Guest Writer, In Wild Air
I decided to follow a theory of child-rearing, called RIE, that prescribes open-ended toys for kids. And so my daughter, age six months, has some rattles and stuffed animals, but mostly I’ve been giving her things from the kitchen. I watched a video online when I was bingeing information about the philosophy, of a little baby lying outside holding a metal bowl and watching the light bounce off of it onto the wall of his house. The baby was four months old and he was tripping out with joy. I was sold.
J. didn’t start to love the bowls until a few weeks ago. Now she turns one over, beats it like a drum. Now she spies herself in its shiny surface, breathes out and sees the condensation, beats it again with her wide-open hands. Now she flips it back over, puts her mouth on its rounded edge, then grabs it and clangs it on the floor.
Regular toys are a crock. Get metal bowls instead.
I was the guest writer for the newsletter In Wild Air, August 2017.