still reading your posts after a few years on the mailing list, still learning new stuff and always deeply grateful for the confirmations of my hunches, and the words you provide to explain them to grownups 🙂
My sales pitch now for self-directed play is ‘it’s her/his day at the office’ (or did I steal it from you??) – but it’s so much more than that. In those cases where I’ve worked with children for two years or more, my learning curve has astounded me, and often I find it hard to convey the endless benefits of the RIE approach because it affects so many interconnected things at once, and heads off so many pitfalls at the pass. To be in a position to beam with genuine delight at a tiny person, to get their jokes, to find them endlessly fascinating in their infinite variety, to me that’s the cherry at the top of the pile. Those passing, but relatively frequent, moments of intense warmth seem to be superfood squared for the child’s soul in general. I had a grandmother who modelled this for me. As far as I can tell, it leads to very high levels of team spirit and cooperation with executive decisions, which leads to more delighted, genuine gratitude from my end. I’m endlessly glad these notions are accessible for all here at your website. On one hand I don’t know how anyone would manage to ‘get’ the whole thing just by bringing up a child or two. I needed way more repeats than that. On the other hand, it is indeed a certain kind of simple to understand.

I’ve looked after somewhere around seventy individual children in private homes, about half were babies from seven months to toddlers around three years old. What struck me about the video was Sammy’s manual dexterity, how he holds the nappy, and flips it over. Also his confidence, firstly in his surroundings – he checked once at the beginning that a trusted carer was available, then not til the very end – and also in his own play techniques. He seemed generally very coordinated, the way he moved around the playpen, and especially when he dug the purple toy out from underneath himself, joy and rapture! He made it look easy.

The first time I saw anything like this approach, and this kind of fluid , almost grown-up movement, was looking after twin boys, from the age of seven months, for close to three years. I had only ever changed one nappy at that point, and voiced my great concerns to their mum. She was finishing psychology studies, and said “you’ll be fine!” and we had a really good time in fact. From about the age of ten months, they were allowed to play in the (cleared of small objects) next room for a little while if their mum had typing to do, and tended to egg each other on and generally hothouse each other. For a short period, one or other of them would often have a decent new bruise somewhere or other when I turned up each week , but it was over very quickly as they gained in balance and judgement.

I took them for the first time to the nearby adventure playground. They made a beeline for the big pyramid where you go round and and up and up, intended for ages three or four and up. They were about one and a half. I nearly had a hernia – for the first time I couldn’t spot for them both at once, so we didn’t go back, but I’ll never forget the looks on the other parents’ faces as these two shuffled along the first levels like pros. One of them had reached the height of my shoulder by the time I realised they weren’t going to stop, and i had to get them down.

We always did improvised singing together on the way home, that was our special thing, culminating in a fabulously dischordant chorale in the stairwell which had great accoustics.

Hope you get a laugh out of this. I still do.

Thank you, Karen!

Yes! I notice the same thing in my classes all the time. There’s a point when the child comes bounding in, completely owning the place! I love it!

Thank you for your kind words, Fran!

Ah, such a lovely comment and story, Ro. Thank you!

No, I never dust…it’s too impossible to keep up.