Transcript of “Is ‘Gentle Parenting’ Too Extreme and Impossible?”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Okay, I admit I’m a little more nervous than usual about this podcast because I feel it’s going to be maybe more personal and revealing than what I normally share.

The impetus for this episode came in a recent Facebook exchange that I had with a parent, and the parent concluded “this ideal of gentle parenting is feeling more and more toxic and gaslighty to me.” In response to her comment, I finally had the chance to ask a question that I’ve been wishing to ask for a while now in light of this recent flurry of complaints in the press about gentle parenting. Maybe you’ve noticed some of them. And then I really, really appreciated this Facebook parent’s candid response to my question — my question that was in response to her comment.

I’m going to be sharing these exchanges and some of the thoughts that they’ve brought up for me. I really hope you’ll find this clarifying and encouraging.

The Facebook exchange happened in response to a post of mine from several years ago actually that I reposted called “This May Be Why You’re Yelling.” It describes some of the things that as parents might lead us to yell. Number one is: “you aren’t taking care of yourself.” It talks about self-care, not just the wonderful bubble bath or getting away with friends or a spouse type of self-care, but something more basic and crucial, which is knowing our limits and our personal needs and setting boundaries early, starting even with speaking directly and honestly to an infant.

I give examples like: “if you’re a sensitive person who can’t sleep deeply with a baby or a toddler near you but you’re co-sleeping because you think you should, maybe you’re not taking care of yourself.” Or, “if you want to wean your child or limit their nursing, but you feel guilty about that, then you’re not taking care of yourself. If you need to go to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, but you’re afraid to leave your fussy baby or screeching toddler, you’re not taking care of yourself. In fact, if you feel guilty about any self-care moment, you’re probably not taking care of yourself.”

I conclude: “we all give up much of our lives for our children, but it’s unhealthy for us and even less healthy for our kids to become an egoless parent, neglecting our needs and virtually erasing ourselves from the relationship. We need personal boundaries and our children need us to model them. This is what it means to have an honest, authentic, respectful relationship that will make limit setting in the toddler through teenage years clear and simple. Notice I didn’t say easy because it’s hardly ever easy.”

Oh, and one of the things I share first in that post is I say: “My sense is that we often end up yelling because we’ve actually made the very positive decision to give our children boundaries with respect rather than using punishments and manipulation. We’re working really hard to remain gentle and kind, and yet our children’s testing behaviors continue. Maybe we become increasingly frustrated, even fearful, feeling like we’ve lost all control without any way to rein our children in.”

Anyway, it’s a pretty long post, and I’ll be linking to it in the transcript, or you can look it up. Here’s the comment that I got on Facebook. She said:

This all sounds good on paper but doesn’t really apply in the real world. In the real world, taking a break to the sound of a screaming toddler is anything but a break and will leave you more frazzled. In the real world, tantrums are horrible to be around on a visceral level no matter how many books you read about childhood development. In the real world, many parents have little to no support and no amount of telling ourselves we are capable leaders can curb the sheer exhaustion we are feeling. This ideal of gentle parenting is feeling more and more toxic and gaslighty to me.

Before I share the question that I asked her, I want to talk a little about the press articles that have come out recently. They’re in pretty major publications. Assuming that they’re all written sincerely and not as a pile-on to a trend, I took them quite seriously, like I take everything. They all mention me as part of the problem, and they’re basically bashing the idea of gentle or respectful parenting, that it’s impossible. One of them even implies that there’s this harsh dark side to it all. A couple of the authors who are also parents, it sounds like they’re trying it, but they don’t feel like it’s working for them and they’re saying, “This is too extreme.”

Now, when I read these pieces, the first feeling that I had besides feeling a little attacked, the first feeling I had was I relate to what these people are saying. I totally relate to them. I remember feeling some of the feelings that they’re describing: that I just couldn’t possibly do this, that it was unrealistic, that somehow there was this expectation on me that I couldn’t live up to and it just made me frustrated and want to throw in the towel. I wanted to throw it away. I’m going to talk about the couple of those instances where I felt that way, but I felt like what I’m relating to, and I could be wrong, is this pressure that we put on ourselves as parents.

Some of us are more inclined towards self-judgment, and perfectionism, and it can get in our way when we’re learning challenging things. Learning a different way of parenting than the way that we were raised, breaking those generational cycles even in small ways is very, very challenging. It’s so courageous to even be trying, in my view. And it sounds like this commenter on Facebook was coming from that place too. This is just impossible. You’re expecting unrealistic things.

In these articles in the press, if I was to take a very unnuanced extreme take on those, I could feel this implies that they were maybe suggesting that it’s better to physically punish your children, and lash out at them when you’re frustrated. I don’t think that’s what they were saying, but I wasn’t sure what kind of alternative they were suggesting.

And so, that’s why I was happy for the opportunity to ask this parent on Facebook this question, “What would be helpful?”

Because believe it or not, and I didn’t say this on Facebook, believe it or not, all I’m trying to do is help. I’m sharing an approach to parenting that inspired me and helped me beyond measure. That’s what I’ve been doing since 2009, sharing what I’ve learned from all the classes I’ve taught with parents and children. When I get a little lost in what am I doing? Why am I doing this? What’s my purpose here? I often ask myself that question to focus me and give me the perspective that I need to know what to do next: How can I help? What can I share that might be helpful?

There’s no implication in what I’m sharing that if you’re not doing it this way, there’s something wrong with you or that I expect you to do it this particular way. It’s a very specific way that I’m sharing. I started calling it “respectful parenting” because I didn’t think people would know or understand or want to understand what RIE parenting meant. And also because I was using a lot of my own experience to interpret Magda Gerber’s RIE approach, even more for toddlers than she did and for older children, and all these details that I learned through working with parents.

So, I thought: well, if I say respectful parenting, which is about treating even a newborn with respect, maybe if I use this term, then it will make more sense to people. That’s why I started using that term. I’ve never actually used the term “gentle parenting” to describe what I do, but I noticed that I seem to be part of a catchall of gentle parenting. That’s how people are seeing this, that I’m one of the many people sharing about gentle parenting. I’m assuming that just means this non-punitive, not harsh, not lashing out type of parenting.

Anyway, I asked this parent, “What would be helpful?” And I said, “I’m also interested in the concept of,” quote, ‘gentle parenting,’ which is not a term I use. What does this mean to you?”

I thought she gave brilliant responses that were very enlightening to me.

First, she said:

Gentle parenting to me is the ethos of teaching and disciplining in an empathic way that is never punitive or emotionally reactive on the parent’s part. It sounds so lovely. It’s a beautiful idea to aim for. It’s also crushing to never be able to live up to despite having all the tools and knowledge because we are human and we are wired to be uncomfortable around screaming. We all want to do better, and we even know exactly what to do thanks to the many sources of information out there for parents and yet so many of us are stuck. I’m thinking about your question, what would be helpful? Maybe it’s just permission to be gentle-ish, capable-ish.

Wow. She really says it all there, and it helps me understand that I’m coming across as this voice of authority that’s telling you you should do it this way, and if you’re not, there’s something wrong with you.

Well, I’m a very imperfect messenger, no doubt, and I also have the problem of… Well, it’s not a problem. It’s a positive thing, but I forget that I’m not still this underground voice sharing for the couple hundred people that would follow me in the beginning where I could really speak my mind and be a little bold and share unique ideas without it being taken as that I’m any kind of voice of authority.

Well, to my surprise, a lot of these ideas that I’ve shared that were very weird to people, in the beginning, are now almost mainstream, almost conventional. Not because I did it all, but I think I had a part in it and it’s just happened that way. That is amazing to me, that ideas like you talk to a baby like a person, that you allow children to have all their feelings, that you don’t try to fix or squelch them, that a child can have ideas about what they should be doing in regard to play or exploring or spending their time even as an infant… Not all of these ideas, but a lot of them are now accepted and that’s fantastic. With it comes a responsibility that I don’t always take, which is, oh, so I actually have the power for someone to feel like they’re not living up to something that’s just supposed to be this way.

I also want to say though that everything this parent said in her comment and a lot of the things in these articles as well, I personally have felt in my early days in learning this approach.

This is one of the benefits of getting older. Between just aging and the work that we do on ourselves or even work that naturally evolves on ourselves, we become much more self-forgiving. I do, and these really strong judgmental voices that were always in my head when I was younger have very much weakened. They still have their say, but it’s not overwhelming, and other voices will usually win out.

I started taking RIE classes with my daughter when she was an infant. When I was first learning this, everything I was being taught was different than what I’d been doing pretty much. I took all of that as oh, I’m wrong. I’m wrong. I’m wrong.

Here I was putting everything into trying to be a new mom, and now this must mean I’m failing, failing, failing because I’m learning all these things that I could have done that I wasn’t doing. There was that to get over. At the same time though, I was so compelled and inspired to stick with it, and luckily that won out.

And then later on when my daughter became a toddler, I remember… Okay, this is 28 years ago, so we know that this had a big effect on me because I can totally remember the moment. I said to my teacher who wasn’t Magda, but another teacher who will go nameless, I said, “What do you do when you just find yourself yelling?” And my teacher said, “You’re yelling?”

And the way she said it, I believe she was probably just surprised. She didn’t have children at that time, so maybe it didn’t make sense to her, but the way it felt was so mortifying. I felt so ashamed. I broke into a million pieces, and I was never going to bring that up again. But what it did was help me to get a perspective: yes, I have a very precocious, strong, powerful toddler. She wasn’t even two yet, but still, why would I yell at this tiny person? What is threatening to me? What is overwhelming to me? How am I not taking care of myself with my boundaries with her that I’m getting to this point?

