The first relationship Book

Hours of observing film footage of mothers interacting with their infants led Stern to write that “the infant is a virtuoso performer in his attempts to regulate both the level of stimulation from the caregiver and the internal level of stimulation in himself. The mother is also a virtuoso in her moment-by-moment regulation of the interaction.” Each member of the dyad comes with a limited repertoire of expression: facial expressions, head movements and gurgles on the part of the infant, mirroring, repetition and exaggeration on the part of the mother, and yet “Together they evolve some exquisitely intricate dyadic patterns.”