Inspirations

Breaking An Abusive Cycle Through AP And RIE (Guest Post by Suchada from Mama Eve)

Please, don’t let them grow up like me…  I have three vivid memories of growing up: The first is of my mother when I was five or six years old. I was getting ready for school and had difficulty putting my shoes on the correct feet (being slightly dyslexic), and my mother went ballistic. She hit me, over and over, all while yelling at me how stupid I was for not having it figured out by now. The second...

Lessons From The Women In My Life (Guest Post by Michael Lansbury)

My eldest daughter turned eighteen two months ago, a milestone loaded with implication and emotion. As her father, I felt an intense (self-imposed) pressure to mark the occasion appropriately, to acknowledge my genuine love and pride as openly and honestly as this East Coast WASP could manage. Certainly, this was the moment to pull out all the stops and come up with something more meaningful than a handshake and a...

Toddler Readiness – The Beauty Of Waiting

When my daughter was 2 ¾ she told me she wanted to ride a merry-go-round. I never figured out where she got the idea, but she loved books and must have seen a merry-go-round somewhere in one of them. We picked a day to visit the classic carousel on the Santa Monica Pier and talked about it for days ahead of time. We imagined the experience – choosing a horse, the music, fastening seatbelts, riding up and down,...

A Jolly Toddler Holiday – 3 Ways To Enrich The Experience

Hi Janet, My son is 28 months, and this is the first year I think he’ll have a lot of questions about Christmas.  My parents are already asking what Santa should bring him, and it’s prompted me to think about how I might position this mythical character in a developmentally appropriate way that embraces the spirit of Santa, doesn’t feel like I’m lying to him or that I will have to burst his...

RIE Parenting – A Culture Of Creativity

There was a buzz about RIE last week. The Daily Beast, Parenting and ivillage posted articles referring to RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) classes as a trendy “celebrity craze”,  and even insinuated that participants constituted a cult. For members and advocates of infant expert Magda Gerber’s non-profit organization, one that’s inspired a diverse community of parents, early childhood educators and...

Magda Gerber – Memories Of A Mentor

Magda Gerber dazzled me. Growing up in Los Angeles acting and modeling, I’d met plenty of celebrities in film, music and politics, but none gave me the thrill Magda Gerber did.  A petite “pixy”, as Laura Huxley describes her in the video “Seeing Infants With New Eyes”, Magda radiated big, bold and bright.  She was in her eighties when I met her and still sat cross-legged on a pillow on the floor during...

Brave Daddy

“Boys don’t cry”, or so we’re taught. Why isn’t crying an equal opportunity response? There are men who don’t allow themselves to cry, or feel unable to because those emotions were discouraged when they were small. But where do those unexpressed feelings go? Heck, it’s challenging for all of us when we become parents to tolerate the helplessness, irritation, heartache (and sometimes, embarrassment) we...

Safe At Home (Guest Post by Loren Chadima)

Loren, her husband and son are participants in my RIE parenting class, and have become my friends. They had a tragic experience with their beloved first son Chase.  Loren courageously volunteered to share her story in the hope that it would help others, even though reliving these events has been extraordinarily difficult for her…   In her book, Dear Parent – Caring For Infant With Respect, Magda Gerber...