Newborn Communication Skills

Reading Infant Cues and Temperament

Babies are communicating all the time; adults are just not very skilled at understanding them!  The key to parent satisfaction, confidence, and infant mental health is parental sensitivity to their infant’s cues, temperament, and individual communication style. Once parents learn to read their babies, they can usually lessen infant crying and develop successful approaches to sleep and feeding for their baby.

This workshop is designed to increase the skill and accuracy of perinatal professionals in recognizing infant cues and temperament to 85% agreement.  Participants will analyze videos of parents interacting with their child individually and in small groups to increase their effectiveness.  In addition, the nine measures of infant temperament and key temperament profiles will be analyzed to increase confidence of participants in their observations.  Emphasis is placed on co-creating knowledge with the parent about their child and developing a working model of that child’s temperament together.  (Isn’t it exciting to know you can learn to do this well?!  I’m excited to to see you learn!)

Here’s a one minute video from Dr. Gilliland describing the workshop:

Continuing Education:  This activity has been approved by the Wisconsin Nurses Association CEAP for 3 contact hours.  WNA is accredited as an approver of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

Who Should Attend This Workshop?  Perinatal professionals who interact with parents during the postpartum period all contribute to parent’s confidence and efficacy.  Clinic and hospital nurses, home visitors, doulas, midwives, lactation professionals, physicians, childcare providers, and parenting educators would all benefit from this course.  It is expected that participants are already familiar with state, cues, and temperament but need to build confidence or expertise in recognizing infant communication and discussing observations with parents.

Here’s a one minute video about who the workshop is for.

Length: 3 hours, 45 minutes

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