Hearts and Minds on Babies

Hearts and Minds on Babies offers professional development training for teachers, and is currently being delivered and evaluated in Early Head Start classrooms at sites across Michigan. Our program is designed to support teachers as well as the teacher-child and teacher-parent relationship. To accomplish this, Hearts and Minds on Babies delivers an attachment-based curriculum that supports teachers in nurturing young children’s development, while also building social support and effective strategies for stress management for parents and teachers, as well as a useful framework for responding to common caregiving challenges. Results of our initial evaluation of this approach suggest that the professional development training strengthens teachers’ understanding of children’s emotional experiences, increases sensitive responding, and creates a common language for parents and teachers to communicate about young children’s experiences.