5 Misunderstandings I Had About the RIE Educaring Approach
When Lee was a newborn, I had heard of The Resources of Infant Educarers (RIE) or the Educaring approach to parenting only in passing. It sounded nice enough, but also kind of hippy-dippy for my taste and parenting style: You ask your baby permission to pick him up? (Why? He can’t talk!) Diaper changes should be treasured as special time together? (Ugh, no thanks, let’s just get this nasty business over with) And parents will let their young infant just play by itself? (Is that even safe?! Doesn’t your baby feel lonely or bored without you?)
Over the last few months, I’ve spent time with the mentors of the RIE institute to understand more about their Educaring philosophy. Developed by Magda Gerber and based upon the research of Dr. Emmi Pikler, the RIE method (also known as Educaring or respectful parenting) is both nuanced and incredibly intuitive.
To distill the RIE approach into the simplest tactics, Educaring requires parents to:
Respect their child as their own person with individual preferences and dislikes.
Trust in their child’s unique developmental path, abilities, and desire to explore.
Observe their little one to learn their child’s subtle forms of communication.
Include even young infants to be active participants in their daily care (like diaper changes and feedings).
Create a physically safe and mentally stimulating environment for your munchkin to freely explore.
Now that I have a clear understanding of the RIE Educaring approach, I reflected on my misconceptions about this parenting style. Here are the five big misunderstandings I had about RIE...
Educaring Misunderstanding #1: Respectful parenting is just being nice to your baby-- which is, like, duh…
The core of the RIE philosophy is respect. When I first heard about respectful parenting I figured, “Well, I’m kind to my infant. I don’t yell, scream, or handle him roughly. I respect Lee.” That’s respect, right?
It is, yes, but in the context of RIE’s Educaring approach, respect is much deeper than just “being nice.” The RIE Manual for Parents and Professionals explains, “What happens when you respect someone is that you put a little distance between yourselves. That distance sets the two of you apart from each other so that you can see each other more clearly.” As parents, we are innately so close to our children and can see so much of ourselves in them and vice versa that we start unconsciously weaving our identities together. But the Educaring approach emphasizes respect as viewing your child as a unique human being and not an object or an extension of ourselves.
In practice, “... we show respect, for example, by not picking up an infant without telling him beforehand, by talking directly to him and not over him, and by waiting for the child’s response,” writes RIE founder Magda Gerber writes in her book Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect.
Educaring Misunderstanding #2: The RIE parenting approach is both cold and lenient.
On its surface, the Educaring approach seems to be way too loosey-goosey: At RIE, parents let their children crawl all over a safe space, pull any material off a shelf, and just throw it around-- the infant isn’t even using it correctly! Moreover, parents don’t play with their children; parents just look at their infants playing! How standoffish is that??
While all of that is true, this view of Educaring’s “uninterrupted play” is incomplete and overlooks the developmental benefits of (and thus the reasoning for) allowing your child to explore freely. Deborah Carlisle Soloman writes in her book Baby Knows Best, “Play can support the development of self-confidence, self-reliance, focus, and attention, and, with practice, fine motor and gross motor skills."
Many parents feel compelled (perhaps even pressured) to micromanage their children’s play, showing the “right” way to play with a toy, and turning every event into a teachable moment. Unfortunately, this sets a negative precedent for children who then come to expect to be entertained by their parents. They also are no longer content to play by themselves and need someone else to get their playtime started. And when we interfere with our child’s self-directed play, it squashes their innate curiosity, creativity, and ingenuity, because they figure, “Well, any time I try to play with a toy this way, Mom tells me I’m doing it wrong, so I’ll just do it her boring way…”
To curb this, RIE encourages parents of even very young children to give their little one space to play independently and without the parent’s good-intentioned interference; Solomon continues, “Let your baby choose what object to play with, how to play with it, and for how long. Refrain from giving an object to your baby and showing her how to do something ‘fun’ with it or how it should be used.”
Educaring Misunderstanding #3: The RIE parenting approach can only be applied to newborns and children under two years old. After that, forget it.
While Magda Gerber’s Educaring approach was designed for infants aged 0-2, because those formative years were the focus of her mentor Dr. Emmi Pikler’s research, parents can adopt the RIE Educaring mindset even if their children are full-grown adults.
The core values and the parent/child relationship of the RIE philosophy ring universally true, albeit adjusted slightly for your child’s age: respect your child; dedicate time to them and extend your full and undivided attention to them; remain a consistent, dependable, and open-minded ally to your child.
Educaring Misunderstanding #4: Everything takes way too much time when you use RIE’s Educaring approach.
To put Educaring into practice, RIE parents focus their undivided and loving attention on their child during caregiving activities (like diaper changes and bathing); this elevates a mundane chore into an intimate bonding moment. RIE also strongly encourages parents to extend a wide berth to their children’s budding independence, like letting their toddler take their time to walk to the playground (even when your toddler is moving at a painful glacial pace). Magda Gerber emphasized going slowly and then going even slower; “Children have a much slower tempo than we do. Their thought patterns are forming, and they need time to process information in order to respond to us. Slow down with your baby and you will be helping her immensely,” wrote Gerber in her book Your Self-Confident Baby.
So yes, the Educaring approach requires more time and patience. But RIE’s aim is to foster your child’s self-reliance, resilience, and autonomy, important traits that will last their lifetime, which can only really be developed with the support of their parents who allow their children the time and space to be their authentic selves. While it does take a lot of time to be a RIE parent, you’re putting in the work when your children are young, so they are more independent and capable when they are older.
Educaring Misunderstanding #5: The Educaring approach really only works for one-child households.
At first blush, it can seem like RIE’s practice leaves little room for you to be finely attuned into more than one child; between the caregiving activities, the quiet and sensitive observation of your child’s subtle cues, and adopting a much slower pace, how can you provide that heightened level of attention to more than child?
Turns out, it can be immensely beneficial to practice the Educaring approach when you have two children, because you’re able to offer them attention during caregiving activities and, separately, create a safe environment in which you don’t need to look after your child like a hawk. Ultimately instill a sense of security in oneself that means your child is able to happily occupy themselves while you tend to the other child. Essentially, through this Educaring approach, you give 100% of your attention to one child during key points in their day without depriving your first born of their mommy-and-me time because there are similar points in their day when they get you all to themselves.
If you’re interested in learning more about RIE and the Educaring approach, I recommend picking up a copy of Magda Gerber’s book Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect which gives a wonderful overview of the philosophy and pointers on how you can begin incorporating respectful parenting tactics into your everyday life!