Episode Transcript
Kate: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Teaching with CLASS podcast, the podcast that gives you quick, actionable tips to easily implement in your classroom. I’m your host, Kate Cline.
In today’s episode, we have part two of our conversation with Johayra Bouza, where we continue exploring the best practices to support infant development, and do a little mythbusting too.
We’re joined again today by Joharya Bouza. You know her. She’s an incredible educator, PD facilitator, instructional coach, and a researcher who has a deep passion for helping educators understand really how important infant development is and the best way to support that as infant caregivers.
We’re picking up our conversation with Joharya, talking about ways to support infant development each day in your classroom. So let’s get back to it.
Do you want to spend a few moments talking about any common myths or things that might be important to think about? One of the things that I know about infant care is that families are raising children in their culture, in the family culture, in their community’s culture, and all those things. It is very important to stay connected with families about things like songs that they sing, and foods that they eat. Also what they believe about how children grow and develop, because some of those things are culturally passed down.
Also how you care for a baby is a very culturally-impacted behavior. Whether you respond to them when they’re crying or if they don’t, or if they sleep in bed with you or if they don’t, or how early we do things like toilet training. A lot of those things are a part of just how our culture is.
Some of these myths might be culturally passed down or whatever, and we just don’t understand general infant development. How can we begin to understand these things that you might be offering as myths or whatever from a developmental perspective to get to the truth about them? Give us an example.
Johayra: First, I want to highlight what you said Kate, that although we are talking about some of these myths and we’re dismantling them and understanding them from a developmental perspective, we always want to stay extremely respectful of family. Families are the primary driver of children and they are the primary decision makers of children.
When we are communicating with them, one of the things I’m going to talk about is the crying out method, where just let a baby cry until they fall asleep. We know from a developmental perspective that that can be very harmful for children, impacting the quality of their attachment. A lot of families share with me, but eventually they stop crying and I tell them that’s the part that hurts the most. They know you’re not coming.
Kate: They’ve given up believing that someone will help.
Johayra: Exactly, but even though we understand that from a developmental perspective, we would never confront a parent and say what you’re doing to the child is harmful.
Kate: This is such a challenging place to be in as an infant caregiver, so help us out. We don’t want to go against what a family has set up and what the child is used to, maybe in all of these things, but we may also understand things from a different perspective. Help us. Give us an example.
Johayra: One of the things that we can do there is that rather than telling the parent that this is a bad method or you shouldn’t do it, what we should do is that we might want to share how we did something differently that maybe help soothe that child to help them fall asleep, so sharing that experience and it being a positive experience.
I noticed that Jason started rubbing his eyes today, and one of the things that I did was that I read him this story that you had told me about the one about the tiger. I was reading to him that little story, showing him the book. Then I sang to him a little bit, and he fell asleep just really calmly and didn’t cry. It just went so well. It really took a lot of weight off my shoulders because when he cries, it really stresses me out. I was just so happy that he was able to do that smoothly.
As you start sharing these things with parents, they’ll be like, wait. How did that happen? Because they don’t like it. They don’t like to hear the cries either. Sharing with them how you’re trying these different strategies and moments of light where they have been affected for you as an educator with their personal child might encourage them to try something different in a way that is not hostile or confrontational to the families.
Kate: Or disrespectful to their caregiving choices. You’re like I tried something new. Guess what happened? What else? What’s another myth? Maybe give us another one.
Johayra: One that I hear often is that infants are purposely trying to spite a caregiver. They’ll think that a 6–7 month old is like oh, they’re really trying to press my buttons. Infants don’t have the cognitive ability to be able to do that. Remember, they don’t even know that you’re continuing to exist.
Kate: When you’re not there, they don’t even know that.
Johayra: Yeah, they think you’re gone forever. They don’t think you continue to exist if they can’t see you.
Kate: They’re not in the corner going hehehe. I have my evil plot here and I’m doing that.
Johayra: I’m going to cry when Dad is on this important phone call because I know it’s going to really piss him off. They don’t. Also when we talk about even toddlers, they lack perspective taking. They’re so egocentric and so worried about themselves that they cannot even begin to worry about you. You really do not matter to an infant or toddler. They’re only worried about themselves.