Once I got over the shame and brokenness I felt, or at least start to get over that, I was able to look at where I needed to grow because I didn’t want to be a person yelling at a not-even-two-year-old. I knew it wasn’t the parent that I wanted to be. It didn’t feel good to me.

So, that happened. But all the voices came to me in that brokenness, in that shame: You can’t do this. There’s something deeply wrong with you. This is impossible. I wanted to throw in the towel, and I feel like throwing in the towel still a lot when some kind of situation feels too challenging. I don’t like feeling uncomfortable or inept less than other people or that I’m not living up to some kind of expectation.

But the expectations weren’t coming from my teacher. They weren’t coming from Magda Gerber. They weren’t coming from anyone but me.

I’m not saying that’s what’s going on with all these people that are complaining about gentle parenting, but that’s my experience. I’m so grateful that there was a stronger voice in me that said: Don’t let those voices win. This matters too much to you. Don’t give up on yourself. Maybe you can do this.

Now in terms of everybody else though, maybe what I’m teaching isn’t what inspires you or feels supportive to you. This is just one style of parenting. It’s not the only one that works. It’s not maybe even the best one for you. These are only suggestions, not rules or meant to be taken rigidly. We have to look out for ourselves in this tough journey, find sources that feed us, nurture us, that make our lives easier and more joyful as parents. We deserve that.

I understand feeling stuck and I understand feeling crushed that I’m supposed to live up to something. At least when I was learning this stuff, it was very unique. It wasn’t so popular. So, it was clear to me that I was wanting to live up to my own goals.

Now I realize that might be less clear and that’s harder, and it’s something that I want to take responsibility for as much as I can.

Yes, tantrums are horrible to be around. It’s really hard to let another person have their feelings. That’s why I’ve written and podcasted about that topic so many times and noted that it will always be challenging. It will never be reflexive for most of us. It just won’t.

But only we can give ourselves permission to be in a process and not perfect at every aspect. In fact, not even close to that.

Here’s the response that I shared with this parent after her comment, which I really, really appreciated. I said:

I hear you. I really do. As I was reading your comment, I was thinking exactly what you said at the end. I was thinking, where is she getting the idea that respectful parenting means never punitive or emotionally reactive? Where is this never coming from? People like me also talk a lot about repair and self-compassion and imperfection. I share what I know helps build relationships and lessen challenging behavior, and I try to share a perspective that can help us feel less reactive. But there’s no implication coming from me that if we don’t live up to this every moment or go through periods where we just can’t at all or don’t want to, we’re failures or doing something wrong. Gentle-ish, capable-ish is exactly where most of us are most of the time. The good news is that gentle-ish, capable-ish is enough to be a great human parent. I understand perfectionism and bagging on ourselves. I can go there myself, but those feelings don’t come from parenting advisors or other messengers out there. Mine come from me.

I want to talk a little about the ideals that she’s talking about living up to. I appreciated Magda Gerber‘s approach and its idealism because I started to see those ideals as signposts. They weren’t a destination even. They were just helping me go in a direction, baby step by baby step. If I didn’t have those signposts, I couldn’t be assured of the direction that I was taking.

But it wasn’t about achieving those signposts or not. It was about the journey, the process.

Yes, there are going to be frustrations and feelings of giving up along the way. Absolutely. But if we keep following these sign posts, maybe there’ll be less of that. There was for me.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with being frustrated. It’s that it doesn’t feel good and it’s not the way most of us want to be with our children. It doesn’t feel good to us, but there’s no judgment on the feelings that we have in a process. They’re all just right, because they’re all our feelings, just like children’s feelings are just right. That’s what they feel.

This is definitely not about being robotic or stifled or I’m just fine all the time. No. Our children want a relationship with us. With all of our sides.

Speaking about frustration, maybe it could be helpful to let out frustration at children sometimes. My mother, I don’t remember her really yelling at us, but she would get very judgmental and angry about certain things, and there were two things. One was if we tried to tickle her… Whew! Or if we’d walk in on her in the bathroom, she made it very clear with emotion that those were boundaries that she was not going to allow us to cross, and we didn’t because that was scary.

So this isn’t to say that letting out our emotions on children is not productive. It can be in the short term, I think, but for me, it was helpful to know that we don’t need to do that. We can set the boundary without creating fear.

If gentle parenting is what this parent beautifully describes, which I would like to think, I love that, then it will only work if we have very strong boundaries. Very strong boundaries. I think maybe that’s missing in some of the conversations about gentle parenting, I don’t know, but maybe that is a problem out there that people should rightfully complain about because it’s just not going to work and it’s not going to help those children. Children need boundaries.

I also want to share one more story from my learning days. I’m still learning for sure. But in the early days when I was training with Magda, there was a conference coming up and this other parent and I were going to present a workshop at the conference from a parenting perspective. Most of these RIE conferences, they’re mostly attended by early childhood professionals rather than parents. But we wanted to do one for the few parents that might be there.

When we were talking about this with Magda, I said, “Well, what should we call it?” And she said, “Parenting Made Easier.” Immediately that came right off the top of her head. I’ve got to admit I was taken aback because that wasn’t the first thing that would come to mind for me about this approach that I was learning from her. To me, it was very thoughtful and careful, deep and challenging in many, many ways. But when I thought about it, I could see what she was saying.

And then a few years later when I had a three-year-old and then two other children after that, oh yeah, it totally made everything easier. When I would compare myself to the struggles other parents were having, all this care and thoughtfulness and mental challenge and emotional challenge that I’d faced learning this really paid off. This doesn’t mean it’ll pay off for everyone, or that this is your way, but it did for me.

When I hear people saying, “Oh, this is this impossible thing, and we can’t do it. It’s somehow judgemental of people that aren’t doing it,” I think of that. I think of how much easier this makes everything and therefore more enjoyable. Because if we’re struggling, we’re not enjoying being a parent. But it’s like moving that rock to the top of the mountain so that it can roll down the other side. It does get so much easier. It does.

Whether you follow some of the advice I give, follow advice other people are giving, whether you decide you want to do this non-punitive parenting thing or you want to find your own way that’s different, take a little from this, a little from that, this is your journey. My feelings about parents are all about trust. Just like my feelings about children. Trusting their process, trusting that you will find your way.

Am I the right person to help you? Maybe or maybe not. I trust you to know what works for you.

I think I would love to change the name of this podcast to Respectful-ish Parenting, Unruffled-ish. I’m going to consider that because that’s what I have learned to expect of myself and the best that we can hope for. It’s always an ish. It’s always a journey. Some days we feel it, some days we don’t.

So, I really, really hope that you’ll be good to yourselves and kind to yourselves and trust yourselves and definitely not give up on being the parent that you want to be because we really can do this.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, JanetLansbury.com. There are many of them and they’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in.

And both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play or barnesandnoble.com, and on audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and for all your kind support. We can do this.

The post Is ‘Gentle Parenting’ Too Extreme and Impossible? appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be talking about authenticity in the way that we relate to children. I have to say I thought twice about this topic because I know that people listening here love getting practical advice, things they can put into action right away. This is more general advice, but it does something really important, which is to improve the quality of our relationship. And that ends up having practical benefits. Because a high-quality parent-child relationship where there’s mutual trust and respect is the key to preventing and ameliorating problematic behavior and creating more cooperation because children feel that they’re on the same team as us. They feel respected and perceived as the whole and capable people that they are.

Okay, so first I want to talk about what I mean by authenticity with children. But I guess it helps to first talk about what I don’t mean…

Authenticity might be thought of as we should yell at our children when we’re angry or get really annoyed with them and tell them how annoyed we are with them. That’s not what I mean. I’ve talked in other podcasts about sharing our emotions with children, and how to do that in a way that isn’t frightening for them because we’re very, very powerful to our children. So when we do blow up, and it does happen to the best of us, it’s scary for our children. There’s no way around that. They don’t appreciate that kind of authenticity and it’s not helpful. Just as we wouldn’t, under the heading of authenticity, tell our friend that she got the most disastrous haircut ever or that we really don’t like somebody or other things that are not considering the other person.

What I want to talk about today is not being fake. So not putting on a show for children, not prioritizing image consciousness over honesty, or being over-enthusiastic, pretending we’re less capable than we are, talking down to children, playing down to children.

I’m not saying I’m perfectly authentic by any stretch. One of the beauties of raising children is that they inspire us to work on ourselves to be better parents for them, and this work takes hold and makes us better as people. That’s been true for me. I’m still not always authentic. For example, I love Photoshop and I love the filter that makes me smooth and not have wrinkles, and I realize that that’s not totally authentic. But it’s not that important to me and my work that the way I look is always totally raw and real. It is important to me with children.

Magda Gerber, my mentor, encouraged me, and it made so much sense to me, to be a real person to my children so they can know me, not some perky parent side of me. Magda inspired me to this bravery: being honest and facing the music with children, facing their feelings, whatever they are, and not trying to change them or manipulate them in any way. And although I could never do phony very well, and I’m not a good liar, I wasn’t brave about being honest and facing conflicts head-on, but I’ve gotten better at that because I’ve been inspired by wanting to be an authentic leader for my children. And that’s another example of something I’ve gained by trying to do it for my children and I end up gaining it for myself: being a confident leader. I had to find this in myself for the sake of my first daughter and it’s helped me to gain confidence as a person.

