20.3: Providing and Supporting Culturally Sensitive Care

Culturally Sensitive Care

A person's approach to nurturing infants and toddlers reflects one's values. "Every aspect of how parents and teachers care for, educate, and think about young children is embedded in cultural perspectives and beliefs. How you respond when children cry, how you decide it is time for them to eat, what you define as healthy and as sick, what you believe are appropriate clothes to wear, how you express love, what you expect to do for children, and what you expect them to do on their own are examples of the millions of ways that culture affects who we are as people, parents, and teachers" (Keyser 2017). Familiar values may be considered natural, whereas unfamiliar values may feel different or wrong. Interactions involving differing cultural norms can create feelings of confusion, discomfort, curiosity, and judgment, as each person often feels their norms are "right”. When children enter care, children and families may be navigating an unfamiliar cultural context. During this process, caregivers need to maintain an open, interested demeanor with each individual and family to learn about their unique culture.

Suppose an infant or toddler caregiver begins to feel uncomfortable with a family's practice with their child or the family's request for a certain type of care. This presents an opportunity for the infant or toddler caregiver to think about their values, cultural influences, and how the family's values might be equally important and relevant in their cultural context. When learning about other cultures, it is important to suspend judgment: to separate understanding of cultures from judgments of their values. "If judgments of values are necessary, as they often are, they will thereby be much better informed if they are suspended long enough to gain some understanding of the patterns involved in one's familiar ways as well as in the sometimes-surprising ways of other communities" (Rogoff 2003). If teachers use these situations to grow in understanding and appreciation of multiple perspectives, they will more deeply understand their own and others' cultural influences.[1]

Learning about others' cultures takes time, interest, respect, communication, and observation. Since many cultural beliefs are learned implicitly, infant and toddler caregivers may not be experienced in articulating them. When a parent picks up her child from the blanket and hands him to you to say goodbye, she may not be able to verbalize "I feel more comfortable knowing that I am physically giving you my baby to care for when I leave. I can't just leave when he is alone on the floor." This creates an opportunity for an infant and toddler caregiver to pick up on the parent's cue and hold the baby for goodbye or ask the parent next time "Would you like me to hold Leo so he can say goodbye to you?" When childcare centers ask parents to write down their cultural practices on intake forms, parents often do not know what to write or what this means. One effective way to learn about and uncover cultural practices is to ask parents about familiar routines and respectfully probe more deeply if the routines are different from the early learning and care culture (Tonyan 2015).[1]

The early childhood profession in the United States has historically emphasized that young children be set on a path toward independence and encouraged to care for themselves as early as possible. Encouraging older babies to feed themselves reflects the profession's emphasis on independence, while many families value interdependence more than independence. This value can be observed in the ways children are taught to help one another and to respect the needs of others (such as staying at the table until everyone is finished). Early learning and care programs have begun to modify program practices and policies to weave the concepts of both interdependence and independence into the fabric of care.[1]

In circumstances when an infant or toddler caregiver cannot incorporate a family's request or preference for care into the center's practices, it is still possible to demonstrate respect for the family’s culture. For example, a caregiver might say to the child: "I know you love to sleep in your swing at home. Your papa tells me how contented you are sleeping there. At school, I will help you nap, too. We can rock a little, and then I'll put you in your comfy bed and pat your back." The caregiver may tell the parent "Thanks Tomas for letting me know how you help Benji sleep at home. It may take him a few days to learn a new way to go to sleep here, but I'll be sure to help him with a little extra rocking so it won't feel so different, and we can check in every day to see how it is going."[1]

---

[1] California Department of Education, Infant/Toddler Learning and Development Program Guidelines, Second Edition by the California Department of Education is used with permission