Tag: baby

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!

baby-led play

Desere2 Comments

When I became a mom, I was overwhelmed with the idea of play time. Making sure my son was entertained, as well as developing certain skills, was exhausting. All day long I would pick up toys and show my son how they worked, hence playing with him. I would build towers and show him how to push them down, push buttons and sing along for him, and stack rings in the correct order. I would place my son down with his toys and if he didn’t start playing right away I would bring the toys closer. I would go to events like baby story time at the library, picking my son up and down to the music like all the other moms. I figured as my son grows, becomes more aware and more mobile, then play time will get easier.

It didn’t.

I was still playing with all of his toys and still feeling more exhausted every day. Something didn’t feel right. It felt incredibly forced, like I was being pressured to play with him because I thought that was how we were supposed to play with babies. 

And the problem definitely was not that we didn’t have enough things, because we did. We had all kinds of toys.

Toys that light up and play music

Toys that develop hand-eye coordination 

Toys great for imaginative play

Interactive toys with smart stages that grow with baby

I could go on… but you get the point. 

When I began learning about respectful parenting, I realized how I could let go of this idea I was stubbornly holding on to, the idea of playing with baby. I was looking at it all wrong.

This is when I got my aha moment, baby-led play.

You see, babies are motivated by all sorts of things that we don’t always understand. Simply placing your baby (on their back) in an area full of safe things is enough to get them going. Your baby will start playing with something, maybe not right away, but they will. Why force it?

As long as babies have our attention and are in a safe environment, they will play. This is because babies learn about their world through play, it’s in their nature. It’s about trusting and respecting your baby to lead their play time.

I trust my son to play with something for as long as he wants. I trust his choices. If he goes to one object and decides to leave it after less than a minute, who am I to bring it back to him and tell him to play longer? If he picks up a ball and plays with it for an hour (as he often does whenever we go to RIE class) before exploring the other objects, again why stop him? He must really like that ball!

I respect my son’s ability to play with a toy however he wants. When I got the Fisher-Price stacking tower for my son, my whole family and I would show him how to put the rings in order on the tower. What did my son want to do? He wanted to first eat the rings. When he was more mobile, he wanted to throw the rings across the floor to watch them roll away. I used to show him again and again how to place them on the tower. I think back on this and wonder how I could be so selfish. My son was amazed at the ability of the rings to roll away, and I was trying to take that away from him. Why? To build him hand-eye coordination according to the label on the box? The thing is, he was building hand-eye coordination in his own beautiful way.

When I taught high school math, I spent most of the time as a facilitator in my classroom. This meant stepping back, waiting, and observing my students working in their groups. I would never lead them in solving a problem. It was not about projecting my own agenda or ideas, it was about building off their ideas.

Sometimes this meant solving problems took longer. Actually… it often took longer. But when problems were solved, my students were able to truly own the moment. This is part of student-led teaching. And the result was resourceful and self aware students. Because I trusted my students to be able to learn with me facilitating rather than lecturing, they were encouraged to try new things and persevere.

Sometimes they didn’t quite answer the problem. And when I first trained to be a teacher this bothered me. But my mentor made me realize that ultimately the point of being a math teacher is not to get students to solve problems using preconceived equations. The point is to give students the tools to problem solve through several types of situations, to try out their ideas, possibly fail, and keep trying out more ideas. This is what will prepare them for life beyond school. This is better than teaching the pythagorean theorem and students asking me, “when will I ever need to know this?”

So my students didn’t always finish a problem. But there was so much math happening and so many ideas tried, that they were learning every step of the way.

I like to relate my teaching to my parenting style because baby-led play is very similar to student led teaching. I can sit back and let go, while my son discovers his toys in his own time and his own way. And the outcome is similar to that of my students. Since adopting RIE at home, my son has a longer attention span and much more perseverance. Even though I exchanged many of his toys for simpler items like bowls, tubes, containers, and rings, he will play for longer periods of time. And like my students, I don’t care if he doesn’t play with something correctly (like I mentioned above with his stacking tower). I don’t even care if he ‘finishes’ playing with a toy.

We do less, so that our kids do more. I mentioned this idea when introducing how I feed my son and how I change his diaper. With teaching, I did less so my students were doing the heavy lifting. Consequently, they were the ones learning. Play time is the same. I trust my son and he feels trusted to do what he wants and to figure toys out on his own.

The best part is that I now feel so relaxed!

  • I don’t wave toys in front of him.
  • I don’t check Pinterest for activity ideas
  • I don’t take him to several classes during the week to entertain him
  • I don’t worry about songs to sing or making him clap his hands

I just let go.

At this point you may wonder what is so wrong with playing with a baby. When we wave a toy and they happily crawl over, that can’t be a bad thing? My mom often questioned me about this, saying that my son seems so happy when she plays with him and shows him toys. He is enjoying it!

Well, of course he is. Babies will enjoy when you play with them. The problem is that they will begin to rely on this stimulation. This will grow into a habit of needing someone (or something) else to entertain them. This is also a distraction, and we should never mistake distraction for enjoyment.

Moreover, when we do this, we are ignoring the ideas that our children are trying to form on their own. We might think they are bored, but they may be about to come up with something. This is like sitting down to write a blog. I can feel all these ideas coming up, but then my husband walks in and begins talking to me, or the doorbell rings. I lose my train of thought. As an adult, I have the ability to block out external distractors (doorbell or phone), and the capacity to often get back to my ideas. Babies aren’t like that. They are run by their emotion and the stimuli will take over. Therefore as the parent we need to provide the space to nurture their ideas.

The last and probably most important part about baby-led play is that being forced to be an observer lets me learn about my baby. Every day I observe him and take in all his wonder. I try to see the world through his eyes and learn who he is as a person, what his personality is like.