The thing about children is that they can read authenticity. They’re not consciously thinking about that, but they sense when what we’re saying and doing doesn’t match the feelings that are behind it that they’re feeling from us. And it’s confusing for them.

Newer research shows that babies are born highly aware. Will they call us out on being phony with them? No, because they don’t know anything different. They know what we’re showing them. They know the way that we’re behaving with them and they accept that as normal. But it feels uncomfortable to them when there’s a mismatch in what we’re putting out versus what’s inside of us.

So again, this doesn’t mean putting it all out there no matter what, but it does mean not acting as if we’re very happy or excited when we’re not. Magda gave this wonderful simple example. This is in her “Dear Magda” column that’s available on magdagerber.org. She says:

“Allow your child to learn about you. Be genuine and honest in your interactions. You do not need to put on a sweet smile when you’re awakened in the middle of the night. You are sleepy, so act sleepy. Accept the feelings of your baby, positive as well as negative. Do not try to stop the crying with a pacifier. Do not tickle a sad baby. You may save your grown-up child many dollars spent on therapies where they have to relearn how to cry and how to show feelings.”

So this is one of the big benefits of our work towards being more authentic with our children. We are the prime models for them for what a human being is, and what relationships are. And so our authenticity teaches them to be authentic, to have their messy feelings and processes, and to know that life isn’t just this smooth path where everything’s perfect and easy without conflict. Children need to experience all of their feelings and every age-appropriate aspect of life to build resilience.

So what is it that makes us sometimes less authentic or inauthentic with children? It’s because of the way we perceive them. If we can’t relate to them as a person, if we’re uncomfortable or we don’t perceive them as a person as is often the case with babies and young children, then it’s like we’re compensating for that by overdoing it.

It’s interesting because the elderly are also often on the receiving end of these oversolicitous, insincere types of interactions. And with children, there’s often subtle manipulation involved. Like, I want to over-congratulate you — good job! good job! — when you’re doing something that I want you to do like picking up your toy. So I make a big fuss out of this because I want to make sure you keep doing this or I want to encourage you to keep doing this.

Or maybe I’m pretending that I can’t do this task like stack blocks because I want my child to feel less frustrated and more confident and able. So if they feel like I can’t do it either, then somehow that’s going to make them feel better.

And underneath that on our end is I’m uncomfortable and impatient with your process around skill building. I don’t like the messy frustration that you feel. That’s uncomfortable for me and I don’t want you to have to go through that. It’s well-intentioned, right? We’re well-intentioned. So I’m going to try to help you skip some of these steps and just feel better because I can’t do it either, you see. And here’s what I do when I’m frustrated. I just keep trying.

But think about that. How does that feel when we’re with someone who’s really good at a game, let’s say, and they play poorly just to let us win to help us feel better? Does that make us feel more encouraged, more capable? No, it makes us feel less capable and secure in ourselves rather than more because we know what’s going on and children definitely do. They sense it.

With these tasks, let’s say the skill building of playing with toys and getting things to work the way they want them to, frustration tolerance is an important part of this learning and they need to learn this experientially, going to the depths of their frustration rather than feeling like somebody needs to rescue me out of this or in some way, make it better for me. That makes us feel weaker, less capable. And then when we use tricks with children to distract them when there’s a conflict or a limit that we have to set.

One example Magda gave was a swimming class where the parent has a child who’s upset because they’re being dunked into the water and the child looks upset and the parent is smiling and saying, “Isn’t this fun? Isn’t this great? You can do this.” So the child feels very alone, right? And like something’s a little wrong with them for not feeling like these important people are telling them they should feel.

So for children, our inauthentic interactions can be confusing, unsettling, patronizing, demeaning, and belittling. Our children are just in the process of learning how to navigate feelings and relationships.

You’ve heard me talk here about my qualms about using play. Well, anyway, I don’t like the idea of using play because play to me is very precious, but using play to help children cooperate better… It is manipulative if we are trying to think of a game to get our child from point A to point B.

However, we can do this authentically if, let’s say, we feel like lightening ourselves up and we’re feeling silly, and my child and I both know I’m just being silly and we both know that I want them to brush their teeth. And in another moment, I would rely on this authentic relationship that I’ve been working on, this quality relationship to say, “Come on my dear. You’ve really got to brush your teeth. I know you don’t want to. Ah, it’s a big drag, but we’ve got to do it. Please come with me. Come on. Let’s go.” Putting my arm around my child, being honest about “I know it’s hard for you. You don’t want to do it.” And that’s where our relationship is gold because children want to internalize our values and follow our directions when they feel that we’re not manipulating, that we’re genuinely on their team and working with them, and we understand them and we’re willing to accept all their negative feelings about things. We’re relating to them as people.

So if we’re going to be playful, be playful from a place of authenticity, not manipulation. Then play is fun for us too and more fun for our children when they know they’re joining us in something that we’re genuinely into.

Another benefit for our children is when we raise them with this genuineness, I keep wanting to say messy genuineness, is that they become very aware of inauthenticity. It stands out to them. In today’s culture, with all the technology and social media, inauthenticity is rampant. Even these social media sites, they encourage you to start other accounts. You could have several accounts. You could pretend to be other people. And then all the image consciousness on Instagram and Facebook. We’re changing our bodies and our faces. And yes, as I said, I do a little smoothing, but we’re misrepresenting ourselves. And it’s important for children to be able to be critical thinkers about what they encounter because it’s everywhere. And this is a gift that we can give them through our commitment to authenticity with them.

If someone’s talking to them in this overenthusiastic, phony way, they’re not going to trust that. And that’s good. That’s healthy. They’re not going to be had. They’re not going to buy into those things. They’ll keep their perspective and their distance. They have a much better chance of that if we show them in a million different ways what authenticity looks and feels like.

And of course, children are born authentic. They could be inauthentic if they tried and that’s why they’re so fun to be around. They’ll tell you, “Mom, your breath smells bad.” Or, “That looks terrible.” And from children, I appreciate that. Or like the child that came over here who told us that our house was very, very small. It’s disarming. And this authenticity that children have is gold to encourage, to protect. We have a lot of power in that area if we can commit to being authentic ourselves as much as possible.

And what else is in this for us? A lot, because inauthenticity is less effective overall than our genuine, confident leadership. And often it’s even less effective in the moment.

So a common question parents ask me is: “What do I do when I acknowledge my child’s feelings” (which is something that I always recommend), “I acknowledge my child’s feelings and they tell me to stop talking and they don’t like it and they get really annoyed?”

That usually happens when… well, there are actually two reasons. One of them is just that let’s say our child is angry about something and we’re saying: “That really seems like it made you really angry.” And then our child is actually showing us, yes, they are really angry by saying, “No, you’re wrong. Go away, dah dah dah. I don’t like this.” So they’re still sharing that feeling and that’s good, right?

But the other probably more common thing is that we’re saying the words and we’re not really being authentic. We’re not really able to relate to our child in that moment in the way that we’re saying them. So we’re saying “it made you mad that that happened, I understand.” Or some other version of that that comes out of our discomfort. We’re actually not okay with our child feeling like that. We’re actually annoyed with our child feeling like that, or we’re worried that our child feels like that. And that’s going to come through.

When we’re just saying words and we’re not really saying them with that permission: you get to feel this feeling you’re having, and I hear you, I really do, there’s a big difference.

So we want to say those acknowledgments authentically or they’re only going to make our child more upset. Or feel more disconnected from us when they’re upset. That’s, I guess, the bigger danger that we don’t want. We want our children to feel like they can share these feelings with us because if not us, who? And they need to share them. But if we’re too uncomfortable or we give them these kind of lip service responses that we’re just saying because we really want them to stop and we want to just do our part so they’ll stop feeling like that, then it’s discomforting for our child.

So we have to mean what we say. And if we don’t feel like we can mean what we say, it’s actually better not to say it. Better just to nod your head, focus on your breathing and focus on letting the feelings be, calming ourselves.

Then when we get more comfortable with our children’s emotions, (which we’re never going to get completely comfortable with, but we’ll get more comfortable the more we practice allowing emotions to spill out, the waves to pass us), then we will be able to say, “Yes, I hear you. This did not go the way you wanted, or you don’t like when I say those things,” whatever it is. We’ll feel safer to do that authentically, which is the only way it works.

Another reason on our end to practice authenticity: performing is tiring. Maybe if a person is constantly performing and that’s just who they are, like they just don’t ever let the mask down, then maybe they become accustomed to that. But most of us aren’t like that, and it’s exhausting when we feel like we’ve got to think of a game to get our child to do this thing or help them with this feeling by acting a certain way or change the way they feel by saying just the right words.

When we’re going at these things inauthentically, then it’s not going to work, and we’re going to wear ourselves out from all the performances.

If we can be ourselves and be open and messy: “ah, yeah, I didn’t like it when you did that, but I love you. And I’m sorry it went this way,” whatever it is — allowing your child to go through all the feelings and not trying to distract them or change them — that letting go is… yes, it’s a hard perspective shift. It’s hard for us to kind of flip that switch, but once we start to do it, it’s so much easier than trying to control things that we don’t control. And as parents, we need to preserve our energy. It’s a very taxing job, especially in the toddler years. It’s physically tiring and emotionally tiring.

