About the Book
The first three years of life play a crucial role in setting the stage for later adjustment and success. For children with disabilities, children at risk, and even for healthy infants and toddlers born into well-functioning families, support and early intervention can foster optimal growth and development. This concise and readable guide presents a developmentally sound framework for strengths-based intervention with parents and young children. The volume is filled with practical suggestions for building positive family relationships, cultivating parental knowledge and understanding of child development, and enhancing family support systems. Also featured is an extensive annotated bibliography that describes a wealth of additional resources for professionals and parents. Grounded in research and informed by wisdom from the field, this book provides essential knowledge and skills for professionals and students across a range of health care, social service, and educational disciplines.
Table of Contents:
Preface
1. Early Intervention: Where We've Been and Where We're Going
2. A Solid Foundation: Knowledge Bases to Inform Practice
3. Identifying and Building on Parenting Strengths
4. Enhancing Parental Knowledge and Understanding
5. Strengthening Family Support Networks
Appendix: Resource Bibliography
About the Author :
Martha Farrell Erickson, PhD, is Director of the Children, Youth and Family Consortium at the University of Minnesota. The author of numerous scholarly publications, she also writes a syndicated parenting column and appears regularly as the parenting expert for KARE-TV.
Karen Kurz-Riemer, MEd, is a family education consultant, writer, and trainer, based in Minneapolis.
Review :
This book is a remarkable achievement and a splendid gift to anyone concerned with strengthening the development of infants, toddlers, and families. The authors fearlessly embrace the complexity of development in the first three years and confront the challenges of sharing the parenting journey with vulnerable families. Straightforward, succinct, and honest, this volume provides a sturdy framework to support the growing knowledge of the student or beginning practitioner, as well as a reliable touchstone for the experienced clinician, supervisor, or instructor. The authors' integrative review of three decades of theory, research, and clinical findings, and their advice on reading the intervention literature with a critical eye, are especially useful. So, too, are the clear descriptions of specific strategies for engaging and supporting families. --Emily Fenichel, MSW, Associate Director, Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families, Editor Zero to Three
All too often, books directed at improving the lives of our youngest and most vulnerable children preach, scare, bore, and/or judge. This volume offers welcome relief. The authors' warm, erudite voice is as robust and vital as their subject, exquisitely balancing our attentions between child and parent, context and relationship. They provide a theoretically sound text that is appropriate for any advanced undergraduate or graduate course on early childhood education and intervention. Whether they are enthusiastic newcomers to the field or threatening-to-burn-out veterans, readers are challenged to cross over outmoded categories and curricular restraints. The field is in desperate need of the passion and wisdom contained in this book. --Kyle D. Pruett, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Child Study Center; President of Zero to Three, National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families
A comprehensive resource that embraces all infants, toddlers and their families, this book combines a rich blend of theory and research with guidance for frontline practitioners. It will be a wonderful introduction for persons entering the field of infancy and a source of renewal and validation for experienced providers. The resource bibliography alone could serve as the basis for an Infant Studies library! This integrative overview of birth-to-three work is a real 'find' for all early childhood professionals. --Linda Gilkerson, PhD, Professor and Director, Irving B. Harris Infant Studies Program, Erikson Institute, Chicago, IL
- Those who want a solid volume on some of the current research on infants, toddlers and families will not be disappointed. And those who look for practice implications will find much within the volume that will be immediately applicable in work with families....Anyone working in an early childhood or family setting will find this of great use. --Family Forum (Minnesota Council on Family Relations), 3/8/2002ƒƒ There are...few books that combine research and theory to create a framework for practical parenting interventions. This is one of those rare books that should be on the bookshelves of professionals who work with parents of young children. --Parent and Preschooler Newsletter, 3/8/2002ƒƒ A valuable contribution.....[The authors] help us appreciate both the importance of seeking research-based practices and the difficulties of extending and integrating research from the laboratory into the clinic....Provides one important voice in the much-needed interdisciplinary dialogue on child development, where all involved will have to become critical readers, not only of others' research, but also of their own. --Contemporary Psychology, 3/8/2002ƒƒ Significant concepts, principles, and strategies of early intervention, prevention, and promotion of well-being in young families are covered here....Overall, this could be an excellent training resource for providers of early intervention and prevention services to young families. --Readings, 3/8/2002
