If par­ents don’t get what you’re talk­ing about and insist on plac­ing their tiny infants in var­i­ous types of con­tain­ers and also putting them in front of a TV screen when they are at home or in the car, we care­givers can no longer be respon­si­ble for their child’s devel­op­men­tal delays.

Thus far we’ve had one baby in our care who real­ly hasn’t been con­tainer­ised by us or his fam­i­ly. He just turned 13 months old and start­ed to walk much ear­li­er than I thought he would – 10 months! He also has fine social skills for his age, is bab­bling away appro­pri­ate­ly and has ter­rif­ic recep­tive lan­guage – all the pieces of his devel­op­men­tal puz­zle are aligned for the future.

We know that his nuclear and extend­ed fam­i­lies have also had a tremen­dous influ­ence on his development.

I am glad to be the per­son who con­vinced my col­leagues to let him devel­op at his own pace. He was nev­er sat up or propped up before he could do it him­self – dif­fer­ent from the oth­er chil­dren in our care.

My only puz­zle is ask­ing “Why, if one child proves the effi­ca­cy of no con­tain­ers and no prop­ping up, does the infor­ma­tion not get incor­po­rat­ed into the care plan for all babies by our carers?”

I just don’t get it. Or maybe it’s ‘they just don’t get it’?

I would like to be able to con­vince them to do the right thing. But per­haps the prob­lem is that even though our ratio of staff to child is osten­si­bly a love­ly 1:3, that real­ly isn’t good enough to ensure neu­rotyp­i­cal devel­op­ment in all the infants in our care. 

Per­haps that’s why there is always one twin lag­ging behind the oth­er? Some­one (the ‘good’ baby?) gets neglect­ed when there is more than one infant to care for at a time!

There’s just so much you can do!