Early social development: noticing an infant’s efforts to reach out to others

Emotionally, the nipple in the mouth is representative of the infantile feeding relationship; the repeated taking in of the mother’s care and at the same time the internalisation of an available ‘good enough’ parent which can lead to a sense of security. However, in this observation, as well as a nipple in the mouth there was also often a hand on the breast. There was an active, versatile two movement approach towards the breasts; mouth sucking and hand touching. Over the year I noticed a progression of active, purposeful hand movements while the baby was feeding; reaching and falling, touching and sliding, touching and resting, holding, massaging, clawing and stroking, smacking, drawing, grabbing, touching her own face, to milking and then clapping. In this paper, I put forward the hypothesis that these simultaneous mouth and hand movements represent aspects of early social development. That is, an infant’s efforts to reach out to others that can be shown to lead to: establishing contact, connections, togetherness, communication and creativity.