It’s been a minute, and I apologize…I apologize to you, and I apologize to myself! I know many of you enjoy reading these, and I suddenly remembered…hey, I enjoy writing them! So, I’m recommitting myself to the practice.
I say that and then I’ll say that I’ve been trying to write this for a week. A full week! But maybe the good thing about mulling something for a week is that it gets into my head in a new way…this is not what I would have written a week ago. Past me was bummed. Present me is excited. Future me is already thinking about the next one.
I recently read a book that captured my attention at the 34th Annual RIE Infant/Toddler Conference. A woman I am honored to call my colleague, Dr. Aletheia Lee, presented a fascinating workshop on Erikson (well, really on the power of ‘negative emotions’) and introduced us to a book written by Erik Erikson’s wife, Joan: Wisdom and the Senses: The Way of Creativity.
Aletheia’s workshop got me thinking about that theory in a new way, so I picked up the book, and quickly found myself completely captivated by the first chapter, Our Vital Resources: The Senses. Pause here with me…you know I always say the R in RIE stands for Resources…and what do we teach? How to protect and preserve the senses of infants and young children. It’s why we curate their playspaces with intentional objects and little visual or auditory ‘noise.’ And it’s why we sit back and let them discover what those objects can do. It’s why we are so careful in how we lift and move babies, and why we don’t prop them to sit or roll them over before their bodies tell them they are ready for it. It’s why we approach with curiosity and care when children cry, rather than with a solution or a ‘hush.’
I’m telling you, this whole first chapter feels like Magda and Joan wrote it together… “the human infant, then, arrives in the world ready for mutuality, for reciprocating relations…and is in fact already capable of learning” (something a future post will explore). She waxes on about each of the (main) five senses*, focusing, as Magda does, on the impact and importance of touch, and casually reminding us that “tears communicate.” She even states that a baby’s first toy is her hand…that had me flipping to the front of the book to check the publication (’88…10 years after RIE was founded).
*In RIE we add two more: proprioceptive and vestibular… thinking about how the body and limbs feel in space…which only makes sense since such a grounding piece of this work is natural gross motor development.
She reminds us that we are own first educators… “the sense information we have accrued through experience is the most personal and valid content of our minds…all the other information we select and gather …[is] indirect knowledge based on what someone else has said or written.” The Educaring Approach helps preserve that for children a little longer.
There’s so much more in this book; there’s so much more in the chapter, but I’ll leave you with this…this book that was written over 30 years ago stated that “we live in a nontactile, predominately kinesthetically dull, success-ridden society.” She said that over 30 years ago. But the amazing thing is that while that same description could easily be applied to today’s society, babies haven’t changed. They are still these “lovely, vital little creatures entirely occupied with just being, enjoying the present moment with all their lively senses in a delight-giving space.” And RIE helps us protect them…and reminds us to remember again our own vital resources: our senses.