Getting to Know You: Lessons in Early Relational Health from Infants and Caregivers

Pediatrician Claudia Gold uses narrative storytelling to describe the principles of early relational health with direct application to day-to-day work with infants and parents.

Practitioners on the front lines often feel great pressure to know “what to do” in a wide range of challenging situations. Drawing on both developmental science and extensive clinical experience, Dr. Gold provides evidence that the exact opposite―a stance of not-knowing―helps us find our way into another person’s experience, offering the greatest opportunity for connection, growth, and healing.

Gold presents a model of “listening in” with an intentional suspension of expectations and a willingness to be surprised. The paradigm of listening in functions as a kind of superpower to enhance teacher–student, professional–parent, and parent–infant relationships. Getting to Know You is important reading for a broad variety of practitioners working with infants, including early childhood educators, home visitors, pediatricians, doulas, and mental health clinicians, as well as policymakers, parents, and other caregivers.

Book Features:

• Summarizes the key advances in our understanding of brain science, child development, and infant-parent mental health.
• Emphasizes lessons from real-life interactions between infants and caregivers as communicated through detailed clinical vignettes.
• Offers practitioners a model for listening that is rooted in the concept of cultural humility and the idea that even in sameness there is difference.

Claudia M. Gold, MD, is a pediatrician and writer who practiced general pediatrics for over 20 years and now specializes in early relational health. She has clinical experience working in many different communities and speaks frequently to audiences of both parents and professionals.