And I have learned that, ironically, he too is an observer. When I set him down in a new place, he likes to wait and see what is happening before jumping in. He likes to people watch, and baby watch.

He likes to find one object that is fascinating to him for whatever reason at the time, and hold on to it for a while before exploring more. He likes to test objects out by banging them on hard surfaces to see what they are made of and what sound they make.

He likes lids, anything with a lid to open and close.

He likes scooting forward in a superman pose, using his toes to propel him forward, and holding something small in his hand.

He likes the way the sun goes through the shutters in his bedroom in the morning, and the pattern it makes on the wall.

Because of baby-led play, I am learning who my son is. And at 9 1/2 months old, he is incredible.

 

slow down

Desere1 Comment

The biggest takeaway from my second RIE class was the idea of slowing down. In order to have a trusting relationship and open communication with our babies, we really need to slow down to their level. Babies don’t process things as fast as we do.

Here is what happened in this week’s class. I really needed to go to the bathroom, so naturally I turned to the teacher and said “I need to go to the bathroom.” She looked at me and replied, “You shouldn’t be telling me, you should tell your son.”

Huh?!?

I came here with my son. We came together. If there was anyone who needed to know that I was about to leave the room, it was him. Duh!

Think about it like this, if you went somewhere with a friend, you wouldn’t just leave to the bathroom, you would tell your friend where you were going, right? Treating babies with respect, as whole people, means giving them the same courtesy. More so than adults, because babies and toddlers are driven by their emotions. Leaving can trigger intense feelings and should be acknowledged, not ignored.

My instructor told me to tell my son. She said to tell him first, without moving. To wait. Then to get up and go.

So I did. I told Franky “I need to go to the bathroom, I’ll be back in a few minutes ok?” and then got up and left. As I was next door in the bathroom, I could hear the distinct cry of my son. He was crying! I hurried back and saw he was definitely in distress. The teacher was talking to him saying “your mom left and you didn’t like that.” When she saw me she said “your mom is here now.” She told me to move close to where he was sitting, which I did. I picked him up and hugged him, without saying anything. After a few minutes he calmed down and went off to play.

But I had made a mistake.

My teacher pointed out that when telling my son I needed to go to the bathroom I ended my statement with “ok?” which is a very typical thing parents often do. We do this as if to soften our statement. But it’s not softening it, it is asking permission. As adults and as parents, we do not, should not, need the permission of our children to do self caring acts (like going to the bathroom).

And in the eyes of my son, of course it’s not ok! My son doesn’t want to be left alone.

Instead, I need to tell him I am going.

Period.

And then go.

Don’t stick around. Don’t say it 100 times. Don’t be all sad with your eyebrows down trying to empathize. You need to go to the bathroom, go! Your child will learn to respect that you need to take care of yourself, and will grow up respecting this idea of others.

RIE is not about avoiding our babies’ cries. It was ok that he cried! It is ok to set limits and for our kids to say, hey we don’t like that. Most parents often give in at this point because their baby is crying or whining. We just have to remind ourselves IT’S OK for baby to do these things

This is literally the only way that the baby can communicate. Since RIE is about open communication, it really should go both ways. The baby is not going to always like what you have to say, and will express their dislike for whatever you just set a limit for.

But here is the best part. You set some limit. Your baby cries (or not). And then, you both can move on. Because when babies and children have the space and support to let out their feelings, they are much more ready to move on. We don’t stop them from crying, we accept it the way I did in class when I simply held my son after returning from the bathroom without saying “you’re ok.”

The only thing you need to remember is to slow down. Babies are incredibly good listeners, but things need to marinate for a bit until they can truly process it.

  • slow down while changing a diaper

    • this is not a time to rush
    • ask your baby for help and wait

  • slow down while feeding

    • read your baby’s cues for hunger and for fullness
    • ensure safety, remember they are just learning how to eat

  • slow down while playing

    • babies don’t get bored
    • really look at what they are interested in instead of assuming anything
    • your baby is playing with one toy, now is not the time to grab another toy to show him/her

  • slow down if your baby seems distracted or isn’t paying attention

    • something fascinating might have caught his/her eye. It could be as simple as a reflection bouncing off a surface. Bend down, look where your baby is looking, and enjoy this moment.

  • slow down when telling your baby something

    • want to get up and leave your child, say it first before getting up
    • better yet, say “in one minute I’m going to get up and go to the bathroom.” Then 1 min later, “I am going to get up now and go to the the bathroom. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Then go

 

 

feeding the RIE way

Desere1 Comment

In my last post I wrote about my interpretation of this new thing called RIE and the ideas I was beginning to try out at home.

It began with asking Franky if I could pick him up and pausing, before scooping him off the ground. My husband quickly adopted this idea too, and within a few days this silly habit became the norm. Next would be feeding my son, the RIE way. Continue reading “feeding the RIE way” →

the (new mommy) struggle is real

Desere1 Comment


At work I had a poster above the whiteboard that said

The struggle is real.

But where there is struggle, there is strength. 

It was a very crude piece of decoration in my classroom. I heard the phrase somewhere and quickly took marker to poster and slapped it up there for the next day. Yet, my students LOVED this poster, and would point to it sometimes when I gave them challenging tasks.

Sometimes, I would even give impossible tasks. I would tell them at the end that the point was the struggle, not the answer. Some teachers thought this was cruel, but my students didn’t. They loved it. Some were often unconvinced that the task was truly impossible and asked to keep trying as part of their homework. This always made my heart smile.

Anyway, this quote and the lesson I was trying to impart on my students, is one that I keep trying to remember as a new mom. Because the new mommy struggle IS real. Continue reading “the (new mommy) struggle is real” →