Being With Infants

Practitioner and trainer Beverly Kovach, R.N., M.N., delivers a lecture on the best practices for providing infant and toddler care in a center. Kovach is a child specialist who studied under Magda Gerber. Drawing on her mentor’s work, her own knowledge of infant pedagogy, and 20 years of experience, Kovach presents a caregiver curriculum that allows viewers to choose among topics that include feeding, diapering, motor movement, sleeping, crying, play, language, center environment, and more. Kovach’s philosophy revolves around caregivers focusing all of their attention on the child during caregiving moments, which she acknowledges can be difficult in a busy center. Kovach stresses the importance of keeping the sleeping and diapering stations away from high traffic areas in order to better facilitate caregiver and infant interaction. In a teaching demo, she instructs a trainee on how to pick up a baby so that the baby feels secure and trusts the caregiver. Kovach notes that caregivers do not need to teach play because infants will naturally do so, given a proper environment. Safe and appealing center environments are shown here as well as footage of babies interacting with objects of various size, shape, and texture. A helpful tool for caregivers working with infants, this is recommended. Aud: P. (T. Root)