Lessons for child caregivers

The relationship between a young child and a day-care provider or teacher is an important one, but one that’s often overlooked.

That’s why Spokane psychotherapists Glen Cooper and Kent Hoffman, co-founders of the Circle of Security Project, have turned their attention to child-care settings in recent years.

“We know with a high level of certainty that when children feel safe and secure, they’re able to engage with their environment,” Cooper says. “Any learning happens much better from a position of safety.”

Hoffman and Cooper will lead a workshop Saturday geared toward child-care providers (though parents are welcome, too) to teach caregivers how to promote attachment and bonding in such settings.

Funds raised from the workshop will go toward Blue Prints for Learning which runs the Community Building Children’s Center as well as a child-development training institute. The money will help provide scholarships for people to attend the child-development classes, says Bobbi Cobb, who works at the training institute.

“They’ve taken these theories around the bond the child has with the primary caregiver and are applying it to the teacher-child relationship, which I think is often overlooked and sometimes not valued,” Cobb says.

The Circle of Security Project is an early-intervention program for parents and children. In the last few years, the project has expanded to consider the role other caregivers play in a child’s life and how to strengthen that bond.

Cooper hopes to help caregivers learn to read a child’s cues.

“Kids do form relationships with significant adults in their lives,” Cooper says. “Even if they’re secure at home, if they’re not offered security in child care, that’s 40 hours a week of not being in a place where you can absorb information and learn to negotiate the environment.”