RIE classes?

[lalemma]

Any MDCers have experience with RIE classes? I'm looking for something to do with my 13-month-old, and RIE sounds pretty cool - but I don't know much about it. Searching MDC led to a couple of old threads that discuss some elements of RIE that give me pause (disapproval of co-sleeping and babywearing?) - and I am not interested in getting involved with a philosophy that's really dogmatic about stuff.

I like the little I know about RIE - the idea of treating your toddler as a person, and respecting their bodily autonomy seems really in-line with our family style. And I dig the concept of respecting your little one's agency to explore and figure stuff out - there is a LOT!!!! of anxious helicopter parenting where we live, and I'd really like to find support for doing things a different way.

But - we're pretty crunchy and simple, as a family: we do family bed, no stroller, are trying hard to avoid plastic and consumerism, etc. If you have any experience with RIE, would you say that overall it's compatible with "AP values" (I know that's so hard to define...) or not so much? I'm not interested in being in a situation where I have to defend co-sleeping or carrying my child around. You know?

If not RIE - any ideas for other parent-child classes?

[EVC]

Well, like anything else, I think your experience will depend greatly on the specific teacher/caretaker you get. Dd was not in a RIE center, but once had a caretaker that was REALLY into the RIE philosophy (and I guess had taken classes in it or something?). Which sounded great to us the first time we met her and visited her classroom. But her implementation of the philosophy turned out to be utterly horrible. Basically, for her anyway, it led to what was essentially a cry-it-out situation. Several children--including my dd--had a rough transition into daycare and would scream and cry at drop off. Instead of providing comfort, this caretaker took the view that we honor children's feelings by letting them vent those feelings without adults trying to interfere and convince them to feel otherwise. If a child is sad, an adult should respect that and not simply try to convince him to be happy (because a child feels what he feels and feeling sad sometimes isn't wrong or bad). Yeah, that SOUNDS good and I agree with it in theory. But what it meant in this case was that there were children screaming alone in the corner until they were red in the face and could barely breathe with no intervention on the part of the caretaker, because soothing them, in her opinion, meant not respecting their honest feelings. 

So, I don't know. That was enough to really turn me off RIE. As I said, I'm sure it has A LOT to do with the specific teacher/caretaker and how she IMPLEMENTS what generally sounds like a good philosophy. If I were considering an RIE center, I would meet the teacher and, rather than ask about general philosophy, I would ask specific questions beginning with "What do you usually do when...", "How do you handle....". But I suppose those are questions you should ask of any potential daycare providers. 

[lalemma]

!!! My goodness - I'm really glad I asked. I did a bit more googling after reading your response, and it does seem that RIE is into what I would consider CIO.

Ugh.

[JudiAU]

We never took RIE classes but it turns quite a lot the parents at our Reggio preschool did. Together. They are mostly a bf'ing semi-crunchy group and the lead teacher's "challenging" daughter sin our class. I've seen a lot of teacher-choked interaction at the 2-5 age group and i really like it. I don't know if it is really Rie or reggio oe just good preschool but children and their emotions are treated with great respect. At the same time, Rie theory is supposed to end after 2.

I do think some of the parents are fairly unemotional in response to their kid's emotions. I cant tell if the teacher's wildly emotive kid is helped or harmed by the sympathetic but very rational response. Our talks sometimes discussed it and it creeped me out at the time. But in practice, at our preschool, the teachers are really wonderful to the kids.

[JudiAU]

Also, I remember one meeting where sleep and pacifiers were discussed. Many people (which I thought was odd because they all bf'd) clearly did CIO A LOT.

My gentle sleep suggestions were met with hostility and actually kind of worse, disdain.

[lalemma]

Yikes, Judi! Thanks for sharing that. It's looking more and more like RIE isn't for me - although I'm sure there are amazing individual teachers out there.

In googling, I found the blog of a local RIE instructor, and she goes into pretty heavy detail about how AP ideas like nursing your baby when s/he is upset are Not Okay, and that you need to respect the child's experience of their emotions by holding them while they cry, instead. And that she disapproves of parents who come to class with nursing toddlers and let the toddlers nurse when they fall down or whatever and need comfort - so I'm guessing my toddler and I would be kind of out of place.

Ah, nuts. There were things about RIE that sounded so promising!