Category: Random Aha’s

letting it be

Desere

One of the things I am struggling with is being ok with whatever my son wants, or does not want, to do. Letting it be.

For example, just today we went to the park as we usually do every morning. My son walked around a bit, but then wanted to be picked up. I held him for a while, and then told him I was going to put him down because it was hard for me to hold him for so long. He kept wanting to be held, so I sat down and told him I will sit with him instead. So he snuggled up to me and we sat there, in the middle of the playground. He sucked his thumb and sat, looking around. I asked if he wanted to go home but he said no.

We must have sat this way for 25 minutes until he got up and began exploring again.

Part of me, wanted to push him to play. I wanted to say, we are here at the park go climb, slide, play in the sand, go explore. And when he obviously didn’t want to do anything but sit, that same part of me wanted to pick him up and go home.

But then I asked myself, why not just sit here for a while. Why  not wait until he was ready to play or explore? Why is it hard sometimes to let it be?

I guess it’s because when we go somewhere new, we want our child to experience everything and get the most out of the situation. It’s very hard to accept that whatever our child is doing, is exactly what they want to do. Sometimes that means going to the park and sitting the whole time.

After all, we are building a relationship based on trust. I want him to know that I trust him, and I trust his readiness.

It’s the same thing at RIE class each week. Every child has their own timeline for when they are ready to leave their parent’s laps and join in with the class. How great is it to have a space where they get to feel that trust?

It’s not easy being so receptive to our children’s cues.

We went to a birthday party the other week. The party was at a venue that had one room full of toys, and the next room was set up for ‘messy art’. When we got to the party, my son instantly wanted to jump down and play with all the toys, understandably.

Slowly I meandered toward the other room because I was interested to see what a ‘messy party’ looked like. The room was all covered and had several easels set up for kids. I was so excited because Franky never experienced painting before. I couldn’t wait for him to feel what it was like to dip his brush in different paint, to draw with his fingers, to use sponges and make different prints.

But part of letting my son feel what he is feeling is really integral to my parenting philosophy. Because the same goes with feeling hurt or angry. The best tool we can teach is the tool of feeling those big feelings, knowing that they too shall pass. The only way to teach this is to let these feelings sit, to let them be.

That’s why with RIE parenting, we let our kids cry, or scream, or get upset. Because whatever they are feeling, regardless of how trivial it may seem to us at the moment, is important to them. So we let it be. We sit and we feel.

I guess sitting with my son today on the ground for so long, with other parents staring at me wondering what we were doing int he middle of the playground, I remembered these ideas and how i was letting my son just … be.

when do children learn empathy?

Desere

We talk about empathy a lot in my RIE class. But I never witnessed this quality in my son. Until this week’s class.

At every class at least one mom takes the opportunity to leave her child and go to the restroom. My RIE teacher calls this our laboratory, a safe place to practice leaving our child knowing they will be supported and respected while we are gone. Not always, but many times the child left will cry.

I have watched as the child cries, another child stops playing and watches.

I have watched as the child cries, another child begins to cry.

I have watched as the child cries, another child crawls over and sits with the child until the parent comes back.

But my son never did any of these things.

My son always continues playing. There are times when he even starts giggling. Giggling, as in… he is so immersed in his play he is giggling over the crying.

Rarely he will glance over at the crying child.

But then this week… it happened.

A girl’s mom told her she was leaving. The girl began to cry. And my son instantly stopped playing.

I don’t know if it was because she was a girl. I don’t know if it was that he is now at the point in his life, with enough maturity, that he understands this type of suffering. But now, at just shy of 14 months of age, my son showed empathy. He kept walking over to the little girl, then backing away. He never took his eyes off her. There were moments when he made small noises, as if to match her cries? And then the mom came back and my son was pointing up at the mom as she walked through the door. It was as if he was saying “hey, she’s back, she’s back!”.  Perhaps signaling to the little girl?

But the girl was beyond the point of sadness because she couldn’t stop crying. She was unable to control her emotions, so the mama sat with her little girl on her lap.

I thought that this was it with my son, but it wasn’t. He kept checking in on them. He kept watching. The girl was still crying and Franky continued to feel for her.

