7 Ways I Practice Respectful Parenting Everyday

I love the philosophy of the Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) which centers on showing your child respect, regardless of their age. To really absorb the practice, I enrolled in RIE’s Foundations course. At the end of the class, the students were challenged to summarize and answer, “What is RIE?” and we all struggled to synthesize this very simple but nuanced parenting approach.

While the RIE Educaring philosophy has been ingrained into my parenting style, I often found it tricky to explain exactly how its core principles influenced me. Instead, it was easier for me to demonstrate how I put RIE’s respectful parenting into action. 

So, to that end, here are the seven ways I practice RIE in my everyday life...

1. I enforce our house rules by offering my toddler “true choices.”

Every household has its own set of rules and norms: You have to take off your shoes when we come inside. You cannot jump on the couch. You must eat your food in the kitchen. But, as your toddler tests the waters of their budding independence, they can suddenly seem so stubborn, uncooperative, or like they’re simply not listening.

In her book Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect, RIE founder Magda Gerber points to a workaround here, “Boundaries which are predictably and consistently reinforced provide security. In order to really develop inner discipline, children must be given the freedom to make choices.” In practice, this means holding your “bottom line” while being flexible around the details. 

Here’s an example: We’re a shoes-off household. So when Lee bursts in the door, we immediately remind him, “We need to take our shoes off. Do you want to sit on the floor or on your stool to take off your shoes?” The key is to offer a genuine choice; we are reinforcing the rule (“Shoes off indoors”), but don’t really care whether he sits on the floor or on his stool. Giving Lee this little bit of control over where to sit to take off his shoes makes him more cooperative and willing to participate. 

On the flip side, a false choice is, “Do you want to take off your shoes?” Lee could shout back, “No!” and then what? I’m shouting back, “Well, tough!” and chasing him around the house to un-Velcro his shoes… A true choice will still land you (the parent) at the outcome you want, but a false choice is presenting an option that doesn’t exist or immediately disregards the child’s decision if they “pick wrong.”

2. I narrate, “First… Then…” so my toddler always knows what’s coming next.

Toddlers crave routine as it gives them a sense of safety and security. (Think of how much more relaxed you are when you drive the well-known route to the supermarket versus an unfamiliar trip to a new city without Waze telling you when to exit the highway.) When toddlers don’t know what to expect, they quickly panic. This nervous anxiety takes on different forms: Our children can clam up and cling to our pant legs. Or they become wild animals and run amok, ignoring our pleas to, “Please just get in your stroller…”

To help Lee mentally prepare for the next activity, I am constantly coaching him, “First we’re going to go downstairs and get into your stroller. Then we’re going to walk to the restaurant for lunch…” This narration exercise gives Lee a clear indication of what to expect and what is expected of him, ultimately making him more relaxed and therefore more cooperative. 

3. I carve out time to “do nothing” with my toddler.

Before I was introduced to RIE’s Educaring approach, I felt an immense amount of pressure to always have something planned for my bonding time with Lee. I was compelled by unknown forces to constantly “entertain” him with finger painting, a sensory bin, or sidewalk chalk. 

Enter RIE’s focus on “wants nothing” time during which you simply sit on the floor with your child and see what happens. Table any agenda or plans. Put away your phone. Don’t offer a suggestion of what to do. Just relax next to your little one in their play space.

The objective of “wants nothing” time isn’t to have your child entertain you or for your child to learn how to be bored (which, admittedly, does have its benefits). As Gerber writes in Dear Parent, “[‘Wants nothing’ time] is a free-flowing space in which the child should not feel he has to perform, because the parent is not sending out the kind of demanding messages that say, ‘I am here now, what shall we do?’”

The calm and slow pace of “wants nothing” time is refreshing and liberating for both the parent and child. Lee will select a toy and sometimes he’ll ask me to join in his game and other times he plays independently but enjoys knowing I’m nearby. Most importantly, this quiet togetherness reminds Lee that he doesn’t have to impress me with his artwork or tower of blocks or do something (good or bad) to hold my attention. He can remain satisfied and secure that he is loved for who he is. 

This is a beautiful sentiment and, to take it a step further, is a wonderful benefit to parents: When your child is assured that “they’re enough as-is,” they are more comfortable detaching from you and building their self-confidence and sense of self-sufficiency. This means they won’t lean on their parents to constantly play with them so you can actually step away from them (to go to the bathroom or speak on the phone in the other room) without a total meltdown.

4. I watch him play without interfering with or commandeering his method of playing. 

Similar to how I felt like I had to entertain Lee prior to learning more about the Educaring approach, I was always turning every activity into a learning experience. Rather than allow Lee to just wrap his developing mind around a toy, I would overwhelm him with the “right” way to play with it and correct him if he was doing it “wrong.” It made Lee’s playtime stressful for him and me: He was annoyed that I was distracting him from something he enjoyed and I was nervous that Lee wasn’t going to learn the “correct” way to build a tower of blocks. 

