Berry Brazelton
By Ayrton Meza
Biography
Berry Brazelton was born on May 10, 1918 in Waco, Texas, United States. In 1940 he graduated from Princeton then in from Columbia in 1943. In 1950 he started private training. His interest in child development led him to train in child psychiatry at MGH and the James Jackson Putnam Children's Center. He then combined his two interests in care pediatrics and child psychiatry and in 1972 he established the Child Development Unit, a pediatric training and research center at the Children's hospital in Boston. Since 1988 he has been Clinical Professor of Pediatrics Emeritus at Harvard Medical School.
Theory
He is an Social/Emotional theorist. The Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale looks at the wide range behaviors and is used to examine infants up to 2 months old. By the end of the assessment he has a behavior layout. The NBAS are based on many key assumptions like that infants when born even the weakest ones are highly capable, like how some are able to control behavior. Second, infants communicate through behavior like a baby crying so they can get the attention of the caregivers. Third is that infants are social organisms with their own unique qualities, for example the infant having their own way of doing things.