“The process out of which the self arises is a social  process which implies interaction of individuals.” – George Herbert Mead

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To better understand what children with developmental disorders and delays need to thrive, we begin with neurotypical development. Neurotypical infants offer a rich map of what successful early learning and development look like. The infant and young child’s responsiveness, exploration, and discovery reveal the building blocks that all children require to progress, for interpersonal connection, communication, curiosity and the fundamental prerequisites needed to make sense of their world.

Infants do not learn and progress in isolation. From the first days of life, they experience interpersonal relationships involving complex dynamic exchanges with caregivers who reflect, respond, and guide. These early exchanges lay foundations for communication, language, attention, self-regulation, discovery and an emerging sense of self and others.

Children with developmental delays need more time, more structure and more specialized support. They benefit from a world that is coherent, responsive and rich in opportunity for interaction and exploration.

The child’s learning experiences are individually designed to allow skills, attitudes, and understanding to grow. It depends on the child’s own interests and on the motivation and opportunities we provide. It depends on the pace at which we move, and on the methods we choose. And it depends on the quality and reliability of the nurturing, support and mediation that the child receives each day.

I learn about early child development from our own observations and from early child research done by developmental psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists like Piaget, Vygotsky, Meltzoff, Stern, Trevarthen, Hobson, and Gopnik.

The Child’s Emerging Inner World

Learning builds from basic sensory systems to complex emotions and symbolic thought. Interpersonal experience shapes our ability to relate, to play, to learn, to reason and to understand and regulate emotions.

Biology provides the newborn with rudimentary tools designed to support later development. Infantile reflexes that protect and orient the baby, an inborn appetite for novelty, and the drive to connect with another human face or voice. These are nature’s opening gestures, the first scaffolds upon which a mind can grow.

From these beginnings, each subsequent encounter with the world builds upon what biology has offered. The infant gradually learns to sort and distinguish, to detect patterns and differences that matter for survival and for understanding. At first, the categories are simple and bodily: light from dark, warmth from cold, the familiar sound of a mother’s voice from the unfamiliar tone of a stranger. Soon these become the earliest forms of “same” and “different,” “more” and “no more,” “safe” and “not safe.”

With time and repeated exploration, through play, practice, assimilation, accommodation, and the gradual generalizing of one experience to another, the child’s thinking grows more layered and subtle. What begins as a handful of primitive distinctions evolves into increasingly complex and abstract ways of perceiving, representing, and solving the problems of a widening world.

Early perceptions become meaningful through adult mediators offering playful repetition interactions, who create a sense of emotional safety, and who provide steady consistency and perceptual and cognitive richness that help the infant recognize, remember and predict information and patterns.

The caregiver’s rhythm, the rise and fall of their energy, the cadence of their voice, the way they move, their scent, the warmth of their smile are all taken in by the child. Over time, the caregiver’s sensitivity, attentiveness, responsiveness, and empathy become familiar assemblies, elements bound together to form a unified presence, a person.  

Disrupt that coherence, change the movements, the energy, the rhythm, the voice, change the hairstyle, change the personal connection, and the child may be confused, put off-balance, not know how to interact. Slowly, the infant realizes that, despite some changes, there are still enough features that maintain the cohesive identity. The infant is learning the principle of coherence, that things, people, and events can remain coherent even as some aspects may change.

This process is deeply emotional. Movement, rhythm, and intensity carry emotional valence. Fast movements might provoke fear, slow rhythms soothe. Emotions are not merely felt; they are part of how information is processed and categorized. Rhythm is not just movement; it is communication.

Second Nature

Children whose early biological basis of development has been interrupted need to co-construct essential foundations through purposefully facilitated learning. I call this intentionally nurtured learning and growth process Second Nature; the foundational development that is mediated, not merely maturational.

The back-and-forth between child and caregiver becomes the crucible of development. Through shared attention, imitation, turn-taking, and emotional attunement, the child begins to better understand the world and themselves. Many of these deficient early learning processes and various intervention strategies have been described by Greenspan’s Circles of Communication, by Trevarthen’s Intersubjectivity and Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience.

Eventually, the child recognizes not only the coherence of others but also begins forming a more coherent sense of themselves, a more consistent self-concept. They learn to recognize and to say “I,” to look in the mirror and know the reflection is theirs.” This emerging self is organized not only by sensation, but by memory, comparison, connection, intention and emotion.

Infants are scientists in the crib, according to Gopnik. They form hypotheses, test them, and revise their understanding. A child pulls a blanket to retrieve a toy, kicks to activate a mobile, and learns that cause precedes effect. These become foundations of agency, cognition, and problem solving.

Context matters. Change the mobile, the crib, or the interactive adult, and learned feelings and behavior may not transfer. Young children learn best in predictable contexts, where they can repeat, consolidate, and eventually, in time, generalize their learning. When the child has learned the necessary prerequisites, we introduce novelty in an interesting, meaningful way, gradually, subtly, and with enough consistency to preserve coherence.

Objects become tools for interaction, carriers of meaning. An object that can be acted upon is far more interesting and educational than one that moves by itself. The child learns to act on the world, not just be stimulated by it. This is central to the idea of agency. The world is something that can be engaged with, something that the child can influence, can use, can play with, can operate or change, can understand, and can share.

Children attach emotional value to objects, events, and people. Positive feelings lead to repetition. Negative feelings lead to avoidance. This organization of the world by value is an early form of decision-making, preference, and ultimately morality. Memory encodes not just information, but emotion, what person, place, time, event, or object felt safe, what brought pleasure, what caused distress.

Empathy also begins early. Infants cry when they hear others cry. Later, they begin to show concern not just reflexive contagion. A toddler comforts a sibling because they now know what it feels like to be upset and what it feels like to be soothed.

By understanding the foundations of learning in neurotypical infants, we gain insight into how to structure experiences for children with developmental differences. What they lack biologically, we provide through intentional, relational experiences. We teach them not just what to learn, but how to learn. Not just how to relate, but how to regulate themselves.

Development is not a straight path, but a process of organizing, connecting, and transforming. When early foundations are shaky or missing, communication, play, learning, judgment, and self-reliance are far more difficult.

With time, patience, and the deeply human quality involved in interpersonal play and mediated learning relationships, a Second Nature is constructed. One that supports the child’s progress and affirms their unique path toward engagement, understanding, and progress.

Copyright © 2025 Shlomo Chaim

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