Another benefit to authenticity: we’ll feel clearer, less convoluted. We won’t be going at every situation with this I’ve got to have a strategy for this and figure this out. And what am I supposed to do here? We’re going to let life happen more. We’re going to be inside ourselves, staying in our lane with our child, letting them do all the things that they’re capable of doing, like feeling all their feelings and developing their skills, with all the frustration and moments of wanting to give up that go with that. We’re not going to try to control those things by coming in with inauthenticity. We get to be ourselves. It’s so much clearer than trying to figure out: What do I do in this situation? What do I have to put on for that? And how do I make this happen? That’s confusing work that is better off not in our job description.

And the truth is that these feelings that we’re hoping to avoid, are going to come to the surface eventually. They have to. Feelings don’t disappear because we’ve ignored them or distracted children out of them. They’re only pent up. They can even fester. They can emerge later in less recognizable ways that are going to throw us off balance more easily, or even possibly create anxiety, and depression in our children. We don’t want that. So we might feel like we’ve saved something in the moment or made something better at that time, but all the realities and emotions and conflicts in life have to be passed through for children to develop in a healthy direction. So facing the music honestly, letting feelings be as much as we can really matter.

I feel blessed that I had Magda as my teacher. She was an incredible model of authenticity. She didn’t have an ingenuine bone in her body. It was a little bit intimidating and amazing to be in her presence. And her teachings freed me to embrace my authentic, messy inner life and my messy parenting, and my messy relationships. And this is what I would love to pass along in my imperfect way to all of you so that you too can be inspired to be authentically imperfect or imperfectly authentic, something like that.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to you. Thank you for listening.

Please check out the other podcasts and posts on my website. They’re all categorized by topic and you should be able to find whatever you’re looking for. There are many of them. Also, if you’re not aware of my books, please check them out. They’re best sellers on Amazon. No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting  are also available on audio@audible.com and you can get one for free by using a link in the liner notes of this podcast. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon and an ebook at Amazon, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com. And if you find this podcast helpful, you can help it to continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes and by supporting my sponsors.

Thank you again. We can do this.

The post The Power of Authenticity with Our Children – Why It Matters appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Be Careful What You Teach (It Might Interfere with What They Are Learning)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m responding to a question about doing learning activities with our children, like teaching them the ABCs. Here’s the interesting email I received:

“Hi Janet, I’m wondering, is there a respectful approach to teaching children, say, their ABCs or doing any learning activities? I work as a nanny, and the family I’m currently with is very interested in their son’s learning and development. Sometimes he’s happy to go along with loosely structured learning activities, and some days he’s disinterested. I’m wondering, is it best to end an activity if he’s not showing interest-slash-refusing to participate, or come back to it later, or what? I wouldn’t want to teach him to give up on things, or that he just needs simply to offer a little resistance and then he gets what he wants. I really like the respectful approach and use this approach as much as possible. Any words of wisdom for those of us who use this approach as a nanny would be very much appreciated. Thank you for any advice.”

Okay, so what I’m going to suggest would apply to a nanny in this situation or to other kinds of caregivers of children, and to parents. What I’m going to suggest is an alternative. While there may be a respectful way to do these learning activities with children (I’m sure there is), the question I want to pose in return is: are learning activities the best way to help children learn? You can probably guess that I believe they are not, and I’m going to talk about why in this podcast. But mostly, I want to offer an alternative to teaching children their ABCs and directing them in learning activities.

What this nanny says is that the family is very interested in their son’s learning and development. Most of us as parents, or nannies, or early childhood teachers are very interested in learning and development. And then she says that sometimes this boy is happy to go along with loosely structured learning activities, and some days he’s disinterested.

So what this nanny is asking about is what to do when she can’t garner interest from the child she’s working with. And she doesn’t say how old this child is, but some days he’s disinterested, and sometimes he’s even refusing to participate. She’s concerned that she’s going to teach him to give up on things, or that he just needs to simply offer resistance and then he gets what he wants.

The problem here is that the activities she’s doing are actually not aligned with, and complimentary to, early child development. And that’s why she’s getting the sometimes frustrating results that she’s getting.

Children are born with these amazing learning abilities and they’re actually able to stay with their interests for a very long time. But when we try to impose our interest in their learning, and what we believe they should be learning, it’s often a mismatch. It’s similar to trying to put up curtains on windows of a house that hasn’t been built yet. They’re still working on the foundation.

Skills and knowledge that involve rote memorization are actually the easiest thing for children to learn when they’re ready. But in these early years, they’re developing a very important foundation that will serve them throughout life. It’s a foundation of higher-order learning skills that go way beyond memorization. They’re learning how to learn, and they’re learning about themselves as learners. The best message they can receive is that they are trusted, that we understand (and research shows this) that they are the learning experts.

It is an innate ability that they have, and it is all done through play. And that isn’t to say that this means we now have to find fun, playful activities that are teaching our child these little specific details, these symbols for ideas like amount, weight or letters. The foundation of learning is about using all of our senses to explore amount, weight, gravity, comparisons. To analyze, have theories, and so much more.

Children need to focus on what those symbols represent. And they will naturally do this through play, through play that might not even look like anything to us. It might look like they’re just messing around or sitting there staring into space. But this is actually the important stuff.

So what I would propose to this nanny is to help these parents appreciate the incredible learning that their child is engaging in every moment. This learning that goes way beyond adult-directed activities. Learning that goes deep because it is meaningful to that child. Just like for all of us, when we take a course that we’re very interested in, we learn quickly and we learn deeply. We can sustain attention in that kind of learning. We don’t refuse it or stop. We can be insatiable around it. Those are the experiences that young children need to have in this crucial window of time, the early years, building the foundation for that house of learning.

So specifically, I would encourage this nanny to cultivate this child’s self-directed learning, which is the same as cultivating his self-directed play. Because to devise successful learning activities, we have to understand how children actually learn. So our job can be setting up a safe play area where they are free to be explorers, and letting our child be the master of this one area of life. And then letting go of the results.

Young children have to conform to a lot of things that we decide, but learning through play can be a territory that they own completely. And they deserve to own it, because they are the experts at this. They need to be active in their learning, not passively receiving or following along. They need to be the ones that are creating, designing, initiating, sustaining. They can be trusted with this job.

Then when play is cultivated, we can learn how to be in observer mode, in sensitive observation mode, and we will learn everything we need to know about that child. And the way to share that with someone else is to be the observer, and to write down what that child is doing, what we see, and help the parent to appreciate the amazing things children do. Much more amazing than being able to recite an alphabet or a succession of numbers.

So write down what you see. “I noticed he was interested in the rug. There was a flower that he was following with his finger, and then he went over to the other side of the rug where there was a similar flower, and he seemed to connect those two ideas.”

Or, “He had that ball that’s actually been in his play area since he was tiny and he never noticed it before, and today he was rolling it, and watching it, and bouncing it off the floor and other objects. He seemed to be doing an intensive study of that ball. I noticed he used it in actually 20 different ways.” And then listing those.

This is how children develop a long attention span. This is how we give children the edge when they do enter a structured learning environment at age five or six. They get to go into that with confidence in their active learning, and with a lot of experience with how to master concepts and ideas. And a sense from the adults around them that they are accepted and appreciated for who they are. Those are things that we can give children that last a lifetime.

So after offering that alternative, I want to talk a little about the reasons that self-directed learning is better than adult-child teaching.

Number one: It (1) distracts children from, and can even undermine, these amazing, innate learning skills. Alison Gopnik expressed it this way, she notes in her studies that “babies as young as eight months old demonstrated astonishing capacities for statistical reasoning, experimental discovery, and probabilistic logic that allowed them to rapidly learn all about the particular objects and people surrounding them.”

And then she warns, “Sadly, some parents are likely to take the wrong lessons from these experiments, and conclude that they need programs and products that will make their babies even smarter. Many think that babies, like adults should learn in a focused, planned way. So parents put their young children in academic enrichment classes, or use flashcards.”

“Instead,” she says, “Infants and toddlers need plenty of open-ended play time to be able to build the brain synapsis necessary for higher learning abilities.”

So those products and learning activities that we try to impose on children take precious time away from them building the brain synapses that they need as lifelong learners.

Number two: (2) by teaching we can impede instead of foster, skills like sustained focus and attention span. Again, I’m amazed in the observations I’ve done in my classes and of my own children, the long attention span that children display when they’re following their own interests. But when they have to follow ours, it’s seldom anywhere near as long that they can sustain that attention.

One of my popular posts is called “Baby, Interrupted” and I go over other specific things that we might do as parents that actually foster a shorter attention span in our child. We’re interrupting their interests and trying to direct them to our own.

And we want learning to go in deep. These little shallow things, these memorizing things, again, are just the tip of the iceberg. By focusing on those activities, we might be threatening the gold the children already have coming into this world. Their interest in mastering everything about it. We learn deepest when we are able to discover it ourselves.

Piaget has some famous quotes about that idea. He says, “Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand, that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly for the rest of his life.”

I think a lot of us can relate to that, I know I can. When I have a problem I can’t figure out on my computer, I can ask one of my children or someone else to come and fix it for me, or just show me what to do. Or I can do what I don’t always do, believe me, which is figure it out myself. But guess what helps me in the long run? Figuring it out myself. Because the computer becomes a little less intimidating to me, and now I can do it myself. I don’t need someone to show me. And I will remember that solution forever because I discovered it.

Similar to the way that I use this app, Waze, to get everywhere now. I’m very dependent on it. But what happens is, I don’t really know how to get places. And when I’m traveling, especially, and I don’t know the area, it helps me so much to actually have a jog around or, if I have time, to try getting around with just some basic directions, or finding it myself on a map. Then I learn that area. When I’m using Waze, I never really learn how to get somewhere. All it does is make me more dependent on Waze.

