Class 1
Establishing the Relational Field
Developing Rapport with the Parents and Oblique Tracking of the Baby

No matter how good your connection with a baby might be, your expertise cannot be effective at its highest potency until you have the support and enthusiastic participation of the parents:  this is what we refer to a "rapport." Since you want your work to have its finest results, developing rapport must include the recognition of the "relational field," the baby's psycho-socio-emotional environment.

Observing the parents to perceive their desires, fears, hopes, judgments, doubts, strengths, and blind spots––and doing so efficiently––facilitates recognition of the baby's relational field. Precise respect for each particular family congregation helps you define the four-dimensional boundaries of the playing field that you temporarily enter as one of the important members. If you are invited into this constellation by each member, and are working in the context of "permission," you are more able to concentrate your empathy and skills within a privileged framework. Your work becomes finer, more effective, and is more easily and more permanently absorbed into the family system.

This class teaches methods to develop rapport with the parents to help you address their needs while meeting the needs of your principle client:  the baby. Often the parents have a different agenda than the baby, but in most instances, if the baby's agenda is satisfied the parents discover that their agendas have also been met:  they have a happier more content baby. Oblique tracking of the baby's body language is also introduced in this class.