“Touchpoints” is a theory of childhood development based on more than 60 years of ground-breaking research by Dr. T. Berry Brazelton — a pediatrician, professor, and expert on child development — and colleagues at Boston Children’s Hospital and communities around the world.
This theory looks at predictable periods of regression and disorganization (called “touchpoints”) that occur just before a child makes a developmental leap.
Understanding this model can be helpful for strengthening parent-child relationships and development throughout the early childhood years. In short, when parents understand their child’s development and touchpoints, they are better prepared for predictable backslides in behavior and can look forward to exciting new steps to come.
Key Concepts of Touchpoints
Brazelton’s approach focuses on the developmental stages from birth to age three. The “touchpoints” he describes are stages when a child’s development temporarily seems to stall or regress, such as disrupted sleep or clinginess.
These moments often precede significant developmental milestones such as walking, talking, or developing more independence. Dr. Brazelton argues these are opportunities for connection and support, not something caregivers need to “fix.”
Brazelton urges parents and caregivers to be partners in development rather than managers. He validates parental anxiety, encourages flexible routines, and promotes responsive parenting over prescriptive methods.
Key developmental stages he looks at are:
- Birth to 6 months: Focus on bonding, feeding, and early sensory development.
- 6 to 12 months: Emergence of mobility and object permanence.
- 12 to 24 months: Rapid speech, emotional expressions, and testing limits.
- 24 to 36 months: Developing autonomy, complex emotions, and social awareness.
Why It’s Important for Parents to Understand Touchpoints
Ease Stress
Raising an infant is challenging, and for new parents, it can be a time of great anxiety and emotions. Understanding the regressions that may accompany their child’s developmental spurts can ease stress.
Improve Communication
Understanding Touchpoints provides parent or other caregivers with the opportunity to help each other understand a child’s behaviors, strengths, and growing capacities.
This is a helpful communication tool for child care providers, parents, doctors, and other caregivers who are seeing the same child at different times of the day. It provides a common language of child behavior and development that enables you to work together and collaborate for the best interest of the child.
Boost Cultural Competencies
Touchpoints has the ability to reconnect families with their communities in ways that build hope and reduce stress. It provides an adaptable, culturally-sensitive way of working that engages a community’s heritage, assets, and self-strengthening capacities on behalf of its young children.
Not only does Touchpoints involve a valuable component of cultural competencies, its Guiding Principles and Parent Assumptions provide an approach to understanding children that can be valuable to pediatricians, nurses, early educators, home visitors, and other professionals to support parents.
Build Confidence
When given the tools to be more effective caregivers, parents are naturally better equipped to meet the health, emotional, and learning needs of their children.
By learning more about Touchpoints and incorporating strategies into their own lives, parents are giving their children the powerful opportunity to become successful early learners.
This theory also empowers parents to be confident caregivers who use their innate wisdom to do what’s best for their child.
Want to Learn More About Touchpoints?
If you want to better relate to and understand your child, Touchpoints is a great place to start!
For more information on Dr. Brazelton’s theory on child development and tips on how to better integrate Touchpoints into everyday parenting, visit the Brazelton Touchpoints Center. They offer a variety of resources and in-depth training based on Dr. Brazelton’s touchpoints.
You can also read Brazelton’s books, including “Touchpoints-Birth to Three” and “Touchpoints: The Essential Reference.”
About the Author:
Amy Bontempo has 20+ years of experience with birth-to-three programs and is the former Manager of Family and Community Engagement at Penfield Children’s Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Down Syndrome Association (DSAW) of Wisconsin since 2011 and previously served on the Volunteer Respite Committee for Children’s Service Society, now part of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Community Services, and the Family Resource Connection of Milwaukee Co.
