Infant and Toddler Mental Health: How Parents Can Create A Healthy Foundation for Social Emotional Development In the Early Years and Beyond

Feb 1

By Jessica Taylor-Pickford, LCSW, IMH-E (Mentor Clinical)

February 2021

What exactly is infant and toddler mental health? I always like to start writings like this with a working definition, so that we can all be on the same page about what exactly infant mental health, or healthy social emotional development in young children, looks like.

Simply put, infant and toddler mental health is the developing capacity of a child from birth to age three to:

experience, regulate and express emotions;

form close and secure interpersonal relationships;

and explore the environment and learn (Zero to Three, 2006)

Young children experience their world as an environment of relationships, the most significant of these typically being their relationships with parents. These relationships scaffold healthy social emotional development in the first three years of life.

Over the years, there has been a devaluing of the importance of early childhood. Folks assume that because babies and toddlers cannot remember their experiences later in life that these experiences are not as impactful or important. This could not be further from the truth. The experiences of a young child are literally embedded in their brains and help form the basis for relationships and social emotional development later in life.

If you geek out on neuroscience, perhaps a great way to frame the importance of early childhood is to note that about 80% of brain development occurs between birth and age three.

If relationships are more your thing, take note that during the first years of life infants and toddlers develop an internal template of how close relationships will look across the lifespan (called attachment). This attachment template shapes how worthy and effective an individual feels connecting with loved ones, as well as their view of how trustworthy others may be in understanding and responding to their needs.

Parents and caregivers of young children support a child’s social emotional development through day-to-day interactions that define their relationship.

The daily work of parenting and caring for young children can seem so mundane, but it is of great importance in building healthy brains, supporting children in developing a healthy attachment, and in scaffolding those ever important infant mental capacities we initially discussed.

For example, when an infant or young child babbles, gestures, or cries, and an adult responds appropriately with eye contact, words, or a hug, neural connections are built and strengthened in the child's brain that support the development of communication and social skills. Repeated moment to moment, day after day, those neural pathways are strengthened and subsequent developmental skills are built.

So the next time you wonder what you did with your infant all day, please remind yourself that you were building and reinforcing important neural connections to scaffold your child’s ongoing development.

When you respond to your infant in a nurturing, consistent, warm, and attuned way in those day-to-day interactions, beyond building neural pathways, you are also helping them develop a template for healthy relationships now and in the future.

For example, each time you respond to your infant when they feel anxious, distressed, hurt or fearful—whether that is singing a favorite song, holding, rocking, or nursing—you play a role in calming their overwhelmed nervous system while also supporting your child in feeling understood, protected, and worthy of your support. Repeated countless times in the early months, this builds your child’s capacity to self soothe and their confidence to communicate their needs and elicit the desired response.

Over time you will see your infant using their capacities to communicate not only to elicit care, but as a vehicle to engage in reciprocal communication—to share positive feelings and to play. The smiles, coos, and silly repetitive games (like peek-a-boo) all become part of a synchronous, mutually engaging dance that helps your child experience delight, feel valued, and gain trust in their ability to get their needs met in the wider world.

The strength and security of your parent-infant relationship in the early months provides the metaphorical springboard for exploration and learning as your toddlers gains developmental skills and confidence. Your child will feel secure knowing that they have encouragement from a strong, supportive, and available caregiver who will be able to catch them when they fall (sometimes quite literally as they begin to walk or climb).

Clinical theory and research have demonstrated that over the first year of life your child literally takes in what they have learned about their relationship with you and that it becomes their template for close relationships in the future. The day-to-day moments have not only wired neural pathways in their brain and increased their capacity for emotional regulation, but shaped their view of themselves as worthy of love. These interactions build trust that those in the wider world will respond in ways that make sense.

Here’s the good news. You do not have to be perfect, just good enough.

Often times when I start talking and training about attachment, I can watch as parents and caregivers start reviewing their day-to-day interactions with young children, attempting to affirm that they did indeed respond appropriately for their young child’s bid for connection, wondering if they were nurturing enough or consistent enough, questioning whether their relationship feel synchronous.

What I have to offer is this: you do not have to be perfect, just good enough. In research on secure parent-child relationships, this means getting it right about half the time (so technically failing). I use that as an important reframe for parents who quite often tell me that they feel like they are failing— you are still good enough and doing enough to support the capacities we talked about earlier.

We make mistakes, big and small.

We strive to understand the meaning of behavior.

We get distracted and sometimes even struggle to manage our responses to these tiny human beings.

I am making a very deliberate shift to “we” here, because I right there with you in all of this. Knowing that there is important growth and learning that needs to happen in these difficult moments helps me make it through them.

You see, if we were perfect, it would rob our children of the opportunity to self soothe, problem solve, try something new to get their needs met, learn from mistakes, and practice what it feels like to get upset and eventually calm down. These are all important skills that take root in early childhood, build resilience across the lifespan, and occur in those messy, not-so-wonderful experiences of the parent-child relationship.

So take time to recognize and celebrate everything you are doing for your infant and toddler every single day. It is not just feeding, changing diapers, singing songs, kissing boo boos, wiping noses, setting boundaries, and calming tantrums.

In the day-to-day moments, or as I like to call them the moments between the moments, you are scaffolding his healthy development, building her developing brain, helping him feel safe exploring the wider world, showing her what a healthy relationship feels like, and modeling what it feels like to live through moments of misunderstanding and mistakes. Though they may not remember exactly how your love and care shaped these capacities, the impact will be felt across their lifetime.