At some point, my son went up to both mom and girl, and just barely, softly, touched the little girl’s hand. He then walked away. And the little girl stopped crying. She was watching Franky and soon enough was again ready to join him and the others.

It was just so beautiful and it was so sensitive.

My teacher has talked to us about how babies often cry when they hear crying because they have a sort of innate sense of empathy. But in the beginning this is just mimicking. At some point, it becomes more. Children really begin to understand that crying stems from a place of suffering, a place of sadness, that crying is not just noise. And this understanding establishes a true empathy within the child. Since this is a complex thing, it happens at a different stage for each child. And now, with careful observation and the perfect environment to allow such a situation to unfold, I believe my son achieved this quality.

Because of my background as a teacher, or maybe just my personality, I am always trying to learn more about RIE. I am particularly fascinated by what it looks like beyond the first two years. I ask my teacher and anyone I know who has raised their children with this philosophy, how does RIE look when our kids are teenagers? What sets RIE kids apart from non-RIE kids later on in life?

Well one of the things I often hear is compassion, because RIE is about relationship-based caring. RIE kids are just more compassionate. In preschool, elementary school, high school, and throughout their entire life.

I am not trying to say non-RIE kids can’t be compassionate. Of course some kids are and some kids aren’t. But this parenting philosophy allows kids the opportunity to develop compassion. It is because we let the kid cry and let the other kids see it. It is because we trust what kids are feeling to be real and authentic. It is because we create an environment that embraces emotion instead of stamping it out.

This is why RIE kids care more. They feel more. They are more.

And I think that such a beautiful thing!

babies have a bed time

Desere

Let’s be real, the only time I can run errands alone is late at night after Franky is asleep. Every now and then I say “Laila tov” (good night in Hebrew) to my son, eat dinner, and head out. That means I usually get to my destination of Target or some other store at around 8pm.

As I peruse the aisles, I can always hear the same noise. It doesn’t matter what day I go. It doesn’t matter if I am there at 7pm, 8pm, or 9pm.

Babies are crying. 

Oh, Desere. So niave. Babies cry, it’s normal. I wrote a whole post about normalizing and being comfortable with crying and sad feelings.

True. Crying is ok.

But as caretaker our job is not only to be there for our child when they cry, it is to figure out why they are sad and if it is something controllable, avoid it. For example, hunger and tiredness are completely avoidable. We are not perfect, obviously, but we can do our best to get our kids fed and in bed. (#fedandinbed)

Therefore, this crying I keep hearing late at night is 100% avoidable. Do you want to know how? Ready…

BABIES HAVE A BED TIME!

It’s a simple tenet of parenthood.

Whether you adhere to putting them in bed at a certain time or not, babies have an internal clock. At a certain time, different for everyone, they will be ready to sleep. If they are not in bed at that time, they will cry. This is biology.

I get it, we all want to be this mom:

Hitting the town.

Stars twinkling.

Baby in stroller, probably asleep and cute as ever.

Looking good.

Feeling good.

Bonus points: heals and slim dress

But this just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen because babies have a bed time. And as hard as it is, we can’t always be selfish and go out late at night just because we want to. Especially not for the first two years. We gave that right up when we had our baby.

It is your prerogative to go out of course. To each their own.

But don’t give me those “Oh sorry I don’t know why she is crying” looks because it is so simple, your baby is tired.

I try to ignore it! I try to ignore it because unfortunately going out to run errands at night is sometimes the only alone time I get. It feels good to be out. It feels good to be alone. So I try to be happy and do my shopping. I pretend like I am a single gal shopping at 9pm like it’s a normal thing to do on a Tuesday night.

But I can’t ignore it. The mommy lens is permanent. I can’t take it off.

And that mommy lens is magnified with respectful parenting clip ons.

This means I see it all. I see the mom stuffing more and more snacks in her 18 month old’s hands so she will stop crying at 9:30 at night. I see the dad flipping the 8 month old boy in the air to get him to stop crying. I see the babies in their strollers, fighting the straps that are constraining their bodies from getting into a comfortable sleeping position. I see the bulging eyes because of the noise and the fluorescent lighting.

