The Nuthatch Nest

This is one of my very favorite books. Reading it is like a meditation. It always makes me happy to read it. The illustrations are incredible and colorful. They keep the attention of my young group.

The children also like the book because it has so many animals in it. The animals are identified at the end of the book, so it can provide an opportunity to teach children about new animals.

I also love this book because it is a story about differences, about kind words, and about being unapologetic about who we are. It’s also a story about valuing slowness, which I love given our hurried culture. ❤️

This is why eliminating or limiting the use of objects that restrict movement in childcare is so important.

Container Syndrome is a term used to describe the lack of skill in infants who are not allowed ample movement opportunities. Container Baby Syndrome is the result of an infant being placed in a container for an excessive amount of time during the day. This extended time leads to structural, movement, and behavioral challenges as a result.

Baby containers include baby equipment and items such as:

👣Restrictive playpens
👣Crib
👣Car seats
👣Strollers
👣Bumbo seats
👣Bouncy seats and swings
👣Rockers
👣Nursing cushions
👣Vibrating chairs
👣Jumpers
👣Exersaucers
👣Positioning pillows
👣Slings
👣Floor seats
👣Infant swings
👣Walkers
👣Jumpers

All of the time spent in these baby containers adds up! When in a positioning device such as the ones listed above, little ones are limited in the motor development that results from stretching, wiggling, turning, reaching, and otherwise moving.

https://www.theottoolbox.com/container-baby-syndrome/

What beautiful world could we create?

Why don't we?
More and more adults are having an ‘education epiphany’. They have come to realise that putting large groups of same-age babies or children into a classroom for years and years on end was an idea dreamed up by men who are now long dead. Adults today realise that change doesn’t ever come from mainstream, it comes from those who dare to do something different. These adults have come to understand that keeping children in classrooms is a perfect recipe for destroying the children’s chances of growing their seen and unseen connections with their natural world.

When humans come undone from the natural world two things happen; first the child’s lifelong personal physical and mental wellness is at stake. And secondly, a person who is disconnected from the living world unwittingly makes life decisions which go against the interconnectedness of Life. They do not take into account that their every action-invention-chemical will have an effect on the Web of Life. That’s what has got us where we are now, in the anthropocene age, on the edge of the sixth mass extinction, facing catastrophic climate change. All power to the people who are creating places and spaces for children that are especially tailored for the biological and social-emotional needs of those children, people who are mending the broken connections. You know who you are.

A wonderful podcast episode about the gifts the RIE philosophy offers babies and parents. ❤️

‎Respectful Parenting: Janet Lansbury Unruffled: Surprising Benefits of Doing Less, Observing More, and Welcoming Feelings on Apple Podcasts ‎Show Respectful Parenting: Janet Lansbury Unruffled, Ep Surprising Benefits of Doing Less, Observing More, and Welcoming Feelings - Mar 1, 2022

Temporary Infant/Toddler Opening ❤️
_____________________________

We have a full-time, temporary, infant/toddler opening available in my small, licensed family daycare located in Montevideo. The opening is available now until mid-January 2022. Hours are 7:15 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Inspired by the RIE philosophy, our primary value is the respectful and nurturing care of babies and toddlers.

Please PM us with questions, for more information, or to set up an interview. References are available upon request. Thank you!

https://www.magdagerber.org/blog/helping-your-baby-to-get-the-sleep-she-needs

Helping Your Baby To Get The Sleep She Needs Dear Magda, It is becoming more and more difficult to put Alison, my seven-month-old, to sleep. I have always nursed her to sleep, but now she wakes up crying as soon as I put her down, or shortly...

"There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children."
—Marianne Williamson

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🤫

Great post!

Science keeps telling us to our children. It's interesting how many scientists are now focusing on the thinking that happens not in your but in your . You have spread through your innards, and there's increasing attention on the vagus nerve, which emerges from the brain stem and wanders across the heart, lungs, kidney and gut.

The nerve is one of the pathways through which the body and brain talk to each other in an unconscious conversation. Much of this conversation is about how we are relating to others. Human thinking is not primarily about individual calculation, but about social engagement and .

Stephen Porges is well-known for his “Polyvagal Theory,” which focuses on how the concept of is fundamental to our mental state. Porges tells us that those who have experienced have bodies that are highly reactive to perceived threat. They don't like public places with loud noises. They live in fight-or-flight mode, stressed and anxious. Or, if they feel trapped and constrained, they go numb. Their voice and tone go flat.

Physical reactions shape our way of seeing and being. When we're really young we know few emotion concepts. Young children say, “I hate you!” when they mean “I don't like this” because they haven't learned their culture's concepts for hatred vs. badness. But as we get older we learn more emotional granularity. The emotionally wise person can create distinct experiences of disappointment, anger, spite, resentment, grouchiness and aggravation, whereas for a less emotionally wise person those are all synonyms for “I feel bad.” A wise person may know the foreign words that express emotions we can't name in English: tocka (Russian, roughly, for spiritual anguish) or litost (Czech, roughly, for misery combined with the hunger for revenge). People with high emotional granularity respond flexibly to life, have better mental health outcomes and drink less.

Cuddles help develop emotional granularity. If bodily reactions can drive people apart they can also heal. Martha Welch of Columbia University points to the importance of loving physical touch to lay down markers of .

Under the old brain-only paradigm, we told people to self-regulate their emotions through conscious self-talk. But real emotional help comes through co-regulation. When a caregiver and a child physically hold each other, their bodily autonomic states harmonise, connecting on a level. Together they move from separate distress to mutual calm.

When we step back and see the brain and body thinking together, the old distinction between reason and emotion doesn't seem to make sense. Our very perceptions of the world are shaped by the predictions our brains are making about our physical autonomic states. And we can also see how important it is to teach emotional granularity, starting from birth.
https://cstu.io/853e81

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