Plain Language
Glossary
Early childhood work comes with its own language. These definitions strip out the jargon so the ideas can do their work.
Early childhood work comes with its own language. These definitions strip out the jargon so the ideas can do their work.
The Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. Administered in North Carolina through NCIMHA, it requires specialized training, supervised clinical hours, and renewal every three years. It’s not a license—it’s a voluntary credential that signals deep commitment to relationship-based practice with very young children. Four of our co-founders hold it, which is rare for a single practice.
A credential issued by the NC Division of Public Health for practitioners working with children birth to three and their families. Required by state administrative code for directors of centers serving infants and toddlers, it demonstrates competency in developmental care and family-centered practice.
An active clinical license in North Carolina authorizing a social worker to provide therapeutic services under approved supervision. The “Associate” designation means the practitioner is licensed and working toward independent licensure (LCSW). This credential enables our clinical consultant to provide therapeutic family support—a dimension most early childhood consulting teams don’t have.
An advanced graduate degree focused on population health, epidemiology, data analysis, and program evaluation. Our data consultant uses this training to help early childhood programs design evaluation systems, analyze outcomes, and tell evidence-based stories about their work.
The foundational idea, developed by John Bowlby and expanded by many researchers since, that children need at least one consistent, responsive caregiver to develop a secure sense of self and the world. Secure attachment isn’t about being a perfect parent—it’s about being “good enough” and repairing ruptures when they happen. Most of our frameworks build on attachment theory in some way.
An educational philosophy developed at Bank Street College of Education in New York City. “Developmental” means starting where children are. “Interaction” means learning happens through doing—with people, materials, and ideas. It emphasizes the teacher’s role as an observer and thoughtful guide, not a curriculum deliverer.
Developed by Lesley Koplow, LCSW at Bank Street’s Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice. Each child receives a personal teddy bear that becomes a “transitional object”—a portable emotional anchor. Bears help children express feelings in words, navigate transitions, and build relationships. Teachers don’t need a new curriculum; they welcome the bears into existing routines and follow the children’s lead.
Being With is one of the phrases we return to most often. It comes from Lesley Koplow and the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street, and it names a posture rather than a technique. It is what an adult does when a child is having a feeling the adult cannot fix—a meltdown in the cereal aisle, grief after a death, fear on the first day of school, joy so big it overwhelms a small body.
Being With is not narrating. It is not performing calm you do not have. It is not rushing the child toward the next feeling because the current one is uncomfortable for you. It is—staying close, staying quiet, letting your body be the steady thing in the room while the child’s body does what it needs to do. I’m here. I see this. I’m not going anywhere.
The child does not need you to solve the feeling. They need you to survive it with them, so they can learn that feelings are survivable. That is the whole of it. Everything else—the language, the framework, the intervention—is scaffolding for this one move.
An evidence-based parenting program and clinical intervention based on attachment theory. The “circle” is a visual map of a child’s needs: going out to explore (using the caregiver as a secure base) and coming back in for comfort and connection (the safe haven). The program helps caregivers read their child’s signals and respond more consistently—not through rules, but through understanding.
DIR stands for Developmental, Individual-Differences, Relationship-Based. Developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan, this model supports autistic and neurodivergent children by meeting them at their developmental level and building communication and connection through their own interests. “Floortime” is the hands-on practice: getting on the floor with a child, following their lead, and building back-and-forth interactions one circle at a time.
Developed through Bank Street’s Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice, ERP helps educators understand children’s behavior as communication—especially children who have experienced trauma, loss, or chronic stress. A child who hits, hides, or shuts down isn’t misbehaving; they’re telling you something. ERP gives educators the language and tools to hear what children are saying.
The phrase comes from the Reggio Emilia schools in northern Italy: the physical environment—the room, the shelves, the light, the things on the floor—teaches the child alongside the adults. It is not a backdrop. It is a participant.
In practice, this means the room has to keep changing. A space built for a baby who is beginning to sit is no longer the right space for a child who is crawling, pulling up, and dumping out baskets. When the environment stops meeting the child where they are, the child tells us—through frustration, through boredom, through climbing the bookshelf. That is information.
Reorganizing a room—pulling out the hats that no longer fit, making space to move, choosing a handful of intentional objects instead of a full shelf—is not housekeeping. It is a caregiving act. It says: I see who you are becoming. The room reflects that now.
An evidence-based early intervention program for children with autism that trains parents to be their child’s best play partner. Built on DIR/Floortime principles, it recognizes that parents—because of their relationship—are uniquely powerful agents of change. Randomized controlled trials have shown meaningful improvements in social interaction in young autistic children.
A multi-tiered framework for promoting social-emotional development in early childhood settings, developed through the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations. The base of the pyramid is universal practices for all children (nurturing relationships, high-quality environments). The middle tier is targeted support for children at risk. The top is individualized intervention. It’s the most widely used social-emotional framework in early childhood programs nationwide.
