In this location, we will share short articles from time to time that may be of interest to parents, caregivers, early childhood teachers, and other professionals. It is our hope that these articles inspire, inform, and create a dialogue among those who read them! Some article may also find their way into our journal from time to time as well.

An old popular song goes like this:

“Button up your overcoat, when the wind blows free,
Take good care of yourself, you belong to me!”

But the question could be, when living with a young child, just how do I accomplish this?  Learning to dress yourself is just one of the many life skills that an infant, a toddler, and a pre-schooler master step by step, like eating, sleeping, and moving.  No different from these other capacities, each tiny bit of success in learning to dress herself builds joyful self-confidence and a sense of competence, a sense that she can succeed in her world.

Picture the joyful look on a toddler’s face when he manages to pull off his sock, and struggles to put it back on again, over and over.  The persistence in trying to manage the sock, and then the shoe, shows us a picture of learning how to learn.  Trying again, and again, sometimes making progress, sometimes making no progress that we can see, young children are learning to be active in their lives, taking ownership, taking risks, and caring for their basic needs of warmth and protection by clothing themselves.  Another contrasting picture is the five or six year old child who expects and depends upon an adult to do all the activity of dressing for her, who becomes a limp dishrag at the very thought of putting on a snowsuit, a jacket, or boots!

Curiously enough, we often ask how we can help a child learn to crawl, or walk, or to speak – capacities that our children actually learns fully out of themselves, by themselves, and in their own time if there are older people in the environment who move, walk, and speak.  And we wonder if it is too early to teach a child to learn to read, or so many other things.  But we never seem to ask when it is time to begin to help a child learn to dress himself!

Some things children learn out of themselves, and other things are social learnings – meaning that they learn them with us and through our relationships with them.  Dressing is a central one of these learnings!  And when can we begin? Almost from birth, amazingly enough.  For even in their beginning chaotic movements, very young infants are interested in us and can begin take great joy in those special, intimate times that we spend together when we care for their bodies.  If we work slowly, giving her a chance to notice and participate, give her time to respond and to learn what we are doing when we bathe, diaper, or dress her slowly, over time, she will come to expect these movements that we make, to anticipate them joyfully, and to want to be involved in them.  If we give time, and notice, we may see that a leg or arm reaches out to help – not yet skillfully, but with a desire to help us.  At the beginning, we do most of the cooperating!

But step-by-step, we can lead our children to a joyful sense of competence and confidence, in addition to a feeling of relationship and cooperation.  Dressing is hopefully not something we do to a child, but something we do with a child.  If we do it together, it can become a pleasant or even joyful shared moment; if we do it to a child, sooner or later the child will gain the strength to resist our forceful uncomfortable efforts.  Dressing is an ideal time to teach gentle touch, respect for another person’s body, patience, and task completion.  All these are invaluable life skills, and since the curriculum presents itself so frequently, why not make the most of it?

By the time they can walk, their skills in caring for themselves will give them added security.  The child who has practiced hundreds of times with an interested adult will be interested himself and will have real skills, in contrast to the child who has been ‘dressed’ by someone else, who has a daily reinforcement that this is something beyond his skills or abilities.    By the time your child reaches that magical age when their sense of self comes forth strongly, the “I want to do it myself” moment, we can support and celebrate their need and wish for independence!

2004

SOME THOUGHTS ON RHYTHM
by Susan Gray Webe

Life is full of rhythm!  Our bodies are full of it: our heartbeats, our breathing, our organs, for example, all have rhythms.  We walk rhythmically, and we talk with rhythm.  We dance and sing with rhythm, and we wake and sleep rhythmically. 

The natural world also has rhythms: picture the moon and its in and out pull upon the tides as they visit the land, only to leave it again. The growing of the plants, the falling of the leaves, the ripening of apples and tomatoes  – each has its moment.  Our human activity also traditionally has had many rhythms: planting and harvesting; cutting, splitting, and gathering wood for warmth, household work – the laundry, the baking, the cleaning.  And not only was there a rhythm to the week, but the activities had their own rhythms – kneading bread, swinging an ax, plowing or hoeing the field – and there were even songs to accompany work.  After the hard physical effort came rest.  The seasons had a profound effect on daily life – what people ate, what tasks they did, and even how comfortable they felt.

