Chronicles of Chaos

March 13, 2008 | Print

Oliver Falls Down

Oliver and I are at the coffee shop. When we walk outside to the patio, he trips and falls on the bricks, not hard. A woman passing by us sees him stumble, and rushes towards him uttering, “Oh no!” I’m behind Oliver watching to see if he needs me, and otherwise doing nothing.

For some reason Oliver’s oblivious to the woman. He uprights himself and heads towards the pigeons bobbing in the corner of the patio.

The woman looks at me a minute, surprised and says, “Sorry about that.”

Maybe she apologizes for responding so dramatically to a minor stumble. Or maybe she realizes that by not doing anything I let Oliver take care of himself and go along with his plan without interruption, and she could have changed all that.

At times with my own kids, my preference for observing and letting the kids work it out appears insensitive to other parents. I remember one dad telling Michael, You’re the parents who let the kids hit each other. A joke, but not really. We don’t let the kids hit each other, we just follow a less is more approach.

The balance doesn’t feel difficult until my kids are in dynamics with other kids whose parents are more hands on. The word share is batted around as the solution to toddler toy grabbing, in contrast my observe and reflect style sounds professorial (He took the truck. I see you want the truck too, let’s find another truck (assuming I know another truck is available)).

A big part of RIE parent/infant classes is learning when to support babies and toddlers, and to what degree. I learned so much by going to the weekly classes with Amelia for all those years (which led me to training and then leading a version of these classes). We spend half the class observing the kids’ movements and interactions, and how the facilitator offers support and respect. The other part of class is discussing questions and challenges raised by parents that particular week.

The experiential aspect, the showing up each week, reinforces and expands my parenting confidence and range. Plus just slowing down for an hour or so and being with children and parents in that way feels like the good parts of therapy.

Tomorrow Oliver and I are starting an observation class for two year olds at a Waldorf school. I could say it’s for Oliver to be with other kids and experience a program of his own, but a lot of the excitement is for myself–I love the feeling of spending time with kids and parents in this way. These classes inspire me about parenting, because there’s always more to discover.

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