A relationship-based approach to professional development where a supervisor creates a safe, collaborative space for practitioners to slow down and explore the emotional content of their work. It’s not traditional supervision (observation and feedback). It’s about noticing what comes up for you when you’re working with a child or family. The parallel process is central: the quality of the supervisory relationship mirrors what we want practitioners to offer families.
Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped Children. Developed at the University of North Carolina, TEACCH uses visual supports, structured environments, and individualized schedules to help autistic individuals navigate their world. The philosophy is that autistic people have a distinct culture of learning—the goal isn’t to make them less autistic, but to make their environment more accessible to them.
D. W. Winnicott called them “the first not-me possession”—the blanket, the stuffed animal, the worn pacifier, sometimes a mason jar lid—objects that children choose themselves and return to again and again. They live in the space between the child and the world, carrying the steadiness of a caregiver when the caregiver is not in the room.
A transitional object is not a substitute for a relationship. It is a tool the child has invented to hold what a relationship offers when a relationship is not available: the soothing rhythm, the known texture, the predictable shape of something they can trust. In our work we see them everywhere—the teddy bear in the BEAR Program, the familiar hat a toddler carries for weeks, the exact spoon that makes breakfast possible. The object is specific, chosen, and almost never what the adult would have picked.
Children outgrow transitional objects at their own pace. Some keep them for years. Some move on in a season. Both are fine. The object did its work by making the child feel safe enough to do the work of being a child.
An approach to practice that recognizes the widespread impact of trauma and integrates that knowledge into policies, procedures, and interactions. In early childhood, trauma-informed care means understanding that challenging behavior is often a response to overwhelming experiences—and responding with curiosity and compassion rather than punishment. It doesn’t require knowing a child’s history; it means assuming every child has one.
Alexandra Sacks, drawing on the work of anthropologist Dana Raphael and developmental scholar Aurélie Athan, named this state matrescence—the developmental transition of becoming a mother, parallel to adolescence and just as disorienting. It is not a problem to solve. It is a passage the body and mind move through alongside the child’s growing.
I’m not ready is one of the most honest sentences a parent can say, and it keeps being true. Not ready for the NICU. Not ready for the milestone that marks the end of babyhood. Not ready for the meltdown, the sleepless stretch, the grandmother who says the wrong thing. Ambivalence—the grief sitting alongside the love, the I can’t do this alongside I would do anything for them—is not a failure of bonding. It is the texture of bonding.
We say this out loud because the alternative is shame, and shame makes parents quieter when what they need is to be heard. You do not have to feel one thing at a time. You do not have to resolve the ambivalence before the next moment arrives. You are going to continue to not be ready. And still you will try.
Research by Shaw and colleagues (2009) found that roughly 60% of NICU parents meet criteria for post-traumatic stress symptoms. The number surprises no one who has been there. A NICU stay—days, weeks, months—lives in the body long after discharge. It shapes how a parent sleeps, how they respond to the sound of an alarm, how they feel about a milestone that was never guaranteed to arrive.
We name this because early childhood practitioners meet NICU families often and do not always know what the room is carrying. A parent who seems hypervigilant at drop-off, who flinches at a cough, who asks three times about the nap—that is not overprotection. That is a nervous system that has been trained by the beeps and the monitors and the phone call in the night, and it is doing its job.
The work is not to reassure. The work is to notice. To slow down. To let the parent tell you what their body is still holding. The NICU ends, but the residue does not, and a practitioner who can sit with that—without rushing the family toward a more comfortable story—is practicing Being With at an adult scale.
Bank Street College of Education is an independent graduate school in New York City with over 100 years of history in progressive, child-centered education. CERP (Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice) is a Bank Street center that develops and disseminates the BEAR Program and Emotionally Responsive Practice training. Our lead consultant co-directs CERP.
The Smart Start lead agency for Buncombe County, NC. Smart Start is a public-private partnership in North Carolina that funds early childhood services, including childcare quality improvement, health services, and family support programs. BPC partners with ConnectEd Circles to bring BEAR Program training to local educators.
The North Carolina Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Association. NCIMHA administers the IMH-E® endorsement in North Carolina and serves as a hub for the infant mental health workforce across the state. Active membership signals a commitment to relationship-based practice with very young children.
North Carolina’s statewide early childhood public-private partnership. Smart Start funds local partnerships (like BPC) to deliver services that help children birth to five enter school healthy, safe, and ready to succeed. ConnectEd Circles works within the Smart Start system to reach the families and educators who need support most.
Have a term you’d like us to add?
Get in Touch →Knowing the words is just the beginning. Our team can help you bring these frameworks into your classroom, home, or program.
See Our Services →