Magda Gerber is a pioneer in the field of infant studies. She's established 10 principles of respect that caregivers (and all of society in my opinion) should understand. I'm going to list them out briefly. The full versions are very accessible in a variety of infant books and online as well.
1) Involve infant and toddlers in things that concern them. Don't work around them or distract them to get the job done faster.
2) Invest in quality time, when you are totally available to individual infants and toddlers. Don't settle for supervising groups, without focussing (more than just briefly) on individual children.
3) Learn each child's unique ways of communicating (cries, words, movements, gestures, facial expressions, body positions, words) and teach them yours. Don't underestimate children's ability to communicate even though their verbal language skills may be nonexistent or minimal.
4) Invest in time and energy to build a total person (concentrating on the "whole child"). Don't focus on cognitive development alone or look at it as separate from total development.
5) Respect infants and toddlers as worthy people. Don't treat them as objects or cute little empty headed people to be manipulated.
6) Be honest about your feelings around infants and toddlers. DOn't pretend to feel something that you don't or not to feel something that you do.
7) Model the behavior that you want to teach. Don't preach.
8) Recognize problems as learning opportunities, and let infants and toddlers try to solve their own. Don't rescue them, constantly make life easy for them, or try to protect them from all problems.
9) Build security by teaching trust. Don't teach distrust by being undependable or often inconsistent.
10) Be concerned about the quality of development in each stage. Don't rush infants and toddlers to reach developmental milestones.
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