Purpose of IT3 Within ECMH Consultation

Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation is intended to support parents and caregivers in developing an increased awareness and understanding of the impact of their interactions on a child’s social-emotional well being, thereby increasing nurturing caregiving practices. This resource is designed to support your work as an early childhood mental health consultant. You can use this information with parents and caregivers as an intentional and structured professional development opportunity. Specifically, the Infant Toddler Temperament Tool is designed to help ECMH consultants to:

• Assist parents and caregivers in recognizing and exploring their own temperament traits
• Support parents and caregivers in identifying and reflecting upon the temperament traits of the infants and toddlers they care for.
• Support parents and caregivers in understanding how these adult-child similarities and differences in temperament traits may affect “goodness of fit”
• Give parents and caregivers an array of simple strategies that they can use to best support the unique temperament of each child within their care.

Audience

Early childhood mental health consultants can use this resource with parents and caregivers of children birth through three years of age.

The term “parent” is used to refer to any adult who is the primary caregiver for an infant and/or toddler and provides ongoing support for the child in his or her home environment. “Parent” may refer to biological/adoptive parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, foster parents, or any other steady presence in the child’s life within the child’s home(s). The term “caregiver” is used to refer to any adult that provides ongoing care for a child outside of the child’s home such as a teacher, child care provider or day care aide or support to families within the home setting such as a home visitor. The term “young children” in this resource refers to infants and toddlers birth through age three.