RIE Principle #5: Child is an Active Participant in Caregiving
At Sustainable Play Preschool we utilise the RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers®) approach to caregiving. This perspective emphasises connection as key to empowering each child’s growth and development.
Our previous RIE posts detail the first 4 RIE principles of basic trust, environments, time for uninterrupted play, and freedom to explore child-child interaction. Today we’ll get into the fifth principle,
“Involvement of the child in all care activities to allow the child to become an active participant rather than a passive recipient.” (Resources for Infant Educarers®)
For reference, the RIE perspective rests on 7 basic principles:
- Basic trust in the child to be an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner
- An environment for the child that is physically safe, cognitively challenging, and emotionally nurturing.
- Time for uninterrupted play.
- Infant – Infant Interaction – freedom to explore and interact with other infants.
- Involvement of the child in all care activitiesto allow the child to become an active participant rather than a passive recipient.
- Sensitive observation of the child in order to understand his or her needs.
- Consistency, clearly defined limits and expectations to develop discipline.
Sustainable Play Approach
Our staff RIE Leader Rosie shared the following reflection with our Educators on this principle:
“During caring activities (feeding, nappy change, toileting, dressing etc), we encourage even the tiniest infant to become an active participant rather than a passive recipient of the activities. We can create opportunities for interaction, cooperation, intimacy, and mutual enjoyment by being wholeheartedly with the child during the time we spend together. Often children are so refueled (cups are full) by this unhurried, pleasurable experience that they are ready to explore their environment with only minimal intervention from adults.
No one can pay full attention to a child all of the time, especially in our busy long day care settings. So the natural time to give a child your full attention is during those moments where you are with them one on one already, such as a nappy change, assisting a transition into care, providing first aid, meal times, sleep times etc. Some tips to being fully present and encouraging active participation are:
- Prepare ahead – have everything ready so you won’t have to search for a nappy, spoon, or towel, which would disrupt the continuity of your time together.
- Observe – find the right time to begin a care moment, if a child is absorbed in play (and it is not urgent, eg a soiled nappy) waiting for them to be ready will allow them to be more present and involved in the activity.
- Explain to the child what you are going to do – even the youngest infants, although they may not understand the words at first, will soon begin to associate your sounds with your gestures and actions and anticipation will grow for the time together.
- Communicate, step by step – allow the child to follow and become involved in the process, make eye contact, study your face, follow your actions, respond to you and you to them.
- Slow down – in order for the child to have time to truly participate, everything should be slowed down. Allow tarry time for a child to respond to a question, to do an action for themselves, or to share feelings with you. This might look like “I’m going to take your shorts off now (pause) I wonder if you can help me (pause) Can you lift your bottom (pause)”.
- Pay full attention – whenever you are involved in care activities (key caring moments) do it with your full attention. Try to “unbusy” your body and mind, be fully there, interested only in that child for that time. As a team, we can support this by not interrupting an educator who is involved in a care moment, and helping to create time and opportunities for slow and attentive care moments within our routine and program.
Magda Gerber says,
“Whereas a caregiver may rush through routine caring activities in order to get ready for the more valued time of following a curriculum, lesson plan, or structured stimulation, the Educarer uses the time that must be spent with the child anyway as a source of valued learning experience.”
The video below is of a much younger child and so obviously nappy changes will look very different in our setting but it’s a nice clip of how connected and present Magda is and how she explains the steps now so that in the future the child will know the steps and be able to participate more and more.”
RIE Associates describe ‘Child as Active Participant’
Ruth Anne Hammond (RIE Associate) shares, “in the RIE approach, we encourage adults to allow children to be active participants rather than passive recipients in all the caregiving activities. You’d be surprised how quickly an infant can begin to understand your requests. You think it’s silly to talk to babies because they don’t speak, right? You think they can’t understand you, but they actually are learning from early on, and even a very young baby can lift a leg or put a leg down in helping with a diaper change.
They’ll even kick their leg through their pants when you ask them.
The main thing is to remember how important it is to slow down. They don’t process our requests at the same speed that an adult does. If we slow down, they can keep up and they can become really involved, and this gives them a very strong sense of their own ability to be part of every event that concerns them.”
