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At 10:05 PM 3/19/2002 -0800, Jeff Aitken wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>My friend Beth recently met a
prominent expert on early childhood<br>
development. Beth asked him, "what does a young child most need
for<br>
development?" and he replied, "open
space."</blockquote><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Here is a snip from a recent paper
by Dr. Louis Sander (1997):<br><br>
"(T)he essential features of self-regulation and self-organization
that are<br>
required of every living organism cannot be bypassed when we come to
deal<br>
with the developing human infant...<br><br>
The essential requirement that each living organism be
self-regulating<br>
requires that the initiative to take one or the other direction must
come<br>
from within the organism itself, not from an extrinsic
source...<br><br>
(One example) is illustrated... by the bassinet-monitoring study. This
was<br>
the appearance over the course of an infant's awake period of an
'open<br>
space' (Sander, 1977) in time that allows the endogenously activated,
self<br>
organizing initiative of the infant to emerge and begin the process
of<br>
constructing its own idiosyncratic goals...<br><br>
(T)he mother puts the infant in a reclining chair where the baby can
see<br>
and hear her, and goes about her other work or interests. This is a
moment<br>
of disengagement, but one in a state of regulatory stability, a
coherence<br>
in the infant-caregiver system as a whole. This is an open space in
time<br>
when the infant's 'primary activity', its agency for generating<br>
self-organization, can take off in initiating and organizing an<br>
idiosyncratic network of proximal engagement of its own...<br><br>
Here we have a systems model, then, of equilibrium constructed by
an<br>
enduring coordination between infant and mother over time that
provides<br>
containment without impingement."</blockquote><br>
Jeff -- this is wonderful. Do you happen to have a reference? It would be
great to start a conversation. Also I think I may have to sue him for
copyleft infringement :-)<br><br>
Harrison<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Harrison Owen</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<div align="center">7808 River Falls Drive<br>
Potomac, MD 20854 USA<br>
phone 301-365-2093<br>
Open Space Training
<a href="http://www.openspaceworld.com/" eudora="autourl">www.openspaceworld.com</a>
<br>
Open Space Institute <a href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/" eudora="autourl">www.openspaceworld.org</a><br>
Personal website <a href="http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm" eudora="autourl">http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm</a><br><br>
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