Today technology has freed us from these natural cycles and much of the physical activity of work.  With electric lights and modern communications, with stores open all night, it can be ‘daytime’ anytime at all, seven days a week.  Even a day of rest is not often so any longer.  And we can eat any food in any season, coming from so far away that we have not even a picture of who the farmer is who has grown our food.  The most common rhythm for us may be the hum of the computer or refrigerator!  Truly, these aren’t rhythms at all; - life filled and varying – but unceasing beats without change.  And the beat is not leisurely or natural, but busy and hurried, and is not really rhythm at all, as rhythm is filled with life.  These sounds are merely a shadow of the life of rhythm, a droning beat. 

It is not that we are not grateful for all that technology gives to us. On the contrary, many helpful and useful things have come our way through technology.  But it is helpful to recognize that there are losses as well as gains.  Children, especially, benefit from life rhythms.  They are in the midst of the process of creating and developing the rhythms of their hearts, their breath, their digestion and sleep.  For them, the possibility to trust in regular times and sequences for the activities of their lives brings bodily health and security.  In the early months and years, it is the familiar that brings comfort – a familiar blanket, face, hand, or voice; a predictable sequence of events.  Regular sequences and times help a newborn baby settle into life, and give a secure foundation from which to get to know the world.  All the special people and places, the sounds and smells that greet her are new, and they are her life!  For the adult, care giving may become repetitious and uninteresting, but for the child, it is the greatest joy.  Imagine the child’s joyful anticipation of special time with those who love her, taking care of her: after we eat, daddy will give me my bath, momma will help me to put on my pajamas, a familiar voice will sing to me and tuck me in bed.  This familiar sequence and pattern bring delight for the child, and as these sequences become a habit, they later become the source of discipline, because “this is just the way we do it”.

Rhythm also helps avoid over-stimulation and fatigue for young children, because the ‘breathing’ of the day – now more active, now less active and quiet – refreshes their energy.  It also builds good habits for later life when the pace of our day and the stress of life make us forget to pace ourselves in a reasonable way.  This work – play – rest rhythm is a health habit for a whole lifetime!

Dr. Jane Healy, a Ph. D in psychology with a background in neurological development, feels that a rhythmic home life is vital to developing thinking skills.  Establishing order from chaos helps develop neural pathways that create routes within the brain that enable us to think.  The nursery rhymes and finger games we play with our children, the lullabies and songs all help with this process, and it is their rhythm that both brings delight to the children and helps them to recall them.

The year turns round, over and over, bringing birthdays, family celebrations, travels to visit grandparents.  The toddler remembers these events and finds joy in their repetition

Spending time in nature is a wonderful support to rhythm within our homes.  Getting in touch with the seasons bring happiness to children and renewal to us.  The young child begins to feel a security in the order of the year – first springtime with the tiny blossoms, spring bulbs blooming, puddles, and new leaves.  Then comes summer with its fluffy clouds, green all around, lightening bugs . . . all at a pace that a very young child can absorb without stress and the confusion of hurry.  These slower rhythms of nature can slow us down as well – the breezes, the crickets, the bird’s songs, sun sets – and then our internal rhythms become slower, more peaceful, and healthy. 

As a popular song of the 1940’s (I think!) says, “I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got rhythm, who can ask for anything more?”

How can we create or strengthen rhythm in our lives?  Creating rhythm arises out of a balance between the adult’s awareness of the child’s needs and the child’s naturally emerging rhythm.  We begin with the rhythm of waking, sleeping, and eating, for in the beginning this is all there is.  As we observe closely, patterns will begin to express themselves, and we can support these patterns in becoming an actual predictable, secure rhythm.   As our children grown, play is added, and bathing, and time outdoors.  Our children take their cues from the sequence of the day’s activity.  “If I have just had my walk, now it must be time for my nap”, imagines the infant.  The repetition of this sequence brings joyful anticipation over time and a willingness to be guided into the transition toward the next activity of the day.

Parents discover that when a rhythm is created, far from compromising their freedom, life actually begins to give more freedom.  Children are more relaxed and comfortable, more secure, less anxious and stress-filled because they know that the adult they love and trust is guiding the flow of the day.  They relax into this security and often are less clingy or demanding.  They need not be preoccupied with making sure that their own needs are met and can be free to play imaginatively, to explore, to observe. For the adult, the possibility to predict what will happen when, to anticipate the sequence of the day with its more active and more restful periods, enables a possibility to imagine how she or he will spent time when a child is napping times or play with the deep engagement that is possible when the security of predictable rhythm underlies daily life.  The alternative is a child who becomes preoccupied and at times obsessed with gaining adult attention, with manipulating the environment, or with gaining access to food continuously because she does not know what to anticipate and trust throughout a day.  The child who knows, for example, that meals will come on a predictable rhythm, can spend energy on other things. 

