For my research competencies class, I chose to research the effects of positive adult-child interactions as a Training and Curriculum Specialist on a military base. I am tasked, partly, with ensuring that the high-quality of our child care centers. We do this by training, teaching, and modeling care. Recently, I have found myself repetitively talking about the importance of interactions.
At my center, we recently conducted a Child Abuse Risk Assessment Tool (CARAT). The tool's purpose is to identify possible areas of child neglect and abuse, not possible child abusers. The CARAT can be compared to a very intensive Infant and Toddler Environmental Rating Scale-3 (ITERS-3), in my opinion. One of the areas that our classes scored the lowest on were interactions. Lack of interactions have not received low scores on other CARATs, and I wonder if it is a bi-product of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the height of the pandemic, we asked caregivers to exceed our expectations to allow our soldiers to "complete the mission." We put into place contagion protocols, mandated social and travel restrictions, and provided PPE. Yet, we expected our caregivers to give the same level of interactions; hugs, cuddles, eye-level conversations, and hand-holding when the world told us those very things could cost you your life.
Interestingly, until I started to type this blog entry, I never noticed a connection between the two. Is it normal for the focus of your research to change? If my research focus has changed, should I make a new research proposal? What do you do when the information you want to research is relatively new?