Make the Connection” (MTC) is designed to help you support  parent-child relationships during the first three years of life. Secure attachment has been found to be the best foundation and predictor of healthy self-esteem, optimum cognitive, language and social development, impulse control and general success in school. It is also within primary relationships that infants organize their sense of self and of others and internalize expectations that determine how they will engage in all future relationships.

OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES IN MTC

MTC is a universal program that can be offered to general or at-risk populations of families. The overall objectives are to help you support parents in fostering their infant’s attachment, language and learning by:

• Responding to their infants feelings and needs (MTC with LOVE)
• Communicating and talking with their infant (MTC with LANGUAGE)
• Facilitating their infant’s learning through play (MTC with LEARNING)

So that their baby

• Develops a secure attachment
• Establishes the two-way affective and functional communication required for language
• Develops the curiosity and confidence necessary to explore and learn

So that their toddler

• Develops a healthy balance between attachment and autonomy
• Acquires a vocabulary of first words and engages in simple, verbal conversations
• Builds a capacity for pretending, problem-solving and persistence

I learned how attachment lays the foundation of who my child will grow up to be.

Parent participant in Make the Connection program