*Note: none of these things should be expected, requested or insisted upon by parents…just offered as an option, like: “Would you like to try taking your sock off yourself?” Independence and mastery are about accomplishing things by choice. [Children] sometimes choose not to do things they are fully capable of doing for a variety of healthy reasons. Trust and don’t push.
- “Dressing and undressing (undressing usually comes first): This is the most common one parents seem to overlook or just don’t make time for. [Children] can take their shoes and socks off if we provide minimal help (like sliding the sock over their heel so they can pull it off from the toe). Parents get used to rushing these things to get them done, but if we slow down and give children a little time, make a conscious effort to “move at the speed of children” (as Jeanne from the website Zella Said Purple aptly describes it), they often do it with only minimal assistance or none at all. In my classes I ask the children if they would like to take their bibs off and give them to me, and then I usually loosen the Velcro so that they can get the bib off easily. But one child in this one-year-old class surprised me by being able to put her bib on herself…In another class I facilitated, 2 year olds weren’t yet doing this. Is that because I did it for them and didn’t give them the opportunity?
- Eating with [utensils]: All three of my children ate well with a spoon soon after they turned one, probably because I followed Magda Gerber’s advice to introduce solids with the baby on my lap and use two spoons, so that the baby had one to practice with daily. [Are you still feeding your child because you are anxious about them not taking in enough nutrition? Trust the child and if you had been withholding their independence at mealtimes, slowly start to give them that back in ways that seem natural to them.]
- Climbing into a car seat: I’m definitely a creature of habit, and this one took me by surprise with all three children. It would happen by accident when I wasn’t looking. I’d realize…whoa…my baby is quite capable of climbing into her seat and may have been able to for a long while. [Save your back and encourage your child to get into their own car seat. Be patient with the process and encourage them to move the straps over their arms, loosening the straps as needed so that they can eventually just hop in and put the straps in place ready to go!]
- Climbing up and getting back down (with spotting): If [children] get used to us taking them down from structures, steps, etc., rather than waiting, spotting and encouraging them while they problem-solve, they can believe themselves incapable and dependent on us to help them do what they can do on their own.
- Puzzles: This is another thing [children] can begin doing, but only if we 1) don’t show or help them, and 2) don’t lead them to believe that puzzles are tasks that need completing. Just let them fiddle, experiment, leave things partially ‘done’. Don’t teach them there’s a right way, and they’ll retain the confidence to persevere and eventually succeed.
- Natural gross motor development: [Children] can achieve all developmental milestones (and enjoy many transitional positions in between) without adult assistance, if they have plenty of time to practice.
- Self-entertainment – extended periods of uninterrupted independent play [see our blog post on providing this RIE principle of ‘time for uninterrupted play’]: We create this opportunity when we provide safe play spaces that include some open ended play objects (see this video for ideas) and cultivate independent play from the beginning. [Children] revel in their free play time when it has been introduced early and gradually becomes a predictable part of their daily routine.
Of course, our [children] can’t do any of these things without our support – our patience, restraint, encouragement, and acknowledgement of their struggles and successes. As Magda Gerber explains in Dear Parent – Caring For Infants With Respect, sensitive observation is the key to knowing what to do when…
“By closely supervising our infants, by allowing them to do what they are capable of, by restraining ourselves from rescuing them too often, by waiting and waiting and waiting, by giving minimal help when they really need it, we allow our infants to learn and grow at their own time, and in their own way.” – Magda Gerber”
Thank you for reading and look out for our next blog on the sixth principle, “sensitive observation of the child in order to understand his or her needs.”
Sources:
- Educaring® Approach – Resources for Infant Educarers®. (2022, December 5). Resources for Infant Educarers® -. https://rie.org/educaring-approach/
- Gerber, M. (2022, July 26). Magda Gerber’s Basic RIE Principles. Magda Gerber Legacy. https://magdagerber.org/magdas-writings/magda-gerbers-basic-rie-basic-principles
- https://rie.org/educaring-principle-involvement-in-caregiving/
- https://amshq.org/Educators/Membership/Member-Resources/The-Montessori-Uninterrupted-Work-Period
- https://www.janetlansbury.com/2011/08/surprising-things-babies-might-do-if-given-the-chance/