Watch, wait and wonder is an approach to improving the attachment between parent and baby, developed by Dr. Nancy Cohen<ref> Cohen, N., Muir, E., Lojkasek, M., Muir, R., Parker, C., Barwick, M., & Brown, M.,(2000). Watch, wait, and wonder: Testing the effectiveness of a new approach to mother-infant psychotherapy. Infant Mental Health Journal, 20, #4, 429-450.
Research
This research compared two forms of psychodynamic psychotherapeutic interventions for 67 clinically referred infants and their mothers. One was an infant-led psychotherapy delivered through a program called Watch, Wait, and Wonder (WWW). The other was a mother-infant psychotherapy (PPT). Infants ranged in age from 10 to 30 months at the outset of treatment, which took place in weekly sessions over approximately 5 months. A broad range of measures of attachment, qualities of the mother-infant relationship, maternal perception of parenting stress, parenting competence and satisfaction, depression, and infant cognition and emotion regulation were used. The WWW group showed a greater shift toward a more organized or secure attachment relationship and a greater improvement in cognitive development and emotion regulation than infants in the PPT group. Moreover, mothers in the WWW group reported a larger increase in parenting satisfaction and competence and decrease in depression compared to mothers receiving PPT. Both WWW and PPT were successful in reducing infant -presenting problems, decreasing parenting stress, and reducing maternal intrusiveness and mother-infant conflict. Some potential reasons for the differential treatment effects and the theoretical, clinical, and methodological implications from the findings are discussed.
References
<reference>