My best course - Understanding behaviour

Many nursery practitioners, and their bosses, would baulk at the thought of spending five days out of the office on a training course. But understanding transference - when people unconsciously transfer feelings from the past to the present - is essential for every practitioner, according to Dr Louise Emanuel, consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic.

She says, 'When you work with families and young children you have to have an understanding of relationships. Otherwise we find ourselves taking things very personally. Many early years professionals are incredibly relieved when they find out why a child might come into nursery and kick them in the shins before they even start.'

The course, A Psychoanalytic Approach to Interventions with Parents, Infants and Young Children comprises lectures from expert consultants on aspects such as bereavement, trauma, depression and observation. Participants are also divided into groups of nine for discussion work led by a psychotherapist. The course is a taster for the Masters in Work with Infants and the Early Years: A Psychoanalytic Approach, offered by the clinic in conjunction with the University of Essex.

For early years practitioner Rachel Cowie, who works at London-based charity Montessori Education for Autism, the course helped foster an understanding of the motives for children's behaviour. 'My degree covered child development and attachment, but this was very different - it was about being aware of the clues.

'One of the case studies was about how children with trauma express emotions. It covered the different ways you could use ICT to find out emotion indirectly, rather than saying, 'Are you happy?', 'Are you sad?' We've recently been using iPads to do this, by asking 'What song do you like?' and 'How does this make you feel?'

She adds, 'The course was all to do with babies and education in the first year of life, but it is good to know about emotional development, family and how environment affects any child from birth to five.'