Through RIE, I learned the importance of “uninterrupted play,” which Deborah Carlisle Solomon describes in her book Baby Knows Best as, “By uninterrupted, we mean just that. 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.” 

Infants and toddlers learn through problem solving and trial and error through their play. When I was regularly swooping in to straighten the tower of blocks for Lee, I took away an important learning opportunity for him to independently realize that you can’t stack a block on a round ball or that the tower makes a loud noise when it crashes down. Moreover, this constant problem solving on the parents' part discourages children to accept a challenge and build resilience; they’re more likely to later come to you to “fix it” when you know they’re capable of figuring it out themselves.

5. I modified my toddler’s bedroom into a “yes space.”

We don’t have a lot of space in our New York apartment, but we have preserved Lee’s bedroom as a safe zone where he freely and comfortably explores. His bedroom is his domain and outfitted with furniture to suit his height, toys that are readily available and pique his interest, and no dangerous objects like unanchored furniture or open electric strips. (For more on Lee’s Montessori-inspired bedroom, you can read about it here.)

We converted Lee’s bedroom into this safe space for our shared benefit: We get peace of mind and Lee gets to peacefully play. We can rest assured that Lee is safe, so we don’t need to hover, play body-guard, or micromanage his playtime and can actually step out of the room knowing he will continue peacefully playing while we brew a pot of coffee. Meanwhile, Lee gets a place of his own where he can enjoy uninterrupted play and get lost in his Brio train set without fear that we’re going to come in and pull him away because, “That’s dangerous!” 

This makes our household calmer overall, which foster’s Lee’s ability to stay focused and less reliant on stimuli (like an iPad or TV) to hold his attention. “... Babies who live in a home that is peaceful are given the opportunity to develop focus, as opposed to those who live in a home where the television supplies the sound track and the parent frequently jumps up to answer the phone or respond to the beep of a text or e-mail,” furthers Solomon in Baby Knows Best.

6. We have a very predictable family routine.

Now that Lee is a full-fledged toddler, our day-to-day routine is pretty formulaic and highly predictable-- Lee knows what happens next in his agenda at any given point in the day. I cannot stress enough how deeply comforting routines are to young children; predictability ingrains a sense of security and assurance, “I know what to expect.” Magda Gerber writes in Dear Parent, “Being exposed to circumstances we cannot anticipate nor understand, and in which we cannot actively participate, makes us feel helpless.... Anticipating a change, on the other hand, gives us a feeling of being prepared, of being in control.”

While having lunch at 12:30 on-the-dot every day sounds so tedious and limiting to parents, it’s actually mutually beneficial for the adults and children: If you can maintain a consistent routine, your child will learn to roll with the changes that will inevitably come up and parents won’t incur as many mood swings, temper tantrums, and power struggles in their daily lives. The entire family will be more relaxed overall and ultimately more flexible when you need or want to be; Gerber points out, “You may occasionally bathe in a different tub, sleep in a different bed, but you still bathe, then sleep. From these simple routines self-confidence, security and consistency in the midst of change can be derived.”

7. I give natural consequences to unwanted behavior.

Differently said, I don’t give Lee a time out. Deborah Carlisle Soloman breaks down the difference between consequence and punishment in her book Baby Knows Best, “A consequence happens as a result of your child’s behavior. A punishment is a penalty for doing something wrong. Help your baby or toddler learn about cause and effect, or what happens as a result of his actions.” Toddlers live in the here and now, so sending Lee to his room as a form of punishment isn’t going to help him reflect on what he did “wrong.” He’s already onto the next thing and forgotten about his offense entirely.

Instead, I want Lee to understand that when he pushes a boundary, there will be a natural cause-and-effect consequence to his actions. For example, Lee knows he’s only supposed to eat in the kitchen, but he’ll still try and sneak a cracker into the living room, just to test how far he can get before I stop him. As I see him eek towards the kitchen threshold, I’ll remind him sternly, “Lee, we eat our food in the kitchen.” Sometimes he’ll come back to the table and finish his snack. Other times, he’ll turn on his heels towards the living room. At that point, I grab his cracker and evenly tell him, “I won’t let you eat this in the living room. I’m putting it on your plate in the kitchen. You can eat it there.” 

Through this, I am not punishing Lee but I am matter-of-factly reinforcing where the boundaries are and, if he can’t follow them, there is a direct consequence. Over time, Lee will develop self-discipline and I won’t need to constantly nag or scold him to eat in the kitchen; this limit will simply be a matter of course to him.

If you’re interested in learning more about RIE and its philosophy, check out my blog post on the topic on the key takeaways (and misunderstandings) I had about RIE, Educaring, and respectful parenting here.