We have some interesting tests for that, where they even can’t see the other perspective on physical things. If I were to grab my hand right here, I would say, okay, walk on that side and see what you see. Walk on this side and see what you see. Okay, now walk back on that side. Describe what I see. They’ll describe what they’re seeing and we’re talking about older kids that already know how to talk.
Imagine an infant. They are so worried about themselves and trying to understand their own bodies and their own state of being, that it is impossible for them. They do not have the frontal lobe skills to be able to be spiteful to someone else or to purposely want to bother a caregiver.
Kate: And our thinking that they can do that is because we have the ability to look at things from someone else’s perspective. We can come up with all kinds of stories for why things happen from someone else’s perspective because we’ve made that cognitive leap in growth already. Babies haven’t done that yet, so they’re not plotting against us. Any others that we want to talk about?
Johayra: A lot of the time people think they’re worried about spoiling an infant. If I go and I respond to the baby, then that baby is going to always expect me to come and respond to them, so they’re going to be spoiled. Or if we can use another term, they’re not going to develop ways to soothe if I always come and help that child out.
I want to let you know that infants are not spoiled. Infants are communicating their needs. They do that by crying. Crying is actually a good thing because that’s all they got.
Kate: I don’t have a lot of tools in the toolbox yet. Yes, exactly.
Johayra: Exactly. When the infant cries and when they want to be held and they want to be cuddled, or they’re hungry, or they’re dirty, or they don’t like the temperature at that moment, they are communicating, hey, I have a need. Remember, we talked about the importance of being responsive. When that child is communicating I have a need, our job is to attend to those needs, do it in a way that’s timely and appropriate for the child.
This doesn’t mean that every single time the child goes, you’re going to pick them up and carry them. Maybe you try different strategies to be responsive. Maybe you sing a song where you let them hold your finger, or maybe you give them that little red ball that they’re really interested in. Although we do have to be responsive, the way that we’re responsive may look differently depending on the age of the child and also depending on the needs of the child.
Particularly during that, as we call it the fourth trimester, the first three months after, please carry your child and give your child as much skin-to-skin contact as you can, as they need. It is totally normal and appropriate. After that, if we want to start having some different strategies, especially because we want to be respectful towards some of those cultural things that we are understanding on how to take care of infants, we might want to try some of these other strategies, which might not be picking up and carrying, might be singing a song, might be some of these different things that are helping that child.
Some children start doing their own self-soothing techniques. Maybe they play with their hair or they use a pacifier or they use their hands to be able to suck and soothe them. Allowing for some of these other different strategies and encouraging them to use these different strategies might be helpful during that time.
Kate: Yeah, responding to their cries and their needs is not spoiling them. If they stop communicating their need for something, they’ve given up the idea that anyone will help them, and that is not putting good brain architecture in place. That’s putting dysfunctional brain architecture in place.
Either way, it’s building the brain. It’s either building the brain to be a functional person who can communicate their needs or a person who doesn’t do that. Their brain is getting built either way.
Johayra: Some research that’s really enlightening for that is Dr. Nathan Fox did a lot of research in Romania, where he was looking at some of the orphanages over there and being able to capture the behaviors of young children. One of the things that he found was that the infants weren’t crying. Children weren’t crying because it was 1 caregiver to about 40 infants. As you can imagine, even the most strong-willed, amazing caregiver cannot care for 40 infants at a time.
Many times they were ignored and they just stopped communicating. We also saw that that was reflected in some of their attachments. They had an attachment to which we call disorganized attachment, which is an attachment we don’t want to see. These are kids that are like walking backward towards people or biting themselves.
There are a lot of questionable kinds of behaviors like hey, this brain architecture, just like you said, it’s pretty dysfunctional. What’s going on here? It’s not what we expect to see. That is why, because they weren’t being responded to, so they developed this inappropriate, incorrect brain architecture that’s impacting them for the rest of their lives.
