Know

作为婴儿和幼儿照顾者，您必须考虑教室和程序的身体和社会环境如何影响自我意义。您可以批判性地思考消息，当您与他们交谈时，或者当您看到与他们的婴儿和幼儿互动时，或者当他们完成学校表格时，他们会思考。通过这样做，您可以帮助孩子和家庭对其身份感到自信。本课程将帮助您确定满足这一重要目标的具体方式。

Consider the situations below. These kinds of scenarios can happen in any program.

What messages is each young child receiving about his or her identity? What messages are the families receiving about what you or your program values? What messages are they receiving about the expectations you or your program has for them?

As you read the scenarios, perhaps you felt a pang of empathy for the children, families, or infant and toddler caregivers. Some individuals weren’t receiving positive messages about their identities. As an infant and toddler caregiver, you are responsible for creating safe, nurturing, welcoming, and accepting environments for all children and families in your classroom and program. In doing so you need to consider not only the physical space, but also social interactions and exchanges that take place within that space. Take a few moments to consider alternative ways infant and toddler caregivers might have responded to the above scenarios:

Environments that Promote Infant and Toddler Sense of Self

Environments play a large part in identity formation and comprise many aspects. As discussed in the Infant and Toddler Learning Environment course, an environment is a combination of the physical space and contents as well as the adults, relationships, and sense of community within it.

作为一个成年人,你可能对wh有几种选择ere you get to spend your time. You can seek out places that you feel good in and you can avoid places that make you feel uncomfortable or stressed. Infants and toddlers don’t have this level of control about where and how they spend their time. In Lessons One and Two, you learned that infants and toddlers develop their identities primarily as a result of the messages they receive from the significant adults in their lives. Therefore, every choice you make regarding the environment will send messages to the infants, toddlers, and families in your care. What messages do you want your care setting to send? How do you want infants, toddlers, and families to feel while they are in your care setting? What do you want them to learn about themselves?

We all want to provide children with spaces that are safe, welcoming and responsive. Intentional planning and design can help ensure that your care setting is a special place for the infants, toddlers and families in your care. Your care setting should be a nurturing and supportive space that encourages infants and toddlers to be who they are with you and explore new ideas. It should be safe, stimulating and developmentally appropriate. It should validate children’s thoughts and feelings and provide numerous opportunities to practice skills and experience success. Take a moment to download and read the Zero to Three article,The Science and Psychology of Infant-Toddler Care, available in the Learn section of this lesson, to learn more about establishing an environment with an infant or toddler’s sense of self in mind. In addition, take a moment to reflect on the ideas highlighted below:

Your Sense of Self

As described in the first two lessons, the earliest interactions identify and help define for infants and toddlers what they come to expect about relationships. When adults are emotionally available to identify a young child’s cues and provide responsive care, they share a very strong message, such as, “I understand your feelings and needs and know exactly what to do next.” As infants and toddlers experience adults who understand and share in their thoughts and feelings, they can build a positive sense of self.

As an infant and toddler caregiver, you are a direct part of the care environment. Wittmer and Petersen highlight that: “Knowing ourselves involves exploring our strengths and vulnerabilities. We need to wonder about, and try to understand the meaning of, our reactions, our frustrations, and the parts of our job that bring us joy. This exploration can sometimes be difficult or uncomfortable” (2013, p. 409). Another way to think about this is the “care” that is behind the “caregiving”.

我们所有人都可以发现自己在努力与一些幼儿和家庭有时地努力在遇到的情况和关系 - 建设。正如您可能在以前的课程中学到的那样，观察是我们作为婴儿和幼儿照顾者的最佳策略之一。观察可以帮助我们更好地了解婴儿或幼儿，了解他或她更好，这反过来可以改变我们对事故或互动的感受或想法。

One strategy you can use is visualization. See yourself interacting positively with an infant or toddler. If he or she displays behaviors that seem to disrupt your caregiving approach, try seeing this young child without those behaviors and your responding in a caring way.

