Abstract:
I will show through music, pictures and videos adults’ meaningful hand gestures and the baby’s hands conveying what the baby is experiencing both physically and emotionally when alone and in relation to others. NICU babies with nasogastric tubes may not be signalling through cries but through their hand gestures. I shall discuss the crucial importance of parents and paediatricians observing and finding meaning in the baby’s hand communications from birth onwards. I shall suggest it is important for parents and adults to be mindful of the baby’s state of mind and find ways of talking, comforting, touching and holding the baby. Also being emphasized will be the importance of supporting parents and facilitating and assessing parent-infant interactions from time infant is born. Babies at risk of autism have different hand and body movements from healthily developing babies. I shall stress how early intervention is crucial before the babies are six months in order that some therapeutic healing can take place through mother-baby interactions and the skilled interventions of psychotherapists and occupational therapists.
Biography:
Dr. Jeanne Magagna, Tavistock trained child, adult and family psychotherapist, has worked with children and their parents as a nursery teacher, secondary and university teacher as well as subsequently being Head of Psychotherapy Services at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children for 24 years. She has also worked as a consultant to Family Futures Adoption and Fostering Consortium and previously Coordinator of Training at Centro Studi Martha Harris in Florence and Venice, Italy, where she now continues to teach.
Throughout her professional life her aim is to help parents and professionals observe the deeper aspects of infants’ personality in order that infants can be better understood and have more rights to good parenting. Her books The Silent Child: Communication without Words and Being Present for Your Nursery Age Child discuss how important it is to collaborate with parents to support and understand their children and parents have been involved in these writing projects. With the collaboration with Roz Read she has edited Contemporary Child Psychotherapy. Other collaboratively edited books include: Psychotherapy with Families, Intimate Transformations, Creativity and Psychotic States and A Psychotherapeutic Understanding of Children and Young People. Jeanne currently works on most continents teaching infant observation, discussing collaborative work with parents, and engaging in clinical discussions.