So it makes a difference, and it especially makes a difference in these early years. Because again, this is the crucial foundation that children will draw on in everything they’re learning for the rest of their lives.

The third reason that self-directed learning is better than adult-directed activities is that, without meaning to, (3) we can teach children that they need to step it up and perform for us for us to be interested in and appreciative of them. It can become a part of our relationship, that children feel they aren’t really enough, things they’re interested in aren’t that important, and that they need to be able to do things that they don’t feel able to do yet, in some cases. And then they get the smiles, then they get the good jobs and the kudos, and that appreciation that they long for.

But again, if we see differently, if we see the way Magda Gerber saw, and I see after cultivating play with my own children, and then seeing how beautifully this foundation has served them as students and adults… You can’t buy this kind of learning in an activity book. And it has the other benefit of giving our children that confidence in themselves as capable people who are interesting as they are, for their interests and their agendas, not only interesting if they can conform to ours.

The fourth point I want to make, (4) children behave better when they feel accepted and appreciated as they are, when we have that basic trust in them. Magda’s first principle, basic trust in the child, as an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner. Feeling trusted and appreciated for who we are eliminates a lot of the stress that we can feel, and therefore helps us to be at our best more of the time as young children. It’s that relationship of safety and trust.

The last point I want to make is that letting go of those learning activities, those things that we want to teach, letting go of that fear that somehow if my child doesn’t know these, what are again very small details in the scheme of things that children will easily learn when they’re ready… But that fear that we might have if our child doesn’t learn this, I’m not doing a good job, they’re not going to be able to succeed in school… Those are messages that I know from parents are getting passed around a lot these days, and it concerns me… that toddlers need to be in classes and learning activities need to be created for them.

If I had a magic wand, I would use it to (5) eliminate all that stress that parents have around this, so that they could trust, so that they could enjoy their experience a lot more. As Magda Gerber said, “Do less, enjoy more,” and, “Be careful what you teach. It may interfere with what they’re learning.” She also said that.

So letting go of that as part of our job, that we have to teach children all these things and make sure they’re up to task… There are several studies showing that knowing letters and numbers and how to read at a very young age might give a child an edge in the first year or two of school, but then it all evens out. But if we give our child this edge of being able to reason, and experiment, and understand probabilities and be critical thinkers and engage for long periods, retain what they’ve learned because it’s going in deeply… That’s an edge that, unfortunately, with other children it doesn’t even out. That is a lifelong edge that we can give children.

And then, the other organic way that we teach is through caregiving tasks where we communicate and we give language to things. Where we teach children all about their bodies, and what food is, and all of these different words that we’ll use will be meaningful to children. So following their interests, and giving language to those, taking advantage of caregiving opportunities, dressing, bathing, mealtimes, diapering, as times where we are more directive.

Some people I know that I work with, they really want to teach, and that’s a time when they can. And it can still be organic and important to the child, because it’s about what’s really happening to their bodies, and our relationship with them.

There’ll be specific numbers and words, of course, that we’ll be teaching in these experiences. There are hundreds of opportunities in a day when we’re communicating respectfully with a child, where we can say, “Here’s three snaps on your shirt. Let’s snap those. Okay, we’ll do this one, one. Do you want to help with that one? Two, three, we did it.”

Or, “You want a second serving of that vegetable?” (Yeah, we wish it was the vegetable!) And then when they’re done with that, “Do you want a third?” And all of this can be authentic and respectful. Never pushy. Children feel the difference.

So do less, enjoy more, trust more. You’ll be amazed. We need to give ourselves a break from all this performance pressure we might feel.

I hope some of that helps. This is a topic that I’m passionate about. It’s one of the most valuable things I learned from Magda Gerber and have appreciated in every moment that I’ve been able to spend with children. So I hope it makes sense.

At last! I’ve created the No Bad Kids Master Course to give you all the tools and perspective you need to not only understand  and respond effectively to your children’s behavior but also build positive, respectful, relationships with them for life! Check out all the details at nobadkidscourse.com.

And by the way, if my podcasts are helpful to you, you can help the podcast continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes. So grateful to all of you for listening! And please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, JanetLansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in.

And both of my books are available on audio, please check them out. Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting and No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame. You can even get them for free from Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast, or you can go to the books section of my website and find them there. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon, and in ebook at Amazon, Barnes And Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks again for listening. We can do this.

The post Be Careful What You Teach (It Might Interfere with What They Are Learning) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

I happened upon Magda Gerber’s teachings when my first baby was 3 months old, and it led to a succession of epiphanies. Grateful and eager to embrace this illuminating new perspective, I wasted no time implementing it as best I could.

A core recommendation of Magda’s was to create conditions that encourage safe, uninterrupted, self-directed play. Who knew babies were capable of self-entertainment and had their very own interests and play ideas?  This news was a major mindblower for me and also the key to discovering and enjoying my daughter.

Magda taught us that the ideal place for uninterrupted free play to happen was a 100% safe, enclosed play area, and the ultimate was for it to be outdoors. There is no environment more engaging and therapeutic for babies than nature. But could I make this happen with only our hard, brick patio? Determined, un-crafty me got to work constructing what I called a “Yes Space” (because babies and toddlers are able to explore without being redirected with “no, no, no, don’t touch”). It ranks as the best thing I ever did as a new mom besides discovering Magda. (Details about creating that original Yes Space and much more are here in Outdoor Play Spaces.)

What I don’t recall Magda emphasizing as much was how healing and restorative it would be for me to have this “excuse” to spend way more time in the fresh air than I normally would. Don’t get me wrong. There were many, many challenging moments for me as a parent, but never outside in our bliss place. That was where only relaxation, joy and magic seemed to happen.

For all those reasons and more I jumped at the chance to share the story Bailey sent me about the play space she created on her small patio:

Hi Janet,

First off, I would like to express deep gratitude for all that you do. Discovering RIE and, on top of that, your thorough insight into reframing our perspective has made these 14 months with my son such a genuine delight. Because of RIE I see my son as a complete, capable, and unbelievably creative human, just as he is. Rather than constantly looking forward to what he’ll accomplish next, I get to witness to what he is doing NOW.

And naturally, in shifting my perspective in regard to my son, I have become so much gentler and accepting of myself. That is the greatest gift.

We live in an apartment, and until last weekend I had lamented at not having a yard. Then my partner and I got creative! I wanted to share a couple of photos of what we did. I got some inspiration from the photos of other outdoor play spaces you’ve shared.

This is a small, 8×10-foot patio. A lot (or a little) can be done with a small space. I hope this may serve as inspiration for others living in an apartment or small space.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the continuous work you put in to giving respectful parenting a voice.

Bailey

Grateful as I was that Bailey allowed me to post her story, I couldn’t resist seeing if we could take it a step further: “Also, just thinking… if you are willing to share… it would be incredible to have a list of the materials you used and a step by step…? Eek! Sorry if this is all too much to ask!”

Baily replied: “Not at all. I’m actually quite proud of planning and executing this space so I’d enjoy sharing!

Everything except for the mesh fence was found second hand, either through Facebook Marketplace or Restore, plus random kitchen items I already had, making this space very doable on a budget.

Materials:

• • Mesh fence from Amazon
  • Outdoor rug from Facebook Marketplace (JL: similar rugs available new on Amazon HERE)
  • Strip of carpet for spaces that the rug didn’t cover, salvaged 2×4’s that my partner brought home from work.
  • 4 bags of play sand (although we only used 3)
  • Tarp to line the sand box
  • An adorable string of logs I happened to find at ReStore
  • Play objects we already had on hand: random kitchen items, balls, toy car

Not pictured (where I was sitting for two of the pictures) is a little cozy corner with a couple board books.

Since we had the tools for it, we decided to build a sand box, although I’ve seen people use plastic tubs or small pools.

Process:

1. 1. Measured space designated for the sandbox
   2. Constructed sand box
   3. Thoroughly swept and cleaned deck
   4. Laid out rug + pieces of carpet
   5. Put up the mesh fence.
   6. Used zip ties to attach string of logs to posts
   7. Sewed lounge pillow (tutorial HERE)
   8. Brought out books and play objects

I do not yet have a photo of the lounger on our deck, but here is a photo of it in E’s room. He loves throwing/flopping himself into it and just plain lounging on it.

We don’t have any plants in reach, but we do have a couple plastic pots with dirt in them. The last couple of days I’ve placed a pot or tub of water inside the sand box and E has enjoyed scooping and pouring water and sand from the different containers (and on himself :)).

Although this space is about 95% ‘yes’ I do not feel totally comfortable going inside for a prolonged period* while he is out. That being said, this has turned into a peaceful opportunity for ‘Wants Nothing Quality Time.’”

(More on that HERE)

Thank you so much, Bailey!

*Bailey’s instincts are spot on. It is not recommended to leave young children unattended outdoors for more than brief periods, even in a safe play space, and they should always be within earshot.

***

I share more about infant-toddler play and play spaces HERE. And HERE are a few of my recommendations for toys and play objects.

