The final chapter of my forthcoming book (March 2025) opens with a vignette about Darla and Nolan. While the details of the case were changed to protect privacy, the story is based on an interaction among myself, two staff members of a program for parents with substance misuse, a newborn, and a mother who was about to have her baby taken into the custody of child protection. Our task was to enroll Darla in our program before she was discharged from the hospital. I write:

“Almost a year later, Janice [a staff member and not her real name] shared with me that this visit had changed her life. The transformative energy of the newborn–caregiver relationship lived inside her—once she saw it, she would never “unsee” it.”

Last week Janice and I met in person for the first time since the incident, which occurred shortly before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We both left the program soon after, and over the intervening four years we lost touch. Janice is now a staff member of that same child protection agency. She supervises many front-line social workers who interact with families in similar circumstances. She was eager to share with me how she uses the lessons from our interaction with that mother and baby in her work every day.

She explained that her supervisees describe distress at new mothers’ difficulty “bonding with their baby.” Parents, who are both in recovery and active users, look at their phone while holding the baby, rail at “the system,” and in general seem overwhelmed by the difficulty of their own circumstances. The social workers feel helpless to get these mothers to connect with their infant.

“I tell them, ‘When you are with a family, ask them to notice what the baby is doing. Describe for them how the baby is responding to them in the moment.'” Janice went on excitedly, “I suggest they bring in the dads and other family members who are present. Maybe an older sister is angry that she’ll have to help raise another baby. I’ve seen everyone soften when their attention is drawn to the baby and the baby’s amazing capacity for connection and communication right from birth.”

“How do the social workers respond?” I asked, feeling a rising sense of exhilaration. Janice described what happens when she shares these suggestions with her supervisees during home visits. “They get it immediately,” she said. “They too are amazed at how such a simple thing can create such meaningful change.”

I was blown away. By having experienced the power of a moment of meeting and connection between a mother and her infant under the most adverse circumstances, Janice was able to harness that energy to carry it forward over years to a whole generation of practitioners and their clients.

I’m still contemplating the lessons learned from this story. What does it mean for teaching practitioners on the front lines such as my pediatrician colleagues? The Newborn Behavioral Observations™ training offers this kind of learning. In a recent email exchange about the new emphasis in the field of pediatrics on the importance of early relational health I wrote:

 “I wonder if an intentional look at the microscopic process of meaning making in caregiver-infant relationships, along with a textured exploration of how those interactions inform relationships in the pediatric setting might be a good place to start.”

Janice gave me an incredible gift—a real-life story of the transformative nature of infant-caregiver relationships. Many of my colleagues in a variety of disciplines, pediatrics included, feel enormous pressure to be the “expert” and to know “what to do” in a wide range of challenging circumstances. This story reveals how connection lies not in knowing but rather in “not-knowing.” We can offer a relationship: our full presence along with respectful, nonjudgmental observation of parent and infant together. The relationship itself serves to contain the anxiety that accompanies uncertainty. As the vignette concludes:

“A brief period of calm observation offered Darla a moment of competence, confidence, and connection with her infant son.”