Getting to Know You

Utilizing narrative storytelling, this user-friendly guide describes the principles of early relational health with direct application to day-to-day work with infants and parents. Practitioners on the front lines with young children and families often feel great pressure to know “what to do” in a broad variety of challenging situations. Drawing on both developmental science and extensive clinical experience, Dr. Gold provides evidence that the exact opposite—a stance of not-knowing—helps us find our way into another person’s experience, offering the greatest opportunity for connection, growth, and healing. Gold presents a model of “listening in” with an intentional suspension of expectations and a willingness to be surprised. The paradigm of listening in functions as a kind of superpower to enhance teacher–student, professional–parent, and parent–infant relationships. This resource will be important reading for a broad variety of practitioners including early childhood educators, home visitors, pediatricians, doulas, and mental health clinicians, as well as policymakers, parents, and other caregivers of young children.

Book Features:

• Summarizes the key advances in our understanding of brain science, child development, and infant-parent mental health.
• Emphasizes lessons from real-life interactions between infants and caregivers as communicated through detailed clinical vignettes.
• Offers practitioners a model for listening that is rooted in the concept of cultural humility and the idea that even in sameness there is difference.

Claudia M. Gold, MD is a pediatrician and writer who practiced general pediatrics for over 20 years and now specializes in early relational health. She has clinical experience in a broad variety of communities and speaks frequently to audiences of both parents and professionals.

“Each reader will take away something unique to their professional and personal journeys. But I imagine that most readers will catch a sense of wonder and encouragement about this beautifully human thing we call ‘relationship.’”
—From the Foreword by Junlei Li, Saul Zaentz, senior lecturer in early childhood education, co-chair, Human Development and Education Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education