions from graduate students Sophie Barnes, Madelyn Gardner, Anna Lucia Kirby, Annie Hooper, Hisa Streim, and Elizabeth Hentschel - we developed a new report on "Early Relational Health." Along the way, two new babies were born to members of the team too!
Relationships matter, of course; and who are included in our understanding of relationships and how we talk about relationships also matter. Returning to our roots learning from and with child care providers, here is a recent webinar on early relational health from Harvard’s Education Now series with our colleague Thelma Ramirez, from the home visiting field, and Jessica Sager, the co-founder of All Our Kin, a national organization supporting and advocating for family child care providers.
From John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s pioneering work on infant attachment and the field of infant and early childhood mental health led by Berry Brazelton (Touchpoints) and Ed Tronick (Still Face experiments) to the widely popularized “serve and return” metaphor by Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, the importance of relationships as a foundation for lifelong development is among the oldest and certainly the most enduring ideas in the relatively modern science of human development.
Building on that rich legacy, a new “early relational health” framework is emerging from professional disciplines across family support and home visiting, early learning and care, maternal and child health, pediatric primary care, and many others. When I first heard the phrase “early relational health” a few years ago from our colleague Dr. David Willis, I thought that it made sense. But I also wondered if we need another new phrase for the oldest idea in developmental science. Some of my colleagues in Infant Mental Health worried that a new term might even sow confusion for policymakers and other stakeholders.
But as I worked closely with colleagues across different fields and began to understand the concept of “early relational health” more concretely and specifically, I kept hearing the “That’s it! That’s what I’ve been trying to say!” reaction from people from all walks of life - child care providers, mental health practitioners, teachers, social workers, home visitors, pediatricians, community advocates, and parent leaders. There’s something about early relational health that runs deeper than job descriptions or disciplinary boundaries. It is a growing and evolving framework that not only takes relationships seriously (that alone deserves credit!), but it takes seriously the well-being of people on both ends of the relationship (e.g., children and parents, families and professionals) as well as the community ecosystem that surrounds the human beings in relationship with one another. Even in our Simple Interactions work, we have been trying to say in our own words the principles that underlie the early relational health framework.
What I like most about “early relational health” is that it is not telling us something we don’t already know. It is trying to remind us of something we’ve always known, and it has the potential to unify many different helping professionals in their common mission of strengthening human relationships around children, families, and communities.
Rather than standing on the sidelines, we have an opportunity to help articulate and shape this emerging framework in ways that value simple, everyday interactions and respect the often unsung work of the helping professionals. Over the past few years, we joined the effort to develop and communicate this idea from our Simple Interactions perspective. Supported by the Burke Foundation, and after two years of collaborative conversations with many wonderful colleagues and parent leaders, our team at Harvard Graduate School of Education - led by Thelma Ramirez with contributions from graduate students Sophie Barnes, Madelyn Gardner, Anna Lucia Kirby, Annie Hooper, Hisa Streim, and Elizabeth Hentschel - we developed a new report on "Early Relational Health." Along the way, two new babies were born to members of the team too!
Relationships matter, of course; and who are included in our understanding of relationships and how we talk about relationships also matter. Returning to our roots learning from and with child care providers, here is a recent webinar on early relational health from Harvard’s Education Now series with our colleague Thelma Ramirez, from the home visiting field, and Jessica Sager, the co-founder of All Our Kin, a national organization supporting and advocating for family child care providers.