With a rhythmic life, our children are gently guided toward order from the chaos of their first days of life.  We refine our rhythm and recreate it as our children grow and change and as we discover how best to support them. 

March 2005

SWEET DREAMS by Susan Gray Weber

We have all heard it said that ‘the morning is wiser than the evening’; and certainly have been advised to ‘sleep on’ a question, or dilemma, or a challenging life decision. But in truth. sleep in our time is an elusive gift. We are a culture of the sleep deprived, the sleep obsessed, often drugging ourselves into sleep and again, in the morning, drugging ourselves to conscious awakening. We live in a timeless time in which one can live daily life all through the night: working, shopping, exercising at the gym, communicating via fax or e-mail. Night and day are intertwined and confused; the traditional picture of the rhythms of the cosmos - the rooster rousing us with his cock-a-doodle-do, the farmer at work with the rhythms of the sun’s rising and setting are unfamiliar to most of us. And we, on the other hand, are pummeled with the model of technology - the machine that needs no rest, the pressure that if we only tried harder, we human could successfully mimic the machine and work ceaselessly.

And so we are confused, and our children are confused, and we are all tired! We learn early on, as new parents, what a large task it is for our children to learn to wake and sleep in an earthly, fulfilling and restorative rhythm. We gently cradle the baby in our arms, rocking or singing a lullaby, trying to guide her into sleep, but this is no easy task. How confusing today’s world must be to the little one: darkness is not quite complete, with electric light shining brightly; activity rarely ceases in our homes; we adults may work at night or at day, or even a little of both. And so, the child is offered so few natural cues, and imitation of us as adults in our daily rhythms is not a natural support, either.

At the same time, sleep is crucial for the infant and young child, a time during which it is developing its body ‘with all its might’. If day time is over filled with sense impressions, the child will be affected not only in the effort of going to sleep, but throughout the entire night, and we know well how greatly the night itself affects the day to follow.

So - what can we do for our children, to offer sleep as a gift to receive comfortably? Our first task is to examine our own relationship to sleep. How do we feel about it? Do we feel guilty for sleeping, or anxious about the effort of falling asleep, or do we carry a confidence in the goodness and healing of sleep, happy and relaxed as we approach our own bed times? Do we have a sense for the transition between day and night, for the qualities of the evening, that special transition time? Perhaps the first step will be to develop a fresh relationship to sleep and the night within ourselves, one that is confident and positive, recognizing that we must not feel sorry for our children that they must let go of the day and sleep, but rather, feel grateful for the day that has passed. Then our children can feel this as well.

Secondly, we can create a picture of the environment of sleep. To sleep well, we all need quiet, warmth, and a feeling of protection. For the child, this might mean a special soothing canopy or veil over cradle, crib, or bed; a wool or quilted sleeping sack, or a cozy hot water bottle. For the infant, or in some cases even an older child, swaddling creates this sense of protection. Eating also relates to sleep, as the liver takes up its restorative work in preparation for the day to come, and wants to rest from the act of digesting heavy foods. Thus, a heavy meal in the evening can disrupt our sleep.

For our children, a living, dependable ritual for bedtime that is unwavering creates this sense of warmth and protection as well. First, we put all in order by tidying away the playthings of the day: now it is time for the dollies to be tucked in, the cows to go into the barn, the toy train to park at the station. We can prepare for the morning by laying out the clothes. Then perhaps comes the bath, then the lighting of a candle and a story, finally concluding the day with a poem or prayer and a kiss. Our calm, centeredness as parents can work miracles at this moment! This is not the time for recorded lullabies or stories or songs, but rather the moment to send our children to sleep with the loving human voice of those who love the child most dearly as the last sound.

It may be helpful to observe as carefully as possible: how many impressions can this child tolerate during a day in a satisfying way? How can we arrange the child’s day to limit the impressions to this manageable quantity, being ever mindful of the quality of the impressions? For it is the rhythm of the day that creates the support for the night’s sleep. It is often observed that an overtired child will have difficulty sleeping, but that the ‘more a child sleeps’, the more he will sleep! Sweet dreams!

IN PRAISE OF CRAWLING by Susan Gray Weber and Jane Swain

There are so many magical moments that greet us as we watch our babies grow and develop! At birth, greeting one another with our eyes is a profound moment. Some weeks later, our child’s first smile brings us great joy and reinvigorates us to continue the long sleepless nights.

Day by day, week-by-week, new capacities unfold and we are continually awe- struck at the miracles of our children’s development. Our babies discover their hands, they wiggle their legs, they roll from back to front and front to back. Why, then, choose crawling as such a moment for celebration? Watch babies crawl! They are so joyful, up on all fours, free from the gravity of the earth just a bit more, traveling to new corners. Crawling is a very special capacity, brilliantly designed by its creator to strengthen our babies in many important ways, and laying a firm foundation for the developmental stages that follow.

