As the director, I have many opportunities to see the delightful diversity of human development in action. Early in the week, I sat down next to two children working puzzles. One confidently maneuvered 24 pieces of a sea creature puzzle with ease. This child stood up when finished, and on his way to the dress up area, bumped into two shelves. On my other side, a child worked hard, her tongue poked out of the side of their mouth as she turned and turned the piece of a 4-piece puzzle, trying to find the right way to place it. Both of these children are exactly where they should be for their age and development. 
We think about child development in the different domains: big and small motor, language, cognitive, and social emotional. We know this development happens along a predictable continuum, and that this development may be uneven across domains, like the child mentioned before with the amazing cognitive skills and the low body awareness. You can imagine what this looks like in a classroom of ten to twenty children! In a way early childhood educators are master jugglers, balancing the diverse needs of so many different children.
The place that this may cause a rub is when children's development and needs don't line up--in a preschool room, one child may need to be extra busy with lots of stimulation, another may need a slow quiet pace. In a young toddler room, one child may be very interested in socializing up close to her peers while another may resort to biting as he does not yet have language to ask for more space. It is in these times that we see behaviors that are developmentally appropriate but socially inappropriate. And this is the magic of the early childhood classroom-- it is a laboratory of social and emotional learning. The teachers and children work together to build the children's understanding of themselves, their friends, the community. They learn to understand and regulate their own emotions and to read other's feelings. They learn problem solving and self-advocacy.  As a parent, I know how hard it is when my child is on the receiving end of some of this “socially inappropriate” behavior, and as an educator, I know that it is a learning opportunity for my child as well as the other child. It takes trust and time, and I am so glad that the children in our care have lots of both!

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the infant room— a delightful place full of gummy smiles, drool, big feelings and snuggles. And so many different baby steps! There is E who wants to walk so bad. He’s now balancing, standing up and sometimes even bouncing. Soon he’ll take his first step. There is S, our oldest. She doesn’t look much bigger than the others, but in the blink of an eye, she’ll stand and saunter over to the felt board to rearrange the pieces. There’s A, a babe with a smile as big as his big ole belly. He’s started balancing and staggering a step at a time. Little C is a tiny but mighty little one who will just as soon dance as take a step. How ever she moves, she claps for herself afterwards. The twins are their own dare devil universe, contentedly orbiting around each other, exploring the whole room on all fours. For a month, B hung out by the ramp, pulling herself up on the side of it, watching her friends scoot up and down. One day, she decided it was her turn, and now she even pulls herself to stand at the top of the ramp, surveying her world from new heights. Little H is still discovering her feet, laying on her back, crunching her legs up to grab her toes in surprised delight.
Each of these babies is at exactly the right place, taking exactly the right baby steps for their bodies and minds and hearts. And if that is true of them, maybe it is true of you and I too?

A recent birthday and growing bodies have brought up a topic near and dear to the hearts of 4 years olds. "I'm bigger than you!" one says to the other. "Nah-ah! See!" and so the comparisons begin... who is taller, older, faster, jumps higher. And so for Project Day, I asked the question, "What did you like to do when you were little?"
​I asked the children to start by drawing in their journals. Each kiddos carefully thought about this question and readily set to work.

One said, "That's me! I'm a baby! I'm playing in a box." Another said, "My mom says that I like to listen to music when I was little, so that is music and that's me." A third worked carefully, drawing a bed, a fruit, and "the Northern Lights cuz that's what I loved when I was little." I was delighted with the thoughtfulness that the children brought to this activity. Journals are a part of every Project Day, but sometimes they are a hurried affair, with the oldest child especially, drawing some swirls and declaring themselves finished. Next we read Jamie Lee Curtis's book When I Was Little, A Four-Year Old's Memoir of Her Youth. The silly illustrations had them in stitches.

My younger brother recently had his first baby, and I was so excited to share everything I have learned as an early childhood educator and as a mom with him. As I though about it, however, all this boiled down to two things:
1. Parenting is the hardest best thing you can do.
2. Learn everything you can about Magda Gerber and RIE.
Okay, so that is cheating a little, because the work of Magda Gerber is vast and deep and so so rich. My brother and his wife are quick studies, however, and as they welcomed their new human into the world, they were already deeply connected to the RIE philosophy, and ready to put these princicples into action.

RIE, Resources for Infant Edcucarers, is based on respect--for the infant and for the interactions of the caregiver with the infant. On their website, they write: 

From Dear Parent by Magda Gerber
THE BASIS OF THE EDUCARING® APPROACH:  RESPECT
Respect is the basis of the Educaring® Approach.
We not only respect babies, we demonstrate our respect every time we interact with them. Respecting a child means treating even the youngest infant as a unique human being, not as an object.
OUR GOAL: AN AUTHENTIC CHILD
An authentic child is one who feels secure, autonomous, competent, and connected.
When we help a child to feel secure, feel appreciated, feel that “somebody is deeply, truly interested in me,” by the way we just look, the way we just listen, we influence that child’s whole personality, the way that child sees life.
TRUST IN THE INFANT’S COMPETENCE
We have basic trust in the infant to be an initiator, to be an explorer eager to learn what he is ready for.
Because of this trust, we provide the infant with only enough help necessary to allow the child to enjoy mastery of her own actions.
SENSITIVE OBSERVATION
Our method, guided by respect for the infant’s competence, is observation. We observe carefully to understand the infant’s communications and his needs.
The more we observe, the more we understand and appreciate the enormous amount and speed of learning that happens during the first two or three years of life. We become more humble, we teach less, and we provide an environment for learning instead.
CAREGIVING TIMES: INVOLVING THE CHILD
During care activities (diapering, feeding, bathing, dressing, etc.), we encourage even the tiniest infant to become an active participant rather than a passive recipient of the activities. Parents create opportunities for interaction, cooperation, intimacy and mutual enjoyment by being wholeheartedly with the infant during the time they spend together anyway.
“Refueled” by such unhurried, pleasurable caring experiences, infants are ready to explore their environment with only minimal intervention by adults.
A SAFE, CHALLENGING, PREDICTABLE ENVIRONMENT
Our role is to create an environment in which the child can best do all the things that the child would do naturally. The more predictable an environment is, the easier it is for babies to learn.
As infants become more mobile, they need safe, appropriate space in which to move. Their natural, inborn desire to move should not be handicapped by the environment.
TIME FOR UNINTERRUPTED PLAY AND FREEDOM TO EXPLORE
We give the infant plenty of time for uninterrupted play. Instead of trying to teach babies new skills, we appreciate and admire what babies are actually doing.
CONSISTENCY
We establish clearly defined limits and communicate our expectations to develop self discipline.
© 1998 by Magda Gerber