I also see the parents. I see the parents on their phones as their baby is crying. I see parents buying bikinis as their baby is crying. I see parents embarrassed that their baby is crying.

Don’t be embarrassed. Go home. This is not a parenting aha moment. Your baby is tired.

…

rant over

 

RIE: a history

Desere

In my education program, I taught a curriculum called IMP, Interactive Mathematics Program. This curriculum was developed in 1989, so it has time and experience behind it. And can I just say, I love this curriculum! I love how it puts the heavy lifting on the students. I love how the problems aren’t contrived but are really applicable to daily life. I love how each unit has a central problem students have to answer, like “How long is a shadow?” or “Do bees really build it best?”, and through answering these problems they are learning mathematical concepts.

The school where I got a job, however, was not using IMP as their curriculum. But after my first year, I was able to convince my principal to adopt it. Then throughout my second year, I was able to convince 9 other schools to do the same. I did this by allowing teachers to come and observe me, and holding professional development conferences about the curriculum and my own experience with it.

You see when schools were forced to adopt Common Core a few years ago, many had to switch curriculums in order to comply to the new standards. Common Core is just a new set of standards. But for mathematics, these new standards imply that students have more opportunities to collaborate, problem solve, and have deeper conceptual understanding.

The schools in the system I was working in kept trying different new curriculums, but each curriculum seemed to fall short. Students were not learning. Grades were not improving. Teachers were miserable. This is because all the new curriculums that claimed to comply to Common Core were too new. There were too many issues that needed to be worked out. Honestly most of the new books I saw were literally the same original textbooks that we all had growing up, but with “group work” sprinkled in. It was old, masked as new. But because everyone was in a rush to implement Common Core, the curriculums came out before they were ready.

Consequently during my second year, I made it my mission to convince as many schools as I could to adopt IMP. Because I knew IMP was successful! It has the history behind it that already proves its success. Furthermore, it is already everything Common Core is trying to be, but it was done in 1989.

So I have just told you how amazing this curriculum is. From the school’s point of view, it is 100% compliant with Common Core. From a teacher’s point of view, it is a fun and enriching curriculum. From a student’s point of view, it actually teaches understanding rather than memorization through stories and group worthy tasks. It has been around for almost 30 years!

Then why haven’t you heard of it?

Why aren’t more schools using it, if it is such a successful and enjoyable curriculum?

Well through my fight to spread IMP I realized, just because something is good, even really good, doesn’t necessarily mean it is well known. 

This brings me to RIE.

People keep asking me what RIE is. Which is understandable. It is not a widely known parenting philosophy. But it is not a new thing, and it is not a trend. RIE was founded in 1978, but the ideas that developed this philosophy stem from much earlier.

Magda Gerber, founder of RIE, was influenced by her children’s pediatrician Dr. Emmi Pikler. Dr. Pikler worked with parents in the 20’s and 30’s to raise their children in an environment with free movement and minimal intervention.

In 1946 she opened up an orphanage in Hungary named Loczy to house the hundreds of infants found parentless after World War II. Dr. Pikler wanted the babies to be raised according to a specific philosophy:

  • trust in the child as a self-learner
  • intimate human relation with one primary carer
  • minimal interruption of child play
  • a lot of time for child play
  • independence in movement, choice, and activities
  • involvement of the child in all activities with the carer
  • respect

As a doctor, Emmi Pikler was specifically focused on the physicality of allowing babies to grow up without being taught how to sit or walk. She wanted them to develop gross motor skills on their own timeline.

Furthermore, Dr. Pikler ensured every carer took extensive notes. Each carer was in charge of 3 babies, and were to take weekly notes that tracked behavior and movement, as well as social interactions. Outside of these notes, there was several scientists and doctors who observed and carried out studies during the 60’s and 70’s. Research done on this philosophy and methodology continued because Loczy continued to raise children in this way for 30 years!

After Magda Gerber worked with Dr. Pikler in Hungary, she decided to bring what she learned to the United States. She became an infant specialist herself and began Resources for Infant Educarers® (RIE®) to continue educating parents and caregivers.

My point with all this, is that although RIE is not well known, it is not new.