Other recommended resources:

Lisa Sunbury’s wonderful articles on play HERE on RegardingBaby.org

Your Self–Confident Baby by Magda Gerber and Allison Johnson

Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect by Magda Gerber

My book Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting

The post How to Create a ‘Yes Space’ Outdoors (When You Don’t Have a Yard) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “3 RIE Parenting Basics”Janet Lansbury:

Hi. This is Janet Lansbury, and welcome to Unruffled. In this episode, I’m going to be responding to several of you who have asked for a summary of the respectful parenting approach, also called the RIE approach, because this approach is definitely derived from Magda Gerber’s nonprofit organization R-I-E, RIE. And I thought that was a really good idea —  just something to share with a spouse or a friend or anyone who might want to know a little about this approach summed up. It is sort of hard to sum up, because it is a holistic approach that is not just about: Do these things. Do this, that, and the other and you’re doing this. It’s really about a way of perceiving our role, a way of perceiving children and babies.

With all that in mind, I’m going to share.

Before I begin, I just want to remind everyone that my books are available on Audible.com and also Amazon in paperback, and eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com. That’s Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting and No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame.

I’m going to be using my article “9 RIE Parenting Basics (Putting Respect Into Action)” as an outline for talking about this today, and in that article I write, “RIE parenting could be summed up as an awareness of our babies.” Yes. It’s an awareness of our babies. It’s perceiving them as whole people right from the beginning, not after a certain period of time, not just when they’re walking and talking and it’s easier to see them as people, but actually realizing that it’s even more important that we take care to welcome these beings as whole people from the beginning and are able to engage with them in a person-to-person relationship, which we can only do if they’re a person. We’re going to understand that they have a perspective. They have their own unique perspective. They have their own individual way of seeing, of feeling, of engaging with their world. So we’re trying to take that into account as much as possible.

Now, the wonderful thing about the guidelines that RIE offers is that they are all about drawing us into that understanding that we really are dealing with a person here. So if we are kind of almost there, but we’re not quite getting it, just following these practices will draw us to that, because we are engaging with our baby as a separate person. By doing so, we will see: Oh, my gosh, this is a separate person. This is somebody with their own thoughts and their own feelings that are different than mine, and I really can’t make assumptions about this person. I want to get to know this person, and that becomes our role as parents, to really facilitate development rather than trying to direct it in some way.

The guidelines that I’m going to be talking about are, again, from my article, and these are not RIE’s principles. I’ll let you go to magdagerber.org or rie.org, R-I-E dot org, to read about Magda’s principles. These are my own interpretation, and they’re certainly based on Magda’s principles.

The first one: “We communicate authentically. We speak in our authentic voices, though a bit more slowly with babies and toddlers, but we use real words, and we talk about real things, especially things that directly pertain to our babies and that are happening now.” This encourages babies to build communication skills, because we ask them questions. “Are you ready for me to pick you up right now?” That lets them know that we’re opening the door to engaging with us. We want them to share their point of view, and we afford them plenty of time to respond, because we know that it takes some time to take in our words, and we always acknowledge their communication.

One of the criticisms that people have around this is, “Well, babies can’t understand those words.” Well, that’s true. If we don’t ever say the words, babies can’t understand them. Babies can only learn what they’ve been exposed to, but why wouldn’t we expose them to words that we want them to learn, rather than waiting? They learn these things much more quickly when they’re hearing them.

Why do we suggest speaking in our authentic voices when research shows that parentese is what babies respond to? Studies show that, well, sort of indicate that this is what babies want. More higher-pitched voices, exaggerated, and maybe using simpler baby forms of words. But the interesting thing about this research is, well, first of all, there’s never been research that has compared this parentese approach with an actual RIE parent approach, which involves a lot more language than most anyone would ever speak to a baby. We are talking about all these real things that are going on right now and letting our baby know what’s happening moment to moment with their bodies and what we’re doing with them, what we’re doing together, noticing what their attention is drawn to and commenting on that. So when a baby is staring at something and then we see that they’re gazing at something and then they turn to us and sort of look at us, and then we might say, “I was watching you. You were looking at that picture on the wall.”

All of this dialogue is so much more than what I would have spoken to a baby, and what I think most of us in this society do. So there’s never been a study that has compared that to the parentese approach. Another thing about parentese is, yes, it’s an attention-getter. When you’re hearing that sound, when someone’s talking in that very distinct, exaggerated manner, it’s going to get your attention, especially if you’re a baby and you’re so… all your senses are so much more alive, and you’re picking all these things up, you can easily get overstimulated. If somebody’s talking to you that way for a period of time, it can be too much.

For that reason, it makes sense that babies turn their heads when they hear that, in the studies. But that doesn’t mean that it’s the best way. The best way is the way that babies hear us talking to other people, in a normal voice. And then, suddenly, we’re talking to them. This is another reason I think babies like this, because when parents talk like that, babies know: They’re talking to me. This is the way they always talk to me, so this is exciting. I’m engaging, here I am.

But what isn’t measured there is what happens when a parent really engages in an authentic way, eye to eye:, “I see what you’re doing, and I’m interested in you, and I’m going to let you know when I’m doing things with you.” That is, I think, more engaging, certainly more humanizing, and will keep us reminded that we’re in a relationship, and will cause us to want to talk a lot more to our baby, because we are with a person. We’re not with somebody that we ignore a lot of the time until we want to talk to you, and then we do the parentese voice. So for me, I mean, obviously everybody doesn’t agree with this, but for me, this is preferable for all those reasons and that it’s not going to overstimulate babies. They’re still going to know we’re talking to them. They’re going to learn so much from it and from us, and they feel, and we feel, that respect. We feel that we are talking to a person, and that makes it easier to want to talk a lot.

Moving on, the second guideline that I share in my article: “We invite babies to actively participate in caregiving activities like diapering, bathing, meals, and bedtime rituals, and give them our full attention during these activities. This inclusion and focused attention nurtures our parent-child relationship, providing children the sense of security they need to be able to separate and engage in self-directed play.” This is an important point because there’s so much wonderful talk about play, and I write a lot and share a lot about self-directed play, and independent play, and how this is creative, how it’s therapeutic for children. It serves all these wonderful purposes for them, and it’s the best way for them to spend the majority of their day. But what I don’t always mention along with that is, what is the framework for that? The framework that works for that is that these babies need to be filled up with our… children of any age, actually, need to be filled up with our relationship, filled with our attention and nurturing, and have that in place before they’re able to do something without us, or follow their own direction and not be needing from us.

This wonderful framework that Magda offered, Magda Gerber offered, is using these activities that are geared towards intimacy, changing diapers, feeding, bathing, helping you get to bed, helping you get a lovely sleep. These are natural times to give full attention, and important times to do that, because we want babies to be aware of when people are touching their bodies, and what’s going on with them, and these, anyway, are natural moments to be fully engaged and connected, and to invite babies to do what they can do, which, in the beginning, is starting to understand, as we say, “Here’s the washcloth. I’m going to put this on your back, and yes, it’s warm. I put warm water on it, and I’m wiping your back with it,” so they’re able to first participate by being included verbally in what’s going on.

Then we gradually draw them in to helping, “Can you lift your bottom a little while I slide this diaper under? That looks like you almost did that a little bit. Okay, I’m going to lift you a tiny bit more, and I’m going to put this under there.” Going through all the steps with them, inviting them to participate. This builds self-confidence in both of us, actually. It bonds us, and it makes it possible for babies to separate from us so we can go do something during the day. We can go to the bathroom, we can go in the kitchen, and they can be playing, doing activities of their own.

A lot of people will criticize, “Well, how is it possible to pay attention to your baby when you’re breastfeeding, and you have to do this so many times a day, and sometimes it feels like it’s almost nonstop.” Well, we do our best, but I believe it’s important to try, because a baby that’s only getting half of our attention is never really filled up with it. So it’s not just about the food in those times together. It’s about nurturing you with our relationship, nurturing you mind to mind, heart to heart. That’s what really fills babies up. So maybe they don’t even need to breastfeed as often, because they have really connected with this while they’re doing it.

We’re not always going to be perfect in the beginning, especially with feedings, but I think it’s important to understand that that’s a priority and to really work towards that. If you have lots of children, it’s not always going to work out, but I would still let that older child know, “I know you want to be with me. This is my time with your sister right now, and after this, I will be able to be with you again.” Setting aside that time is a priority. It teaches both children something about our comfort with giving you attention, and giving you all of my attention, and even if that doesn’t please the other one in the moment, that’s okay. It’s really important. I care about our relationship.

One more, number three here: “We encourage uninterrupted self-directed play by offering even the youngest infants free play opportunities, sensitively observing, so as not to needlessly interrupt, and trusting that our child’s play choices are enough. Perfect, actually.”

A play choice for an infant is the direction they’re looking in, and instead of interrupting that, “Oh, hi, sweetie,” which we might want to do, “I want to see you right now…” Not that we’re never going to do that, but really understanding that, Hey, she’s doing something right now. He’s doing something that important to him in that moment. If he was looking for me, he’d be doing that. Young infants can really do this. They’re not just out in la-la land. They’re really present, and they know that they need us, and if they want us, they’re very good at letting us know.

That’s how it begins, being sensitive in our observation of our child. Again, it goes back to honoring their point of view, seeing that they have a perspective, and that what they care about matters, and when we do this, we really do see a person there. But sometimes, it could start out by, Okay, we’re going to try to respect this person, and then we actually notice at some point, Wow, she’s doing surprising things. I really do see that this is a person now. It might go that way, and that’s fine.

