Collaborative Consultation with Parents and Infants in the Perinatal Period

When professionals listen to and support new parents in the perinatal period, families enjoy long-lasting benefitsfrom stronger attachment to increased parent responsiveness and confidence. This guidebook shows practitioners how to conduct effective, collaborative consultation sessions that help parents and infants in the critical first few months of life.

Developed by an experienced clinician and researcher, this accessible guide helps practitioners form productive, equal partnerships with new parents, based on warm and attentive listening and responding. A wide range of professionalsincluding doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and home visitorswill discover how to

• understand and document key aspects of infant behavior and child-parent interaction
• observe the baby together with parents, engaging in thoughtful observation and respectful communication
• develop strong active listening skills so they can better understand and support parents
• guide parents in “reading” their baby’s cry patterns and developing strategies for soothing
• transform potential misperceptions of the infant that may interfere with parent-child bonding
• collaborate with parents during a structured neurobehavioral assessment
• conduct ultrasound consultations with mothers-to-be to increase their sense of connection with the baby
• explore how the consultant’s own feelings, intuitions, and bodily reactions can help uncover what parents and infants need
• tailor the consultation framework for preterm and/or substance-exposed infants and their parents

Principles of effective consultation come to life with clear examples and engaging vignettes, and the forms and tools—including Observation of Infant Neurobehavior, See Me Develop form, My Baby’s Behavior Diary, Cry Consultation Interview, Ultrasound Session Coding System, NETHELP social support interview, and Six Steps of Focusing— help consultants collaborate successfully with parents and record key information.

A positive, strengths-based approach for supporting infants and families, this book will help practitioners effectively nurture parent-infant attachment and give newborns the best chance for healthy development.

Zack Boukydis, Ph.D., was a developmental/clinical psychologist whose career was devoted to research and clinical work with mothers, families, and babies. He was the editor or coeditor of three books: Support for Parents and Infants: A Manual for Parenting Organizations and Professionals (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), Research on Support for Parents and Infants in the Postnatal Period (Ablex, 1987), and Infant Crying: Theoretical and Research Perspectives (with Barry M. Lester, Plenum Press, 1985), as well as the author of numerous research publications and grants.

Throughout his career, Dr. Boukydis’s work focused on the influence of infant crying on parents, the neurobehavioral development of at-risk infants (including preterm and substance-exposed infants), interventions to support families in neonatal intensive care units and mothers and infants in drug treatment programs, and an ultrasound consultation program in which practitioners joined with mothers and families in watching their baby during routine ultrasound screens in obstetric clinics. He was a focusing coordinator and focusing-oriented therapist with the Focusing Institute of New York and developed a special international training program, Focusing- Oriented Parent-Infant Consultation: Bringing Focusing to Work with Parents and Infants. He was also a trainer on the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS™; Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2004) in the United States, Europe, and Africa. Dr. Boukydis was a member of the Harris Professional Development Network and was a Fulbright Fellow between the United States and Hungary.

Dr. Boukydis was on the editorial review board of the Journal of Visualized Experiments and was a reviewer for Acta Paediatrica. He was on the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics, Semmelweis Medical School, and the Institute of Psychology, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, and was Visiting Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.