Facilitating carers' mind-mindedness through education and early intervention

是什么决定了我们成为什么样的人？儿童早期环境如何影响他们的发展？为了回答这些问题，我的团队的研究涉及在几年甚至几十年的时间里与相同的家庭合作，以绘制儿童的发展图。这些纵向研究涉及来自广泛社会背景的家庭，从婴儿大约6个月大的时候开始。我们的研究结果表明，父母对孩子可能的想法或感受进行“调谐”的能力(所谓的“心智”)是孩子一系列积极结果(安全依恋、语言和游戏、孩子对他人想法和感受的理解)的重要预测指标。善于“读懂”宝宝心思的父母也报告称，他们的育儿压力水平较低。具体来说，对于贫困家庭来说，父母能够了解婴儿的想法和感受，可以保护孩子在入学年龄不受问题行为的影响。因此，我们的研究表明，父母愿意从孩子的角度看问题会带来广泛的好处。思维集中在非常具体的育儿行为上，相对直截了当和快速评估。该应用程序的主要研究目标是开发和评估一套干预方案，该方案将以一种可访问的方式告知父母有关思维方式的信息。这项干预措施将包括一部动画电影、一本短书和智能手机应用程序，这将有助于促进父母的思维。将通过在高危样本(青少年母亲)中探索其对母婴互动和儿童结局的影响来评估这一干预方案的有效性。相关的博士生将探索(A)养父母的心智、领养安置的成功和孩子结果之间的关系，以及(B)托儿专业人员的心智及其与照顾者与儿童互动的质量和儿童行为的关系。干预方案对于确保我们的学术研究具有现实意义和应用至关重要。政府越来越认识到，早期干预是改善弱势儿童结局的关键。例如，菲尔德(2010年)的报告总结了如何防止贫穷的儿童成为贫穷的成年人，总结如下：“最重要的是健康的怀孕；良好的产妇心理健康；与儿童建立牢固的纽带；父母的爱和反应，以及明确的界限，以及儿童认知、语言、社交和情感发展的机会”(第5页)。然而，得出这些因素至关重要的结论要比确定如何增加弱势儿童拥有积极育儿经历的数量更容易。我的研究可以通过许多重要的方式帮助政府了解关于早期干预的想法，因为头脑可以预测菲尔德报告中确定的关键因素的结果。这个奖学金的主要目标是扩大我与国会议员、地方政府和慈善机构的现有工作，以确保关于心灵的学术研究被用于为与儿童和家庭有关的政策和方案提供信息。为助产士、健康访客和托儿所护士提供专业培训课程将是实现这一目标的关键组成部分。奖学金研究将通过一些主要研究论文向学术受众传播。一个网站和科普书籍将向非学术受众传播研究金活动。

What determines the people we become? How does children's early environment affect their development? In order to answer these questions, my group's research involves working with the same families over years or even decades to chart children's development. These longitudinal studies involve families from wide-ranging social backgrounds and start when the baby is around 6 months of age. Our findings show that parents' ability to 'tune in' to what their baby might be thinking or feeling (so-called 'mind-mindedness') is an important predictor of a range of positive child outcomes (secure attachment, language and play, children's understanding of other people's thoughts and feelings). Parents who are skilled at 'reading' their babies' minds also report lower levels of parenting stress. Specifically for families in poverty, parents' ability to tune in to their babies' thoughts and feelings protects the child against problem behaviours at school-starting age. Our research thus shows the widespread benefits of parents' willingness to see things from the child's perspective.Mind-mindedness focuses on very specific parenting behaviours and is relatively straightforward and quick to assess. The main research objective of this application is to develop and evaluate an intervention package that will inform parents in an accessible way about mind-mindedness. The intervention will consist of an animated film, short book and smartphone app that will help facilitate parents' mind-mindedness. The efficacy of this intervention package will be evaluated by exploring its impact on mother-baby interaction and child outcome in an at-risk sample (teenage mothers). The associated PhD studentships will explore (a) the relation between adoptive parents' mind-mindedness, success of the adoption placement and child outcome, and (b) mind-mindedness in childcare professionals and its relations with quality of caregiver-child interaction and child behaviour.The intervention package is crucial for ensuring that our academic research has real-world implications and applications. There is increasing Government recognition that early intervention is key to improving the outcome of vulnerable children. For example, Field's (2010) report summarised how to prevent poor children from becoming poor adults as follows: "The things that matter most are a healthy pregnancy; good maternal mental health; secure bonding with the child; love and responsiveness of parents along with clear boundaries, as well as opportunities for a child's cognitive, language and social and emotional development" (p. 5). However, concluding that these factors are crucial is easier than establishing what to do to increase the number of vulnerable children having positive parenting experiences. My research can help inform Government thinking on early intervention in a number of important ways because mind-mindedness predicts outcomes in the key factors identified in Field's report. The main impact-related objective of this Fellowship is to extend my existing work with MPs, local government and charities to ensure that the academic research on mind-mindedness is used to inform policies and programmes relating to children and families. Delivering professional training courses to midwives, health visitors and nursery nurses will be a key component in meeting this objective.The Fellowship research will be disseminated to academic audiences via a number of major research papers. A website and popular science book will disseminate the Fellowship activities to non-academic audiences.