Thirty-seven infants were videotaped in face-to-face play with their mothers at 6, 13, and 26 weeks of age. Analysis proceeded at three levels: (a) The infants' periods of attention toward the mothers significantly overlapped with the mothers' facially expressive behavior. This was increasingly true as the infants grew older: Whereas the total proportion of time looking at the mothers decreased, the time looking at them while they were on did not decrease, (b) The infants' Vocalizations, Smiles, and Mouth Openings clustered into "runs" as described by previous investigators, but at 6 weeks these occurred only when the mothers were on. By 26 weeks of age, the infants' clusters of expression had become autonomous turns in a dialoguelike exchange, (c) Analysis of contingent sequences following the onset of infant attention showed that with infants 6 weeks old, mothers' facial greetings-Nodding, Smiling, and so forth-were only rarely effective in eliciting expressive greetings from the infants, but without the mothers' greetings the infants almost never made such responses. With 13-week-old infants, mothers more easily elicited greetings, and some spontaneous (unelicited) greetings by the infants could also be seen. With 26-week-old infants, the spontaneous greetings had become as frequent as those elicited by the mothers.Cognitive development demands a widening of the infant's horizons beyond the mother's face to include other animate objects and their actions as well as inanimate objects and their motions. Thus, infants' preferences change over the first 6 months so that faces, especially mothers' faces, occupy a declining share of their attention (Schaffer, 1977).Maternal behavior might be expected to change in response to this shift in infant preferences. Mothers might use more varied and exaggerated expressions (Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974;Stern, Beebe, Jaffe, & Bennett, 1977) to compete against other objects for infants' attention, for the This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation. We are grateful to Richard Nachman for his collaboration in recruiting the sample; to Lynn Barker, Bonnie Umeh, Stephen Muka, and the many coders who contributed their time and vision to the project.Requests for reprints should be sent to Kenneth

When a shared business retards the life‐cycle development of both generations, it may not be possible for consultants to “restore” their system to health as a family business, because it is unhealthy for such families to be in business together at all. Fantasies of saving their family business, or “succeeding” in passing it to the next generation, are misguided at best. The author argues that when parents’ ego development is inadequate, normal individuation makes them and their children so anxious that the business functions like an addiction. A primary role of the consultant is to recognize such cases, diagnose them carefully, and intervene in ways that encourage the next generation to explore a wider range of options.

Analysis of a family's chronic cycle of escalating and retreating from conflicts is a powerful tool for breaking the cycle, resolving conflicts, and improving relationships.

The speech of 36 mothers to their infants in a face-to-face situation at ages 6, 13 and 26 weeks was compared with unfamiliar adults' speech to the same infants, the mothers' speech to an interviewer, and their conversations with the same children 2 years later. Speech to the infants was quite different from so-called ‘baby talk’, but contrary to other authors the speech to infants was even shorter, more repetitive, and more limited in content than the speech to language-learning children. Differences appear due to the infant's changing status in the relationship, from a potential to an actual conversant.

Trust is not only crucial to success among the owners of substantial wealth, it is also the sine qua non for successful teamwork among professionals who work with them. There can be dangers, however, in too much trust and too little healthy confrontation, just as there are in mistrust and chronic conflict.