But I get it, people who have just heard of it may still be hesitant and wonder, how do we really know if it works? Even I wrote a whole post about not knowing whether RIE will help my son become a respectful, secure adult one day. But just as I told teachers when they were training and learning IMP with me, they needed to trust in the curriculum. They needed to trust that it has been around and it does work.

We too, need to trust in RIE.

RIE has the history.

My RIE teacher has children in their 20’s. She told me she could always see a difference between her kids compared to other kids. My other RIE teacher just went to her granddaughter’s 8th grade graduation last week. She raised her kids using RIE, and they are in turn raising her grandchildren using the same ideals. She said it was such a unique experience being able to see her 13 year old daughter so self aware and confident.

This style of raising children has a history. And the history speaks for itself.

 

stop taking babies to the happiest place on earth

Desere

Last week I wrote about how relaxing RIE classes are.

You know what’s not relaxing? Disneyland…

I went to Disneyland the other day with a few friends, and without my son. I hadn’t been in about 6 or 7 years, so I was excited to go.

But it was horrible.

I’m not even talking about how extremely hot it was (94°) or how extremely crowded it was (park reached maximum capacity). Those things did not help my already wavering appreciation of this theme park.

But what made it horrible for me was seeing all the babies.

I saw babies dripping in sweat and every other stroller having fans attached to them. I saw children having melt downs throughout the day out of what was clearly pure exhaustion. I heard toddlers screaming at the baby center while being changed. I watched kids begging their parents to buy all sorts of toys and parents becoming angry over every request. I even saw kids passed out on the floor, all over the park. And there was crying… so much crying.

And I am sure if you have ever been to Disneyland, you have seen these things too.

Folks, please stop taking babies to Disneyland. I may not be a child specialist or have a PhD, but I have eyes and I am a mother. These babies and toddlers are NOT happy, and here is my interpretation of why this is so.

1. over-stimulation: 

The theme park has giant characters, lights all around, music and bands, noise from all directions, people everywhere, smells, rides.

Just listing it all out is making me feel overwhelmed. I can’t imagine my son, who  gets overwhelmed from too many people coming over, dealing with all of these things.

When I was there, I was going to the baby center constantly to pump. One of the times there I watched a mom holding a baby that looked to be about 8 months old. His eyes were bulging, and looking everywhere. I could see him simply attempting to take everything in. He was being moved quickly, and he was struggling to keep up.

And I felt for him.

2. loss of predictability

Babies crave predictability. This is a fact. Magda Gerber (founder of RIE) believed that predictability helps babies and toddlers feel secure.

The more predictable the daily routine is, the more stability we give our kids. This helps them eat and sleep when the time comes. This also helps them make sense of the ever changing world around them.

I really believe my job is to keep my son feeling safe. Over-stimulation is something that is not routine for him, which is unpredictable. In that type of environment he doesn’t learn or feel comfortable. And I feel like I’m failing my job. Not to mention I hate ‘bucketing’ him for more than a few hours.

After a full day at any theme park, I am whiped out. I am emotionally, physically, and spiritually drained. I can’t imagine what a full day at Disneyland might do to my son’s equilabrium.

I believe my son is capable of handling a lot. But I know he has no way of handling everything that would be thrown at him at Disneyland, which brings me to my next point.

3. unreasonable expectations

It’s called the happiest place on earth for a reason, and I’m not writing this to deny any of those reasons. However expecting a baby or young toddler to take everything in and be as happy and excited as I am when I travel to to Disneyland is unreasonable.

Babies and toddlers aren’t coming here for their own pleasure, that is ridiculous. We take them for our pleasure. We take them for pictures with cartoon characters we adore. Worse yet, we take them as an afterthought because we are really taking our older children.

In her post Please Don’t Take The Children, Janet Lansbury explains her own understanding of child development and the dangers of projecting our adult point of view onto our infants and toddlers. “It sounds fun and stimulating to us, so it must be a good idea. It’s easy to make this misjudgment with pre-verbal children.”

She continues to point out that the stress, discomfort, and exhaustion may not harm babies. “But what these developmentally inappropriate activities are almost certain to do is waste a child’s time, time the child could be spending engaging in self-initiated learning adventures, creating and imagining, feeling content, secure and confident in familiar surroundings, socializing, free to move and explore, empowered by knowing the routine.”

