Lynn Barnett. Sunday's Child: the Development of Individuality from Birth to Two Years of Age, Parts I-VIII. Part IX: 2 to 3 years, 1988. Part X:3 to 6 years, 1989. Also available: Sunday's Child: short version (0-2 years); Sunday's Child: From Dependent Feeding to Rational Eating; Sunday's Child: Father's Role. Lynn Barnett Copies can be obtained, for teaching and study purposes only, from, Iddesleigh House Clinic, 97 Heavitree Road, Exeter, Devon, UK EX1 2NE and Concorde Films, 201 Felixstowe Road, Ipswich, Suffolk IP3 9BJ. Hire: £18 plus p&p, compilation. £15 each 3 months part + p&pa. Purchase: £50 plus p&p, compilation. £30 each 3 months part + p&p.

To my knowledge, Sunday's Child is the first longitudinal study of the development of a child, filmed from the perspective of a child psychotherapist trained in the art and method of Infant Observation. Lynn Barnett's background in anthropology undoubtedly contributed to the innovative approach she has taken to the study of infancy since we are able to observe the intimate details of the baby's (Sunday's Child) daily life within his natural environment - first born child of professional parents living in a rural setting in the South of England. The opening shots of the first tape of the 8-part series (Part I, 0-3 months) show us the narrow streets surrounding the baby's home and we hear the voiceovers of his parents describing their expectations of their soon-to-be-born son. Throughout, the film-maker's commentary is kept to a minimum, thereby ensuring that observers share the experience of an anthropologist and/or trainee child psychotherapist entering unmapped territory with few signposts. To my mind, the film's greatest value results from the exposure to the ‘raw data’, specifically the raw emotions, of infancy and parenthood. Unlike other ‘developmental’ films, we are not presented with excerpts which have been selected in order to demonstrate the film-maker's thesis concerning aspects of normal - or abnormal - development. For this reason, the films are often hard to watch, particularly during the early days and weeks after the baby's birth when the relentless chain of events of feeding, changing, bathing, etc reveal the emotional field in which this child will develop.

As it is impossible to do justice to all of Lynn Barnett's films in one review, I shall assume that the majority of the readers of this review have had some exposure to Barnett's work over the last few years. I shall not, therefore, give an account of the films but rather review them from the point of view of their use as a teaching tool. I shall focus on the package of 8 films which cover the fi