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Letting go is a natural process in
child/parent relationship and development

   Relationship strength is an essential ingredient for adjustment to childcare.  Will your infant/ toddler/ young child soon be enrolled in childcare and learning setting? Don't worry; you'll be there, too, sharing every experience. Here's why, and how you can help.
    Thinking about infants and young children going into an early childhood care and learning setting can be painful. All those reports about the impact of childcare on very young children can be confusing and often scary.
    Even when parents feel positive and confident about their substitute care arrangements, the actual moment of the good-bye kiss can send confidence right out the window. Doubts build quickly when those usually sweet and sunny little darlings are making their feelings about the terrible injustice of this involuntary separation painfully clear to everyone around.
   Just thinking about being responsible for such an outcry of anxiety can bring on a powerful sense of parental guilt. After all, you've just left a sobbing infant or toddler whose adored parent has just disappeared into the great unknown on the other side of the door.
   Someone else, someone who isn't you, will be trying to distract your child with a toy, a treat, a something, and try to reassure that

fers the baby a sense of being together in and with the world. Over time, those good feelings teach a sense of connectedness, a fundamental ingredient in healthy development. The baby learns, "As you have taught me how important I am to you, I have learned to take you into my mind, my heart and my soul. It feels like you're a part of me."
    Over time, as the baby's growing brain can help her to remember and hold that feeling, she learns how to use that connection. "When I can feel how much you liking being with me, teaching me, loving me, I learn more and more about me!"
   Your baby also learns that, "As I learn about how special I am to you, I learn about how special I am to me."
   This is a very important lesson learned. Once this sense of connectedness really takes hold, it helps young children to feel increasingly safe and happy in a bigger and bigger world. It is a lesson for parents to teach, to nurture ? and then to trust its power.
    It means that, even if that child has to be physically apart from the beloved parent, the relationships

you really will be back soon.
   It does help when, at the end of the day, you are told how quickly the crying stopped and play began. It helps even more when, as the days go by, with supportive care, many repetitions of good-bye and hello rituals, opportunities for play, and rapid brain development, those tears begin to dry up. Thank goodness.
   Now let's focus on what happened, what changed, what brought the sun back. Consider this: The biggest challenge of adjustment to child care isn't in what babies and young children lose while they're in child care, but in what they can keep.
    As baby and parents grow together, the close relationship they develop of

agencies, organizations and institutions, we funded expansion of parent education services, a 24-hour help line, an annual exposition of resources for parents and families  and a database of parent education and family support resources.  The initiative has been successful in helping agencies integrate parent education programs into its services for families. It has highlighted the importance of supporting parents in raising children.  And it has identified a need -- a need for parents to learn how to actively participate in the growth and de

velopment of their children.  Once again, The Skillman Foundation is poised to respond to that need. We currently are doing groundwork on the need, structure and potential for a parent organization.  With a primary mission to support the involvement of parents with their children, schools and the community, the organization will be parent centered and parent operated.  As with all major work we undertake, we listen to those who will actively participate to help change things.  This is an appeal to all parents.  Tell us what you think about

a parent organization.  How do we help you to help yourselves?  How do we help you identify and use the broad range of services and resources that already exist?  How do we help support you in nurturing the growth of your children?  Visit our Web site, www.skillman.org,  and send us your ideas, or call me at 1-313-393-1185.  We need to hear from you if we want to make this work for you.
   Kari Schlachtenhaufen is president and chief executive officer of The Skillman Foundation.

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