And I think this is what bothered me the most. Seeing these young kids trapped.

Because children are explorers and need places where they are able to move around, experiment, run, and climb. Asking a toddler not to do these things is asking them not to breathe. But in a crowded theme park, our kids lose this safe place to play and explore. We fear for their safety. We yell if they run. We get frustrated when they don’t comply.

Why are we setting ourself up for failure?

But Des, this is the happiest place on earth! I know it is, and I too cannot wait to take my son here. I dream about the day I can bring him to enjoy the parade and the rides, to meet different characters. I just think there is an age limit to this ‘happiness’ and we need to be careful about what is being commercially marketed to us. And I can’t tell you what the age limit is because I think every kid is different and every kid might be able to handle this experience differently.

What I can do is pass along the test that Janet Lansbury recommends before deciding to take your child anywhere: 1) “Who is this for?” 2) “Are they really ready to actively participate in this experience, or would it be better to wait until they are a bit older?” 3) “Will this be more enriching than an afternoon dawdling in the backyard or a walk down the street?”

When you can answer these three questions authentically, then you will be making a decision in the best interest of your child.

So for me:

1) Disneyland is for me to let loose with my friends and go on rides

2) my son can’t walk yet so he is definitely too young to actively participate in anything at the park

3) watching my son spend a whole afternoon learning how to slide the screen door open, let himself outside, crawl around, come back inside, slide the screen closed, and repeat is enriching enough for the both of us

the rattle incident

Desere1 Comment

Once a week I go the library for baby story time with my son. This event takes place when the library is closed to the public, so only parents with babies are there. We sit on the carpet and the librarian reads 2 to 3 stories. We usually have the babies in our lap or they are laying or sitting on the floor near us. Other than the books, the librarian usually leads several songs that involve both baby and parent.

Some of the songs are the same week to week, others vary. Sometimes we sing about an elevator going up and down, and simultaneously we raise our babies up in the air and lower them back down. Sometimes we sing where is baby, and use a small piece of material to play peek a boo with our little one.

Often if a song involves a manipulative, the librarian will pass it out to each parent before sitting in front to lead the song. This week, she planned a “shake, shake, shake” song and therefore passed out rattles to everyone. I watched as moms received a rattle, placed it in their child’s hands, and shook them showing their baby what the maraca does. Moms with younger babies who were not sitting, would shake the rattle in front of their baby over and over.

Any other time in my life, I would not think twice about this scene. But since beginning to practice RIE, I didn’t feel right about taking the rattle and holding it in my son’s hands to shake along to the music. I didn’t feel right about showing him what the rattle does in general. Instead, I placed the maraca down on the floor near Franky, and waited.

The song began and I looked around at all the moms shaking their babies hands, singing proudly to the music. Some of the moms looked at me and I’ll be honest, I felt like I was being weird for not doing what everyone else was doing. At some point even the librarian looked over and her eyes seemed to ask why my son wasn’t participating. I muttered something like “oh he likes to do his own thing.” But I definitely began feeling awkward.

Was I in the wrong? Was waiting to let my son pick up the rattle out of his own interest and figure out what it does, not the way to go about this? It’s not like Franky wasn’t enjoying himself. He was sitting and clapping, smiling up at everyone. He was obviously enjoying the music and the environment.

I decided to stick to my gut. I was NOT going to pick the toy up.

The song seemed to be almost over, and then it happened. Frank picked up the rattle and tasted it. This is how he usually first explores a new object.

Then he moved it and realized it made noise! He looked up at me with so much excitement, swinging the rattle backwards and forwards. The song was over, but he was just getting started. I looked around as the music faded away and all the babies instantly dropped their rattles, probably because they never wanted it in their hands to begin with. My son sat there and swung that rattle, making beautiful music for several more minutes. 

This was his aha moment.

So what did I learn from this incident? I could give my son toys, show him how they work, and play with him in this manner all day long. But his interest will be superficial, because I am the one giving him the toy. Whereas if I step back, something more amazing may happen.

It may take longer for my child to gain interest in something, but when that is motivated from within, the interest is more genuine and lasting.