What skills does a baby need before she can crawl? She must have strong muscles all along her back, sides, and tummy, so that she can lift her trunk off the ground. For example, it takes several months before the baby, while lying on her back, has enough strength, coordination and body awareness to lift her bottom off the floor and put her foot into her mouth. If we remember back to those earlier days, not so long ago, when we carefully supported the baby’s head whenever we picked her up, we realize how far she has come, and how much effort it has taken to build up those now-strong muscles! And then, balance. . . Raising her head as she lies on her tummy, lying on her side, rolling from side to side— all are small but mighty steps in learning to balance herself, and they all build the skills for crawling.

We know from the scientific research of the last decade that the baby’s brain grows greatly in the first two years. So we know at the same time that much must be happening in these precious 24 months. And it is true. Each different movement — rolling, balancing on the side, pulling themselves along with their arms, lifting their heads — each movement and all its variations creates new and more complex roadways in the baby’s brain. And as anyone knows who has needed to negotiate city traffic, the more different roadways we know, the more success we will have in reaching our destination, especially if traffic is heavy. The brain is no different and it, too, greatly appreciates the diversity of its roadways.

For the baby, each new movement is an adventure in brain creation, in building an increasingly complex repertoire of life strategies that will later be used for academic learning, social problem solving, and creativity.

To praise crawling is to recognize that this complex skill has given the baby a new freedom. She is learning how to learn, and this carries her through her entire life. Try, fail, try again, persist, try again, make a tiny, almost unnoticed bit of progress, and finally integrating so many little elements we cannot imagine, to succeed!

Not only the joyfulness of crawling is a gift. There is much within the activity of crawling that is important for later learning. Crawling is very important for eye focusing and tracking (following an object with your eyes). It lays one of the foundation stones for reading and also for working with our hands, guided by what our eyes see. Crawling helps to integrate the upper and lower body, the right and left sides of the body, and exercises the trunk in increasingly more sophisticated ways. And the transitional movements from crawling to sitting further develop balance!

The baby’s hand, at birth just a curled fist like a spring fiddlehead fern, has a long journey to take to be able to hold a pencil and crayon, to tie a shoe, to butter toast, to use a saw or screwdriver. How does the hand learn to do all these wonderful things? Interestingly, crawling is very important in the development of the hand. The weight that passes through the hand as we are up on all fours serves to “wake up” the muscles of the hand, to stretch out the tendons of the wrist and fingers, and to develop the arches of the hand. (Did you know that we have arches not only in our feet but also in our hands?) Crawling also helps to integrate primitive movement patterns so that the hand can move on to more sophisticated, coordinated, and complex movements.

And if your baby hasn’t crawled, but has scooted past this wonderful and important stage of development? Actually, this is an increasingly common occurrence. In fact, today kindergarten and nursery school teachers commonly encourage crawling in a variety of ways in their classrooms in order to help children who have skipped or spent limited time crawling. As parents, we can get down on the floor and play crawling games with our children – for example, playing “London Bridge” by having children crawl through an arch instead of walk through.

We can encourage activities like drawing with chalk on the driveway or driving little cars and trucks on roadways on the floor, where children will be on their hands and knees and will crawl as part of the activity. We can also create spaces that children will naturally want to crawl through; for example, tunnels with sofa cushions and blankets or crawling spaces through the forsythia bushes or in the snow banks. When the child is still an infant, we can provide an inviting, clean and safe area on the floor, and we can allow the child to spend sufficient time in this environment so that crawling has the possibility to unfold.

Crawling is an important part of the infant’s development in the first year of life. It is a rich activity and provides the infant with many foundation stones for later life; this movement in particular has tremendous ‘bang for the buck’! It is important to note, however, that there are children who develop perfectly well who skip crawling, as there are other avenues that can provide the child with the same important capacities that crawling does. For example, cross-country skiing and climbing up trees and on playground equipment provide some of the same components that crawling does. However, crawling is a wonderful, natural movement activity for the baby. No other activity is so all encompassing in providing all of the aspects mentioned above.

By Susan Weber and Jane Swain pediatric physical therapist, Keene, NH

The authors wish to acknowledge and thank our two physical therapist colleagues, Barbara DeMatteo of Pathways Pediatric Therapy in Keene and Rachel Madsen of Marlborough, NH, who added their rich experience and study of the development of the very young child to this article.