That’s the beauty of these guidelines. They almost force us into respect and really understanding that that person is there, and that’s where the joy in parenting comes, honestly. The joy of this, I mean, the reason most of us are doing this is because most of us had children because we want to have a relationship with somebody. We want to have a wonderful relationship to enrich our life all the way through, and that only happens when we know that’s another person. What the RIE guidelines do is, they help us to get there right away, or at least sooner.

I hope that helps. Obviously, I wasn’t able to give a complete summary, see, I told you it was hard! But you can always take a look at my article, “9 RIE Parenting Basics,” and I’ll be revisiting and covering the rest of these guidelines in future podcasts. Tune in, and in the meantime, you might want to check out some of my other podcasts. They’re on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher, and again, both of my books are available on audio at Audible.com, and in paperback at Amazon, and eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com. I also recommend Magda Gerber’s books,Your Self–Confident Baby and Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect. Highly recommended, particularly for what I’m talking about in this podcast.

Thank you for listening. We can do this.

The post 3 RIE Parenting Basics appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

– Magda Gerber commenting on an infant’s gaze.

When it comes to our relationships with our children, it’s the quality of the connection we have that truly matters. Whether we’re responding to our baby’s cries, setting limits for our toddler, deciding whether we should trust or direct our child’s development, it is the strength of our bond that informs our choices and our child’s response.

Our relationship guides everything we do.  Parenting will either be a puzzling, baffling struggle or logical, organic and (often) effortless.  It’s all about understanding how to connect.

If I had known years ago that I could connect with even the youngest infants just by being myself, I’d have been a “baby person” back then. I wasn’t. In fact, I’m often amazed and amused that my life and work is now all about babies.  Me? I can think of plenty of baby-adoring people I’ve met over the years that I would expect this from, but certainly not me.

For most of my life I was not particularly drawn to babies, and the feeling seemed mutual.  I wasn’t the one toddlers toddled over to,  and although I thought young children were cute and precious, garnering their attention and keeping them entertained seemed like a lot of work.

All of that changed when, through Magda Gerber, I learned that I didn’t need games and baby talk — I could connect with babies as my authentic self. In fact, this is what babies really want and need. And when we do this, we forever see babies in a remarkably different light.  As Magda said, we see them “with new eyes.”

When we show babies that we are receptive to connecting with them in a real way, they will open their souls to us… and pour them into ours.  The secret is simple:

Quietly behold the person.

Since I started doing this, I’ve had unforgettable encounters with babies, toddlers and children of all ages, both mine and those of others. Babies lock eyes with me across restaurants, in airplanes, while passing by in their carriers and strollers.  Really. This is not my imagination or wishful thinking. In fact, it’s more akin to magical thinking.  For a brief moment we see and understand each other at a very deep level. There is recognition and acknowledgement.

When you connect with babies in this real and respectful way you know without a smidgen of doubt that babies are all there, whole people, just waiting to be acknowledged as such.  Babies appreciate you and even seek you out. The joy begins.

One of the moms in my new infant class shared with me that she had been struggling to understand her 4 month old son’s needs.  She decided to try something that had been said the previous week at the RIE Class Orientation: “Just talk to him. Ask him what he needs. Engage him as a person.”

She described this as a “light bulb” that changed everything. Suddenly her boy is much calmer and more communicative. As she told me the story, her boy looked at me, eyes twinkling, and then I talked to him, too. It’s easy to see what a hugely social guy, what a charmer he is and how wise beyond his years (or months, rather!).

With toddlers especially, it’s best to allow them to initiate the connection by engaging with us first.  They like autonomy. I’ll never forget one of the toddlers in my class peering at me through the crack behind an open door and saying “Hi!” We repeated this back and forth to each other several times, her eyes locked with mine. It was a simple, silly game that became profound.  I felt our souls greeting each other… and I cried (but I don’t think the parents noticed).

The connection I have with this particular toddler includes jokes that one probably wouldn’t expect a 21 month old to understand.  During snack time in class, she coughed after taking a sip of the water I had offered her and I replied, “Spicy water,” which she repeated and seemed to find hilarious. Then when she once tried to sneak her hands into the bucket of bananas herself (a favorite pastime of the children), I said, “Such an eager beaver!”  Since then, her parents hear her repeating these remarks and laughing to herself, and she and I continue to chuckle about them, too…

Once you know how to connect with babies and begin to see through the crystal clear lens of respect, you can never go back.  You’ll find it impossible to punish, abhorrent to manipulate, demeaning to trick or distract, disturbing to stifle babies just because their feelings are so hard to hear.  You’ll be shocked and saddened by the way babies are often objectified, dehumanized, their perspectives disregarded. You can no longer pretend there isn’t a person there who wants to get your jokes and deserves your respect and acknowledgement. And not just when it’s convenient — always.

I share more about connecting authentically with babies in Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting

The post Making A Soul Connection With Your Baby appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

I see the positive effects of Magda’s recommendations in my children every day, but it was especially gratifying for my husband and me to get this surprise seal of approval from our college freshman…

Dear Parents,

I’m just writing to tell you both that I love you! Today in my ‘Constructing Childhood’ rhetoric class we were discussing parenting, in response to reading a segment of Amy Chua’s book about Chinese mothers – maybe you’ve heard of it… Anyway, while listening to various anecdotes from my classmates, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I clearly had the most wonderful parents out of the 15 of us in the class. I guess I was just a bit surprised that considering we’ve all made it to (the topnotch university she attends), no one else’s parents seemed to have raised them nearly as carefully as you have raised, and continue to raise me.

So, of course when it was my turn to talk I bragged about you a little. I said that although I would never consider my parents permissive in any sense, my hobbies and pursuits were always left up to me. And even though the rest of the kids in my class were either forced to play a sport or instrument when they were younger, or wish they had been forced to so that they could be really good at it by now, I couldn’t relate. Regardless of whether or not I maybe could have been more talented had I been made to hone a particular skill as a child, I am the happiest because of the respect that I have for my parents, the sure sense of independence they gave me, the trust we have in one another, and the loving friendship that has become of our relationship.

I’m motivated almost entirely intrinsically because I was never taught that I needed to get straight A’s to please my parents. And at the same time, I do know that they care for me deeply, and conversely I love them to death.

This is nothing I didn’t already know, but it was just a nice moment of clarity that I had in class. I love you Mommy and Daddy and please never forget that all that I am I owe to you. You are, quite honestly, the best parents in the world.

Never ever doubt it.

Miss you guys! See you soon mum!

XOXO

C.

I share more about parenting with trust in 

Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting

The post Trust Your Baby…It Works (A Note From My Daughter) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Acknowledge.

Before you tell your child that it’s time to leave the park, or remind him that the really cool truck he’s examining has to stay at the store, acknowledge his point of view. Acknowledge your child’s feelings and wishes, even if they seem ridiculous, irrational, self-centered or wrong. This is not the same as agreeing, and is definitely not indulgent or allowing an undesirable behavior.

Acknowledging isn’t condoning our child’s actions; it’s validating the feelings behind them. It’s a simple, profound way to reflect our child’s experience and inner self. It demonstrates our understanding and acceptance. It sends a powerful, affirming message… Every thought, desire, feeling — every expression of your mind, body and heart — is perfectly acceptable, appropriate and lovable.

Acknowledging is simple, but it isn’t easy. It’s counter-intuitive for most of us, even when we’ve done it thousands of times. Won’t acknowledging our child’s wishes make matters worse? Won’t saying “I know how much you want an ice cream cone like the one your friend has and it does look yummy, but we won’t be having dessert until later” make our toddler hold on to the idea longer, cry harder? Wouldn’t it be better to dismiss or downplay the child’s feelings, distract, redirect or say:”Oh, sweetie, not now”?

Our fears about an honest acknowledgement of the situation “making things worse” are almost always unfounded. Feeling heard and understood allows children to release the feelings, let go and move on. Here are more reasons that acknowledging our child’s truth is worth the conscious effort it takes…

1. Acknowledging can stop tears and tantrums in their tracks.

I have witnessed this many, many times. Whether a child is upset about an injury, a disagreement with another child or anger over a conflict with a parent, acknowledging to the child what happened or that he is hurt, frustrated or angry can miraculously ease the pain. Feeling understood is a powerful thing.

2.Acknowledging, instead of judging or “fixing”, fosters trust and encourages children to keep sharing their feelings.

Parents and caregivers have an enormous influence, and their responses have an impact on young children. If, for example, we try to calm children by assuring them that there’s no need to be upset or worried about something that’s troubling them, they may become less inclined to express their feelings. If our goal is our child’s emotional health and keeping the door of communication open – just acknowledging is the best policy. “Daddy left and you are sad.”

I was reminded of this recently when one of my teenage daughters shared her anger and heartbreak over a long time best friend’s lies and betrayal. How hard it was not tell her that this friend is flawed and that my daughter deserves so much better!  How hard it was to just listen and acknowledge the hurt and disappointment. As painful as this experience was for me, I treasure it, because my daughter trusted me with her innermost feelings. I’ll do all in my power to encourage her to share with me again. (My daughter ended up resuming her relationship with her long adored friend, having noted her limitations, and I was so glad I held my tongue.)

3. Acknowledging informs, encourages language development and emotional intelligence.

Children gain clarity about their feelings and desires when we verbally reflect them. But don’t state the feeling unless you’re sure. It’s safer to use the words “upset” or “bothered” rather than jumping to “scared”, “angry”, etc. When in doubt, you might ask, “Did it make you mad when Joey wouldn’t let you use his blocks?” “Did the dog’s bark frighten you or just surprise you?”

