Thirty years ago, I was giving a paper in Cascais along with Margaret Mahler, Erik Erikson and Jerome Bruner (our US Piaget).The paper I presented was a second by second analysis of attachment behavior between 2-month olds and their mothers, the rhythms they set up, the imitation and the way each one influenced the other as they interacted with each other. It was very successful and was an example of how early attachment began, and how important it was for both infant and parent. After the paper a young man (with curly hair and flying coattails) came up to me and said, “Dr. Brazelton, I want to get to know you. I am Joao Carlos Gomes Pedro, a pediatrician here in Lisbon, and I want to learn all I can about babies and small children. Can I come work with you?” Of course I said “yes” and we have been dear friends and colleagues ever since. He came to Boston in 1981 and learned the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale.

After that, he set up a training institute in Lisbon where he and his colleagues have trained professionals from all over Portugal. He taught them how to assess newborns, and how to be able to demonstrate their behavior to new parents right after birth. We have demonstrated and published 800 peer reviewed papers, several with Professor Gomes Pedro, about the way this changes the new parent’s image of the baby and helps them shape their parenting around the baby’s behavior, his/her temperament and ability to respond. In this way, the early intervention provides the baby with a significantly improved outcome and the parents with the feeling that they now know how to parent him/her.

I have seen Joao Carlos and his wonderful colleagues change Portugal to become aware of how important newborns are and how important it is to teach parents to observe their baby’s behavior as they learn how to become that individual baby’s parent.

He established an annual conference in Lisbon which brought together all the leading infant and child researchers from the US and Europe. This annual conference was attended by 600 – 700 professionals from all over Portugal. All of us in the US felt it was one of the most important conferences we have ever attended. None of us will ever forget them.

I have seen Dr. Gomes Pedro become the chairman of Pediatrics at the University of Lisbon and he has changed medical education in Portugal to include the importance of early assessment and interaction with both normal and high risk neonates, to become aware of how to work with new parents to make a working relationship with them from the first, how to help them observe and interact and attach to their newborns from the first. His research has demonstrated the powerful effects this had on these infants as late as 12-13 years of age. The model he has developed for medical education is one I wish we could all adopt all over the world. Pediatricians in Portugal are much more sensitive and supportive for parents and children than they are in our country.

In 2002, his group asked us to train a group of medical and child care experts on our Touchpoints model. Touchpoints are predictable times in infant and child development hen they fall apart just before a new burst in development, 6 of them in the first year, 3-4 in year 2 and 3-4 each year after that. Parents fall apart too and that is a time of vulnerability. If parent supporters can be available at those times, they can reassure parents that these are normal times for the child to regress, to gather steam for the next new surge in development. Then, each touchpoint becomes an opportunity for both parent and child to feel that they are resilient and are now able to conquer their world. In the past few years, Joao Gomes Pedro and his group have trained nearly 500 professionals to use the concepts of Touchpoints in their work all over Portugal.

I would like to use the Gomes Pedro model of Touchpoints in Portugal, and develop Touchpoints Centers all over Europe, Sough America and Asia.

I am so proud of Joao Carlos and his wonderful career. I am proud to be his friend and colleague. He has changed a whole country to become aware of infants and parents and the importance of early identification and intervention to give the children of Portugal a brilliant future. He is a model for the world!

T. Berry Brazelton, MD
Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus Harvard Medical School
Founder, Brazelton Touchpoints Center