Framings of Child Well-Being in Infant and Toddler Projects

• In Event: Child Well-Being and Social Progress: Moving Beyond Health, Safety, and Standards

Abstract

This paper draws from two research projects and the researcher’s experiences engaging the question, “What does it mean to take a children’s rights-based approach to supporting the well-being of infants and toddlers?” I first engaged in this question with a doctoral student studying infant emotions and peer interactions in group care. Her research (Whaley, 1990) documented empathy in infants, interacting in ways that contradicted prevailing views that often diminished possibilities of agency in young children. My interest in children under three informed a year-long collaborative study with Kenyan colleagues (author, 2000), focused on understanding global economic policy impacts on changing childrearing and care for children under three in 11 unique sociocultural regions in Kenya.

I later did cross-nationally comparative research on how colleagues focused on the direct participation and collaboration of young children, entered the life worlds of children and gave their views due weight. (e.g., Lundy & McEvoy, 2009, Lundy, McEvoy & Byrne, 2011; Lundy &author, 2015; Smith, Alexander, & Mac Naughton, 2008). This tied directly to seeking children’s input when making decisions about community services, early childhood programs and environments, and care. Such approaches also reflected a deep commitment to better understanding children’s well-being and respecting their views – whether in Global South settings where children were experiencing a lack of material support and facing great odds in many cases, or the more affluent U.S., where poverty creates the “other” America that many have written about (e.g., Polakow, 1994; 2007).

In this paper, I draw from a 3 year pilot study that focused on promoting relationships-based caregiving approaches (e.g., Lally, 2013) in infant and toddler group care settings in a low licensing standards state context. Led by community-based early childhood consultants collaborating with higher education partners, this pilot project brought a combination of workshops, classroom coaching, director and teacher Communities of Practice sessions and grants for classroom and playground equipment to centers serving infants and toddlers. The relationships-based foundation of the project emphasizes continuity of caregiving, small groups, and children’s ability to interact with each other, consistent caregivers and the environment. In many cases, this meant directors and teachers grappling with pervasive practices that tend to emphasize efficiency in staffing, budgetary constraints, or assumptions of infant and toddler-being that ran counter to the project’s goals.

As participants became more informed about these child-focused practices and the implicit rights-based assumptions of the project, most worked hard to change practices including primary caregiving, adults transitioning with small groups of babies as they joined another classroom, and communicating closely with families. Other changes included changing use of furniture and equipment in classrooms, so that children were not contained, legs dangling, from curving tables or kept in high chairs or cribs for long periods of time. The paper draws from external evaluation and internal final reports (Schaack, 2015; author, 2015), free writes of participants and exit interviews with directors to make connections between children’s well-being and the rights of our youngest children.

Author

• Beth Blue Swadener, Arizona State University