Educaring^® Principle: Involvement in Caregiving

“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.”

Ruth Anne Hammond, RIE Associate