Parent-child groups at day care centers as a strategy for promotion of early childhood mental health

Abstract

This article aims to present the parent-infant interactive group in nurseries as a possible strategy of psychoanalytic intervention regarding the promotion of early childhood mental health in the educational field. This study has developed from the research “IRDI Methodology – an intervention with nursery educators based on psychoanalysis”, structured as an APCC research – parent-child follow-up in day-care centers. Three experiences in Child Education Centers, with different forms of involvement of the day care teams and the parents, will be presented. The research was based on one of the principles of Therapeutic Education: to support parents with their knowledge about their children, contributing to the strengthening of the parent-baby bond and the infant’s psychic constitution. Based on the analysis of the three types of parent-infant interactive groups in nurseries, the repositioning of the parents discourses of their children occurred as an effect of the identification between parents and the interaction between them and their babies. As a result, the difficulties of infants shifted from the field of disease to the field of child development difficulties where parents become promoters of educational strategies for babies, pointing to the possible link between psychoanalysis and education in the field of mental health.