Pikler herself had something to say about day care centres in an interview that she gave in 1981. In her own words: “Day care can be made much better all over the world if we learned from the experiment of Loczy. At most day care centres, children are cared for randomly, picked up by one person and fed by another. Children are cared for as objects. What the child needs is relationships with the least possible number of stable adults.
“We have to play, to invest – both at home with the child and in day care centres. Infancy is a very complex time. But the one thing we seem to not want to give is time. If you are really there, you become quite vulnerable, because infants touch the infant within us. That can be quite scary.”
Dedicated caregiving is not an exclusive relationship but rather a team approach. A dedicated teacher is appointed to a child before they start. It is their role to build relationship with the child and family through respect and trust. A secondary teacher is also important - someone who provides consistent care to the child when the dedicated caregiver is absent or busy. Children know and trust their caregiver. They look forward to those care moments when they have one-on-one time – i.e. full attention – with their caregiver.
Occasionally both dedicated and secondary teachers could be absent. This is when you’ll discover how well your team works. Children observe and download information so while they have been cared for by their dedicated caregiver they have also built an overall picture of the team. If they see teachers engaging respectfully, then they learn that they can trust all teachers. When their caregiver is away, they usually settle quite well with another teacher, even if they rarely have much to do with that teacher on a daily basis. It’s sometimes cited as one of the reasons for not adopting a primary caregiving approach – that children will be too attached and become unsettled if their teacher is away - but we’ve not found it to be the case. What we have discovered is that if the child’s teacher is present, then the child usually chooses that teacher – sometimes letting you know in no uncertain terms that they want “their” teacher – but if the dedicated teacher is away, the child will settle quite happily with another teacher because they have learnt to trust all teachers.
Recently I have been working in a room not my own, where a child had transitioned from my usual room. I was not his dedicated or secondary teacher in the old room. In fact, I wasn't even his tertiary teacher! He would never voluntarily choose for me to change his nappy or put him to bed. But in the new area, I am the familiar face, the one he has seen week in and week out since he was three or four months old, the one whose voice and ways he has become accustomed to. In his early weeks in this new area, I am his teacher of choice because he trusts me. This does not in any way diminish the work of the other teachers in the new area who are building a relationship with him but from the child's point of view, I am someone he has known and has observed working with those teachers who are his dedicated or secondary. They trust me, so therefore he knows he can too. On the other hand, when either his dedicated or secondary teacher visit the new room, he immediately gravitates towards them. He trusts me but he has a relationship with them.
Never underestimate the power of relationship.
Do we ever change caregivers? Sometimes it's unavoidable as when a child's hours might change and no longer fit with a teacher's working hours. Or sometimes the child shows a preference for another teacher. Occasionally a family might request a change (often because a certain teacher cared for an older sibling). As adults we accept this and don't allow hurt feelings. We respect children's preferences and, as much as possible, family preferences, since dedicated caregiving is not just for the child but the whole family.
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