An added benefit: talking to babies, toddlers, children of all ages about these “real things” happening to them is the most powerful, meaningful and natural way for them to learn language.

4. Acknowledging illuminates, helps us understand and empathize.

To state our child’s point of view, we have to first see it, so acknowledging helps to give us clarity.  When we say, “You want me to keep playing this fun game with you, but I’m too tired”, we are encouraged to empathize with our child’s point-of-view (and he ours).

Acknowledging the situation and asking questions (especially when we don’t know the reason our child is upset) can help us to unravel the mystery. “You’re upset and look uncomfortable. You just ate, your diaper is dry. Maybe you need to burp? Okay, I’m going to pick you up.”

5. Acknowledging struggles might be all the encouragement your child needs to carry on.

This is another scenario in which a simple acknowledgement can work like magic. Rather than saying, “you can do it!”, which can create pressure and set the child up to believe he disappoints us, try saying, “You are working very hard, and you’re making progress. That is tough to do. It’s frustrating, isn’t it?”

6. Acknowledgements instead of praise help children stay inner-directed.

This is as simple as containing our impulse to cheer loudly or say “good job!”, and instead smiling and reflecting, “You pulled the plastic beads apart. That was really hard.”

“Let your child’s inner joy be self-motivating. You can smile and express your genuine feelings but should refrain from giving excessive compliments, clapping your hands, and making a big fuss. If you do this, your child starts seeking satisfaction from external sources. She can get hooked on praise, becoming a performer seeking applause instead of an explorer. Praise also disrupts and interrupts a child’s learning process. She stops what she’s doing and focuses on you, sometimes not returning to the activity.” –Magda Gerber, Your Self-Confident Baby

7. Acknowledging proves that we are paying attention, makes a child feel understood, accepted, deeply loved and supported.

Could there be any better reason to give it a try?

“People will forget what you said; People will forget what you did.
But people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou

“We all need someone who understands.” –Magda Gerber

 I share more about respectful care and emotional health in
Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting

(Photo by girlwiththecamera on Fickr)

The post The Key To Your Child’s Heart (7 Ways It Works) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

The word is wait. And here’s how it works…

1. Wait for development of an infant or toddler’s motor skills, toilet learning, language and other preschool learning skills. Notice children’s satisfaction, comfort and self-pride when they are able to show you what they are ready to do, rather than the other way around. As Magda Gerber often said, “readiness is when they do it.” Ready babies do it better (Hmmm… a bumper sticker?), and they own their achievement completely, relish it, and build self-confidence to last a lifetime.

2. Wait before interrupting and give babies the opportunity to continue what they are doing, learn more about what interests them, develop longer attention spans and become independent self-learners. When we wait while a newborn gazes at the ceiling and allow him or her to continue their train of thought, they are encouraged not only to keep thinking, but to keep trusting their instincts. Refraining from interrupting whenever possible gives our children the message that we value their chosen activities (and therefore them).

3. Wait for problem solving and allow a child the resilience-building struggle and frustration that usually precedes accomplishment. Wait to see first what a child is capable of doing on his or her own.

When a baby is struggling to roll from back to tummy, try comforting with gentle words of encouragement before intervening and interrupting their process. Then if frustration mounts, pick them up and give them a break rather than turning them over and ‘fixing’ them. This encourages our babies to try, try again and eventually succeed, rather than believe themselves incapable and expect others to do it for them. This holds true for the development of motor skills, struggles with toys, puzzles and equipment, even self-soothing abilities like finding their thumb rather than giving them a pacifier.

(For more examples of the value of waiting for children to solve problems, please read A Jar Not Opened and A The Powerful Gift of “I Did It”.)

4. Wait for discovery rather than showing a child her new toy and how it works. When you teach a child something, you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself. –Jean Piaget

5. Wait and observe to see what the child is really doing before jumping to conclusions. A baby reaching towards a toy might be satisfied to be stretching his or her arm and fingers, not expecting to accomplish a task. A toddler looking through a sliding glass door might be practicing standing or enjoying the view and not necessarily eager to go outside.

6. Wait for conflict resolution and give babies the opportunity to solve problems with their peers, which they usually do quite readily if we can remain calm and patient. And what may look like conflict to an adult is often just “playing together” through an infant or toddler’s eyes.

7. Wait for readiness before introducing new activities and children can be active participants, embrace experiences more eagerly and confidently, comprehend and learn far more. It’s hard to wait to share our own exciting childhood experiences (like shows, theme parks or dance classes) with our children, but sooner is almost never better, and our patience always pays off. (I explain this in much more detail in Toddler Readiness – The Beauty of Waiting and Please Don’t Take The Babies.)

8.  Wait for a better understanding of what babies need when they cry. When we follow the impulse most of us have to quell our children’s tears as quickly as possible, we can end up projecting and assuming needs rather than truly understanding what our child is communicating. This is the basis of my argument in Attachment Parenting Debate – For Crying Out Loud and the realization shared by a parent in A Toddler’s Need To Cry (One Parent’s Lesson).

9. Wait for feelings to be expressed so that our children can fully process them. Our child’s cries can stir up our own deeply suppressed emotions; make us impatient, annoyed, uneasy, and even angry or fearful. But children need our non-judgmental acceptance of their feelings and our encouragement to allow them to run their course.

10. Wait for ideas from children before offering suggestions of our own. This encourages them to be patient thinkers and brainstormers. Countless times I’ve experienced the miracle of waiting before giving my brilliant two cents while children play, or providing play ideas when children seem bored. Biting my tongue for a few minutes, maybe saying some encouraging words to a toddler like, “It’s hard to know what to do sometimes, but you are creative, I know you’ll think of something” is usually all that it takes for the child to come up with an idea. And it’s bound to be more imaginative, interesting and appropriate than anything I could have thought of. Best of all, the child receives spectacular affirmations: 1) I am a creative thinker and problem solver; 2) I can bear discomfort, struggle and frustration; 3) Boredom is just the time and space between ideas… (And sometimes, the wellspring of genius.)

Instincts may tell us that waiting is uncaring, unhelpful and confidence-shaking — until the results are proven to us. Sitting back patiently and observing often feels counterintuitive, so even if we know and appreciate the magic that can happen when we “wait”, it usually involves a conscious effort. But it’s worth it.

Do you find it challenging to wait? Do you have a magic word of your own? No need to wait to share your thoughts…

(I share more in my book: Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting)

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OUR BABIES, OURSELVES by Gloria Ohland

Magda Gerber’s approach to child care is like preventative medicine, and it’s therapeutic for both parent and child. Her philosophy  – based on her psychoanalytic training and work as a child therapist – emphasizes self-acceptance, the need to set boundaries, the importance of ritual and of expressing your feelings, the fact that life is made up of choices which have consequences and that there are no victims. These are familiar principles to those who know 12-step-program theory, and their effect is at least as profound when applied to infant care. And while hers is a low-stress, simple and common –sense approach that acknowledges the realities of working moms, its vision is ambitious: “authentic” infants who become secure, autonomous, compassionate adults.

While too many theories of child-raising focus on making children do or be something more than they are, Magda argues the less we do the better, and suggests that many parents try too hard. She believes infants should be left to explore a child-safe environment with minimal adult intervention, because “spontaneous, self-initiated activities have an essential value.  The pleasure evolving from exploration and mastery is self-reinforcing, and the infant becomes intrinsically motivated to learn.”  But parents must also set aside quality time when they are simply available, watching and listening without judgment, thinking only of the child. Says Magda, “We are conditioned to always be doing something. But it is very comforting to know the parent is there, really there, without the little person being under pressure to do something to keep the parent’s attention.”

The key word in Magda’s vocabulary is respect – for parents and their needs as well as for their child’s. Even the smallest infant is looked at, handled and talked to as a thinking, feeling, participating human being, and never discussed in the third person if she can hear. “Many awful things have been done in the name of love,” says Magda. “But nothing awful can be done in the name of respect.”

Some of her very practical suggestions, with the caveat, “What you teach is yourselves”:

• Before you pick up a baby, tell him what you’re going to do. Do things with, not to or for, a baby.
• Allow the child to experience conflict and work it out for herself; let the child experience pain or sorrow, and let her choose when and if she wants to come to you for comfort.
• Be clear. Be honest. Ambivalence from a parent produces a nagging child.
• Children need expectations; they need to know the rules. Discipline is an integral part of a rooted, secure feeling. A child who is never told “no” is a neglected child.
• It’s a misconception that children must be happy all the time. That is not the way life is. If children discover that too late, they will find life difficult and frightening.

When Magda came here from Hungary in 1957, there was no such thing as an infant specialist. Even today, infant care in the USA is neither lucrative nor prestigious, despite our increasing recognition that basic patterns of coping, living and learning are set during the first three years of life. Magda’s Hungarian teacher and colleague, Dr. Emmi Pikler – who originated many of these ideas – was famous for her work with institutionalized children. At her residential nursery, she’d created an environment that encouraged them to reach their full potential. Many studies have since shown that these children don’t exhibit the impaired development – such as a lack of initiative and volition and an impersonality in relationships – associated with institutionalization, and have become healthy, well- adjusted adults.

Perhaps the best thing about Magda’s infant-care philosophy is that its wisdom works just as well in adult life. Mutual respect, and the trust and acceptance it engenders, open the door to well-being and happiness. As Magda says, “Lucky is the child who grows up with parents who basically accept and love themselves, and therefore can accept and love their child, who reminds them so often of their own selves.”

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