Yesterday I had such an interesting meeting with some of my Cape Town based ‘Babies in mind’ practitioners. The topic of our discussion was weaning. We were so interested in the general attitudes in the articles and internet postings about weaning. All of us are trained psychologists, so we couldn’t help noticing that the general […]

Recently I attended a meeting at the Western Cape Association for Infant Mental health, an affiliation of the World Association for Infant Mental Health. Prof Astrid Berg, child and adolescent psychiatrist and senior consultant at ReD Cross Hospital in Cape Town, gave an interesting talk about the first 1001 Critical Days of a child’s life. This

The latest ‘Perspectives in Infant Mental Health’ (an online professional publication of the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH) outlines the new Declaration of the Infant’s Rights. In 2012, the WAIMH Ethics Committee, led by Bob Emde, MD and Tuula Tamminen, MD, found that the needs and rights of babies are often overlooked, whilst

I have been reading an interesting book by Graham Music called ‘Nurturing Natures. It’s about attachment, emotional and brain development and it’s well worth reading, particularly for people who work with infants or in early childhood development. He describes how important parents are for the mental state, both present and future, of their babies. Parents play

I have just listened to a brilliant TED talk about what it’s like inside the mind of a baby. The talk is by Alison Gopnik, professor or psychology and philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. Prof Gopnik is the author of  The Philosophical Baby and The Scientist in the Crib. In a nutshell, she

From an evolutionary perspective, human babies are designed to stay close to their mothers so that they can be protected from danger. This is also true for some animal babies. Threats to a baby’s safety used to take the form of sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths – but babies still need adults close-by to

Some babies are predictably unpredictable! Others seem to gravitate towards a fairly predictable daily rhythm. If your baby seems to want a feed or a nap at different times each day, or if she seems unaffected about where she sleeps or feeds, why on earth would you want to change that? Some people argue that

Why does your baby need you to join our ‘Babies in Mind’ network and attend our parent workshops? Psychologists are always going on about how mental health rests on the foundation of the early weeks, months and years of life. But in addition to this, on a purely economic basis, says Dr James Heckman, PhD

When we become new parents, there are many voices that try to guide us.  Remember that the loudest voice should be your baby’s. Quote by Port Elizabeth based psychologist and Babies in Mind practitioner, Samantha Naicker A few months ago I was chatting to a child-minder for a wealthy family. I noticed that the parents were very particular