How Dr. T. Berry Brazelton Shaped Pediatrics

'With Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s death this week, a little shy of his 100th birthday, obituaries have commented on his prominence as “America’s pediatrician,” on his many honors, which include recognition for his work with diverse populations around the world, and on his extraordinary ability to connect with infants and also with their parents.

He was also beloved by pediatricians, and an extraordinary number of us were taught and shaped by a man who believed deeply that it all came back to looking at the baby and the parents.

“We’re very good at identifying everything that’s wrong with anybody, but we don’t have any idea about what’s going on in them or what’s right about them,” Dr. Brazelton said in 1997 in a long retrospective interview for an oral history project at the American Academy of Pediatrics. That led him to start looking carefully at newborns, before parents had had any influence, and what he saw, looking at the babies, was how their behavior actually shaped parental responses.

And that in turn offered opportunities to help parents, who traditionally were blamed when something went wrong. “As soon as you share the baby with the parent, you can show them the good things first, and then go to the things that they’ve got to work on,” he said. . .

From his initial work observing the behavior of newborns, and their interactions with their parents, Dr. Sparrow said, Dr. Brazelton “demonstrated that newborn behavior is purposeful and meaningful.” That was the foundation of his work, and also influenced much research on brain development and on the importance of the early years of life for lifelong development and health. . .

It was a revolutionary idea, Dr. Lester said, that “the baby actually contributes to shaping his or her own environment, that development is not based on passive exposure.” Instead, he said, Dr. Brazelton’s work helped doctors and psychologists understand that “there’s a built in reciprocity; infant behavior is modified by the mother, mother’s behavior is modified by the infant in a mutually reciprocal relationship.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/well/family/how-dr-t-berry-brazelton-shaped-pediatrics.html?