Okay, I don’t want to bury the lede: I was recently invited to speak on Janet Lansbury’s podcast, Unruffled, and the episode dropped earlier this week! Enjoy!
Janet and I have known each other for a long time, and I have deep respect for the way she brings Magda Gerber’s Educaring® Approach to such a wide audience. Being in conversation with her about this work was a real honor.
Our conversation centered around a question that is the heart of my purpose: why do parents need RIE? And the answer, at its core, is this: RIE gives parents (and professionals!) permission to exhale. To step back. To trust that children are capable, and that we don’t have to be constantly teaching, redirecting, or intervening. Parenting, with this approach, doesn’t have to be so hard.
As Magda said herself, it may be a more comfortable life we could create.
While Janet and I were talking, I shared a story from a couple of years ago…About halfway through a class, a child had claimed the rocking boat. She was in it, she was happy, and she was not interested in anyone else joining her. Another child approached, wanting in. And she made it very clear: no.
Her mother was visibly uncomfortable. Not because her daughter was being unkind exactly, but because everything in us resists that moment. We are wired to say: make room, include others, share what you have. That is the message children receive almost everywhere they go.
But we waited. We watched. And what unfolded was something her mother hadn’t expected to feel: a quiet pride. Her daughter knew what she wanted. She held her ground.
Her mother reflected on how strange it had felt to sit with her discomfort rather than fix it. And how powerful it was to watch her daughter simply… know herself.
Janet and I talked through the layers of that moment, and kept coming back to the same point: it isn’t really about who gets the boat and who doesn’t. It’s about noticing what’s going on inside yourself, and what’s going on with the other person. Letting those feelings guide you… not an outward prompt.
That conversation reminded me of another story I was sure I’d shared before, so forgive me if you’ve heard it. It goes back to a birthday party I attended for one of my families, a child turning 2. The whole class was there, maybe one or two others from outside our little community. It was a real RIE gathering.
At one point, a child was happily driving a Little Tykes car around the yard. Another child walked up and put her hands on the door. In an instant, the father of the child in the car leaned in: “Okay, you need to get out. She wants the car.”
What happened next was something I’ll never forget. Almost every adult around him, gently but clearly, said: “No. She doesn’t have to get out.”
He froze. You could see it on his face: Wait… she doesn’t?
And then, because the adults around him held back, he got to watch. He got to see that the child approaching the car wasn’t trying to take it at all. She was curious about the door. She touched it, explored it, and moved on. His child, the child inside the car, had been paying attention the whole time, watching, wondering. She noticed. She considered. And then she went right back to driving.
That father sat with something in that moment. He said, almost to himself: when I was about to make her get out, I was essentially telling her that what she cares about doesn’t matter the second someone else wants it.
I want to be clear: RIE is not about raising selfish children. It’s about raising children who can notice what’s happening inside themselves and what’s happening for the people around them. That little girl in the car was doing exactly that. She was present, aware, and engaged with the whole situation. She just didn’t need an adult to manage it for her.
When I think back on that, I get shivers…because it’s the polar opposite of what most parents experience out in the wider world, where they are the ones who freeze and are expected to redirect their children. That birthday party felt like a little glimpse of what Magda meant.
Perhaps there is a more comfortable life we could create.