Transactional Models in Early Social Relations

Predictions of developmental outcomes based on early assessments of the child have proven inadequate. Development consists of a series of stage-like restructurings of behavior as the child advances through life. Continuities in exceptional behavior generally do not bridge these stages unless those exceptional behaviors are maintained by an exceptional caretaking environment. Such exceptional caretaking can be related to a mother’s cognitive inability to make developmental sense of the behavior of her child. A sequence of negative transactions can be started when an infant is seen as being abnormal either through his history, appearance, or behavior. The parent who makes this concrete attribution will treat the…