These are the principles that I worked to bring to the teachers I worked with in Philadelphia, and they served as my guiding light in raising my own wee one. While parenting may be the hardest best thing, I hope that the RIE principles bring my brother and his partner joy in the caring for their new tiny soul.

This week, we delved into one of my favorite explorations: real clay.
​Young children are often offered play dough or plastic modeling clay for exploration. These options are easy to play with and easy to clean up, making them favorites for grown-ups. Clay presents another level of challenge--as you work with it is changes from cold and stiff to a warm, malleable medium. Following Ann Pelo's book, The Language of Art, I introduced the children to the clay, asking the oldest to carry the huge 25 pound block of clay to the table. It made an impressive thump​ as he placed it on the table.

Each child had a tray and a sponge for their work area, and I used a wire cutter to carve each boy a hefty chunk of clay. They got to work, realizing that the stiff clay required them to use their whole bodies to move it. Standing, they pushed into the clay using the weight of their bodies work the clay. As they manipulated it, it warmed and moved more easily. They used their sponges to moisten the clay. Soon they were able to squish it with their fingers, roll it with their palms, and making snakes, balls, and bowls. The oldest child in particular really wanted to make something. I encouraged them to get to know the clay first, to experience the different ways that the clay moved, held shapes, and changed. I promised that another day, we would make things to be fired in the kiln, but today was just for getting to know the new material. With this encouragement, the three children work intently for more than half an hour exploring the clay and learning about how to "speak" clay.

So for a while, my assistant teacher and I have been working with our class of 3 and 4 year olds to find ways to solve problems, and to be kind to each other. As is very typical for three and four year olds, however, many children have been experimenting with inclusion and exclusion and what it means to be friends. It seemed like we had been handling the incidents on a case by case basis, often stepping in as adults to resolve the problem. As the teachers thought about this, and how it was affecting the mood of the classroom, we decided to take a new and different approach. We decided to bring the problem to the children, and see if we could investigate the problem. We are calling it: The Meanness Problem. Like many of our projects, this undertaking is not one that we have done before, so we do not have a concrete map of where we are going. Rather we have guiding research questions that we have presented to the children:
What is meanness? How do you know if something is mean? Where is all the meanness coming from? ​

We started the project today with a GIANT piece of paper, to symbolize how this was a big big problem. On this paper, we will write our observations about meanness. In our first discussion today, the children sat with rapt attention, and had many ideas about meanness. They clearly had experienced the meanness, and knew many many ways to say mean words. We studiously wrote down the children's ideas. "Meanness is like when you say, 'You can't come to my birthday party,'" "When you say that you're not my best friend anymore," or "When somebody tells somebody that they are not gong to play cars anymore." They suggested drawing a mean face so we would know what the writing was about, and so we drew a mean face with slanted eyebrows and "mean teeth." We asked them to help us do the research together, and anytime somebody said or did something mean, we would write it on the paper to gather our data on meanness. In our next meeting, we will ask the children how we can learn more about the meanness.

This is a different approach to the social issues of three and four year olds than we as teachers typically take. My assistant and I have had discussions about the best way to talk about this problem with the children, and we have spoken with other educators as well. She is eager to do a corollary Niceness Project, while I am interested in following the thread of meanness to see if we can uncover more information about where this problem is coming from. We will find ways to pursue both avenues, finding ways to document both the problem, and how the children are thinking about solving it through teamwork, cooperation, and kindness. I want to figure out how they understand the meanness in the room, and how they think that we can dispel it. I want the children to own this problem. Only then can we start to figure out how to get it out. One child said, "Where is all this meanness coming from? It's a mystery!" And there is nothing that this class loves move than a mystery to solve!
As adults, it can feel uncomfortable to dwell on the negative emotions that exclusion in play can bring up for us, and it can be tempting to jump to the opposite of kindness. This exploration of exclusion is a fundamental part of child development, and it feels like we have a group of children with the social intelligence to tackle this problem head on, dealing directly with the "mean" and think about how it is affecting the individuals and the group. We are interested to see where this goes and how the class will figure out how to solve the problem. We also encouraged the families to have conversations with their child about the subject and to share any thoughts that they have with us so we can add it to our research.

Little people are learning so much about their world, and just like they hammer on play dough to see what will happen, just like they endlessly build ramps for their cars, just like they swirl paint colors mixing across paper, they are figuring out how to play with each other. They are figuring out what happens when they invite a friend to play, when they tell a friend their idea, when they follow a friend's lead, and, yes, when they tell a friend "You're not my best friend anymore!"