First, a little background: RIE® has been around a long time. It’s an approach to the care and education of infants and toddlers which is firmly grounded in research in many fields including psychology, medicine and education. As I wrote in 2016, “Resources for Infant Educarers®, often referred to by its acronym, RIE®, is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1978 in Los Angeles by infant specialist, Magda Gerber, and Tom Forrest, MD, a pediatric neurologist in Palo Alto, California. The goal of RIE is to help raise authentic infants who are competent, focused, peaceful, involved, cheerful, cooperative, resourceful, initiating, confident, aware, secure, attentive, curious, exploring, interested, and inner-directed.”1
The question is, how do we do all that? It’s easy…and hard. It has taken me 30 years to fully appreciate all the wisdom that Magda Gerber did her best to share. And I have been sharing it with others since 1993, when I became a RIE® Associate under Magda’s mentorship and started teaching, but it seems like I see or learn something new every day, as I work with parents and their infants and toddlers, and with adults who work with families as caregivers or in other roles of support and early intervention.
For instance, just last week, a little girl in my class,17 months old, began playing with a small, soft-bodied doll on a low climbing platform. She repeatedly moved the doll up and down the 4” riser as though the doll were learning to climb, just like she herself had done when she was much smaller, on her belly, close to the ground. No one was prompting her. No one needed to make a comment. She was deeply satisfied by this activity, and I learned that a baby only a year and four months old can think about the learning process! I have often seen children this age pretending to drink, to cook, or talk on the phone…but I have never seen one so young pretending, via the doll, to learn to climb!
This is an example of one important element of RIE’s Educaring® Approach, time for uninterrupted play. Sometimes we hear that we should make an effort to be involved in the child’s play, so that we can add to their experience. Early childhood educators often feel that this is what they are hired to do, and if they are not actively doing something, they are falling down on the job. No one would argue that teachers need to take responsibility, but an Educarer® has a different way of supporting learning, by creating the conditions in which infants and toddlers can explore, experiment, mess around, test hypotheses, and learn by trial and error, not by actively “teaching.”
Learning happens whether we see it or not, because, we trust in the child to be an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner. The lessons they learn about the physical world, including how things feel to touch, how heavy they are, how they move (roll? bounce? tumble?), how many you can fit in a basket, how to make it stand up, or spin…all this sensory-motor knowledge is built up by repeated experimentation. You can call this play, as we at RIE do, or you can call it work, as the Montessorians do, but whatever you call it, it is not only fun for the child, but essential to their education.
But if we’re not involved, you may ask…what about language? That is a very important question, and it’s true that we cannot learn language without exposure to it. Babies must be spoken with in order to become competent in speaking. There’s a famous old story Magda used to tell concerning an experiment by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th Century, designed to learn what the primary language of humans is. According to Salimbene (a monk of the era who documented the story), the Emperor gathered some babies and nurses and, as Magda told it, forbid the nurses, on pain of death, to speak to the babies in any way as they cared for them. So, the nurses fed and cleaned the babies, but did not communicate or connect with them at all. The tragic lesson ended up that babies cannot live without human connection. Not only did the babies not speak (the Emperor thought it would be Hebrew, apparently) but they died.2
So…of course we must connect and talk with babies. When? That is the question….
As I wrote in my book, Respecting Babies, we adults would not appreciate it if someone was commenting on our every action.3 As I am sitting here and writing, I would not appreciate a well-meaning person standing behind me, looking over my shoulder and commenting on my work. (“Oh, that’s a nice sentence! Good use of punctuation! Good job!”) Small children also have to be able to concentrate on what they are doing to get the most from it. So, just as I would love to have someone comment on my work after I’ve finished the first draft, babies and toddler will let you know with a look when they want to hear from you. The look might say, “Did you see that?!” Then, if you say, “Wow, it bounced so high! Such a bouncy red ball!” they will be tuned in, and your words will have meaning, so they will remember, and not just the words, but also the fact that they can count on your support and enthusiasm.
And that leads to yet another RIE principle, sensitive observation4 as a way to understand what they are experiencing. We are always unconsciously tracking the people in our environment, but being mindfully present for babies requires closer attention. Is she deeply focused on something, or is she looking around for something to grab her interest? (Giver her time; she will choose something according to her own agenda.) Is he content on his own, or does he appear to need a word or look of encouragement? And when we do get involved, was our first impulse to step in less than helpful? Then would be a good time to step back and do a little more observation.
What many don’t realize is that observing quietly while very young children pursue their interests builds attachment. When they look up and see that you are there and paying attention, they feel securely held in your awareness. You are not doing nothing after all. You are showing your love by allowing them to unfold in their own way and in their own time.
[More to come. See RIE® 101 #2 for more principles.]
References:
1the-sage-encyclopedia-of-contemporary-early-childhood-education
2Hammond, R.A. (2019). Respecting babies: A guide to educaring for parents and professionals. Washington, DC: Zero to Three.
3https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/salimbene1.asp
4For the full list of the 7 RIE Principles, go to https://www.rie.org/educaring/ries-basic-principles/