On Becoming Human: Last Margaret McMillan Lecture

All British infants’ social and emotional needs, most importantly those relating to attachment and stability, should be nurtured in flexible, spontaneous, play based interactions with other children and adults. Such experience is vitally required to underpin development into secure, sociable human beings from which more formal interaction skills emerge, from mid-childhood onwards. Nurseries and day care centres should be managed by graduate leaders who understand these fundamental elements of human development.