At a recent Pregnancy and Baby Café we were joined by Vanja from Home-Start, who came along to spend time with parents and babies and work alongside our Bump Start team.
We spent time observing babies’ cues — facial expressions, movements and sounds — and talking about how babies are born ready to connect with the people around them.
Putting theory into practice we playfully recreated the still face experiment with the families. Originally developed by researcher Dr Edward Tronick in the 1970s the experiment shows a caregiver interacting normally with their baby, then briefly holds a still, expressionless face so the baby doesn’t get the usual social response. Babies often try many ways to re-engage — smiling, cooing, waving — and their reactions help show how much they depend on responsive connection with caregivers. This sparked lovely thoughtful conversations with families about how their babies are built for social interaction.
Pregnancy and Baby Café is on every Tuesday morning at Stepping Stones ❤️