Kate: Either way, it’s getting built. It’s either getting built well. It’s either a nice firm foundation or it’s a pretty shaky foundation. Okay, last one, can you talk to us about technology and babies?
Johayra: I know that, especially throughout the last 10–15 years, there’s been this surge of exposing children to technology. Particularly, I see it often in iPads being exposed to young children. We know that from a research perspective that does impact their development, and it impacts it negatively because children are not using that time to get exposed to real 3D materials.
There are a lot of studies documenting the differences between children who are getting exposed to these things and those who are not. We might want to make sure to eliminate screens, at least for the first 18 months, and then we can introduce them in a way that is appropriate based on their development.
I know that at times that might be frustrating for a parent to hear because they’re like, but I want to just have dinner with my friends. I get that and that brings up multiple things. That’s the importance of having a village. If I want to have a peaceful dinner with my friend, maybe I’m able to reach out to someone in my village to care for my infant for an hour or two and that’s great for them. They can spend quality time with another loved one.
If you don’t have access to that, we can also think about small materials that we can bring to that restaurant so we can have dinner. We can have maybe small blocks or they can look at a book or they can honestly just crumbling paper. They love to do that. It’s cheap.
At the end of the day, you can crumble it. They can crumble it. You can plan it out and use the same one over and over again. Just make sure to expose them to real materials for them to interact with the world instead of being almost hypnotized by the iPad. That would be better.
There are a lot of myths about like oh, it’s not a big deal. It’s only a little while. But the problem is that we do find those differences. Even if it’s only a little while, when this becomes a go-to strategy to keep children and infants engaged, for the most part it doesn’t end up being a little while. It ends up being a long time. So they need to have interactions with the real world.
That doesn’t mean that they need a bunch of expensive toys. They need boxes. They need paper. They can use old water bottles to play with. Infants are pretty easy to entertain just because they haven’t got exposure to a lot of things.
Kate: They’re curious about everything they see.
Johayra: Yeah. Having some of those materials near you, giving them exposure to that is way better and way cheaper than buying an iPad for an infant.
Kate: Yes. Thank you for talking about that. I appreciate that. Johayra, you have given us so many things to think about from just so many different perspectives and I’m so grateful for this time that you gave to us today.
Before we go, we want to ask you what your final thoughts are for our infant caregivers out there. From your heart to the heart of all those educators, what encouragement do you want to offer them?
Johayra: I want to tell them thank you for being our superheroes and start off with that. Thank you for taking the time to be the architects of the brains of our children. I just want to remind them that every moment that they have with an infant is a chance that can shape their brains for a lifetime.
As those educators are in those classrooms—I know that there are times when lots of babies are crying and they are really trying to manage a lot of things—I want to remind them that they play a super important role in building the foundation for all the future learning and development and relationships for that child. Their warmth, their patience, and their genuine presence is going to inspire that infant to be curious, to trust the world, and to find joy in their interactions.
Each of those smiles, each of those words of encouragement, and each of those gentle touches that they are doing as they’re patting that baby that won’t stop crying to go to sleep, they’re really planting a seed of confidence and resilience and of a love of learning in that infant.
I want to remind them that they have the privilege to nurture these young minds and encourage them to stay present, to make sure that they’re kind, to know that their impact extends far beyond infancy into all the way to that little baby’s adulthood. So they’re shaping the future of those children by just having those connections one at a time.
Kate: That’s amazing. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much for speaking to these people who are doing such important work. Thank you for being here today, Johayra.
Johayra: Thank you, Kate. It’s always a pleasure.
Kate: Thank you so much for joining us today as we continue our conversation about infants. In addition to all the great tips and reminders Johayra shared with us today, she asked me to mention that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a wonderful resource that describes developmental milestones. You will find it on the CDC website if you search for CDC Developmental Milestones.
Okay, brain architects and superheroes in the infant room, you got this. I look forward to being with you again soon. Until then, remember: thriving educators create environments where children can thrive, so please take care of yourself because what you do matters.
You can find today’s episode and transcript on our website, teachstone.com/podcasts.