Infants and toddlers come to identify themselves by the images they hold and see of themselves within their caregiver’s eyes. Infants and toddlers come to learn about how they appear to others. According to J. Ronald Lally, infants and toddlers learn the following things from their caregivers that influence a sense of self:

• What to fear
• Which behaviors are appropriate
• How messages are received and acted upon
• 他们在各方遇到他们的需求有多成功
• 他们可以安全地展示哪些情绪和强度的情绪
• How interesting they are

据儿童保育专业杰夫约翰逊（2007年），您的态度可以帮助您在您的生活和程序中进行更改。约翰逊有六个建议：

• Positive outlook: Thinking positively about situations and people can help you bring about beneficial outcomes. Your personal outlook on life plays a critical role in your level of self-care.
• Self-awareness：知道你是谁包括了解你的感受，你的呼吸，你的情绪，你的思想和你的关系。首先占据你的优势和劣势。检查你的生活，过去和现在。注意你到了多远，你拥有的技能让你到这一点。
• Healthy selfishness: It’s important to recognize your own needs as valid and do what is necessary to meet them.
• Relinquish control: Allowing yourself to relax and see things as gray instead of black and white can allow you to see more options and opportunities.
• 俏皮的态度: Changing your mindset requires playfulness, curiosity, and excitement. Try exploring life through the eyes of a child and see how differently things seem.
• Thoughtful choices: As life gets busy, slow down and make sure you are making thoughtful choices. Reconcile with yourself that you may never master a task perfectly and sometimes it is going to have to be good enough.

Embracing Family Experiences: Considerations for Programs Serving Military Families

Think about the military families you know or serve. How are their identities shaped by the experience of being military families? For many families, military service and personal identity can be intertwined. Consider these potential influences:

• Living on a military installation：大多数家庭，军事和平民，基于他们居住的地方的某些部分基础。家庭生活在哪里发送有关他们的生活方式，偏好和经验的消息。对于军事家庭，生活在安装上可以建立一个强烈的社区感。这有助于塑造家庭如何与他人相关的方式。
• Deployment: Deployment is one of the most stressful events a family can experience. Families must learn to adapt to changing circumstances before, during, and after a deployment. The service member’s sense of self may change drastically as a result of experiences during deployment. The family members, particularly the spouse, can also experience changes in how they perceive themselves after long periods of independence or single parenthood.
• Frequent moves: A Permanent Change of Station (PCS) can cause a great deal of stress for families as children adjust to new schools, programs, and friends. Children or family members may reinvent themselves in a new location, or they may struggle to define themselves in a new school or community.
• 工作时间: Military family members may also work unconventional or long hours when they are home.
• Retirement and return to civilian life: Many individuals who retire from military service are young and find themselves ready for a second career. This can be a difficult transition. Service members may have a difficult time finding new employment that values their skills. They may feel a sense of loss as they leave the active-duty community and may struggle to develop their civilian identity.
• 记住,影响平民家庭的问题affect military families, too: divorce or marital conflict, unemployment for a spouse or partner, and health care needs are just a few of the events that can shape a family’s identity.

Military life is not all about challenges, though. Military families have a variety of supports that you can help families maximize. Military families are often part of a strong military community. They may live on an installation with other military families, and they may have a group of friends in similar circumstances. They also have access to health-care, mental-health, and advocacy resources through their service or installation. These can be valuable assets for families as they work to define themselves. Finally, they have access to you—military childcare. You understand the families’ contexts and can be a valuable source of social support.

Here are some additional ways to support military families, based on recommendations from families surveyed in the National Military Family Association Report on the Cycles of Deployment (2005):

• Help a family to be realistic in their expectations of themselves and of each other. This applies to deployment, changing station, retirement, and other major life transitions. Help families open lines of communication with one another about their expectations, fears, and excitement.
• Provide families with information about what they can expect before, during, and after deployment or other transitions. Recognize that every child’s response may be different on the basis of age, developmental stage, and temperament.
• Offer ongoing discussions and support to families with regard to return and reunion challenges.
• 请记住，甚至那些具有经验的家庭 - 并不总是有他们需要的信息和支持。

See

As you watch the video below, consider how the physical environment and the caregivers’ reactions help support young infants’, mobile infants’ and toddlers’ developing sense of self.

Environments That Promote Sense of Self

做

在安全，培育，响应和接受环境中，婴儿和幼儿可能会培养一种自我和自信的感觉，说：“我很重要，”我为“，”我可以让事情发生。“或者，在不可预测的，较少响应和不受欢迎的环境中，他们可能会感到恐惧和焦虑，同时将世界视为不安全。

以下是您在您的环境中可以做的一些事情，以支持您在护理中为婴儿和幼儿的自我感觉：

• Respond in a similar fashion to boys and girls.
• 回应和满足个人的需求timely manner.
• Redirect infants and toddlers to what is safe and OK to do.
• Respond positively as each infant and toddler develops new abilities.
• Organize materials in a way that enables all infants and toddlers to participate actively.