By Katarzyna Meyer
The first book I read about Emmi Pikler Approach has sent me on a long journey, which is still going on. There are many aspects of her work and each of them are going deep. My first steps, which where inspired by her ideas, was to experience in my daily life with my two small children at home the value of movement for a child.
This maybe be quite easy, this maybe also very hard. Why so? Because we all think, well yes, of course children like to move. There is nothing new about it. So what’s the point? Well, wait a minute and read some sencences from Emmi Pikler. Read the advice she gave to parents and other adults… even over 70 years later, it is very different way of paying attention to movement… we still don’t fully recognise, what movement for a child means. It’s pleasure, it’s fun, it’s a way to grow into our own body, a way to feel confident and strong and healthy…also a way of learning and growing new structures in the brain and to regulate our inner state, our emotions and moods. And the list goes on… If you like to know more, you can read this book: “A moving child is a Learning Child: how the body teaches the brain to think” by Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy, 2013.
But it is not just about any movement. Emmi Pikler’s work was about autonomy of a child’s movement.
As an adult one can start to take autonomy of child’s movement seriously when we notice how different a child becomes, when we at last start to make changes in our daily lifes to allow free movement.
This means to ask ourselves “how and where can I make space and possibilities for my child, to move on its own?” and to stop trying to push the development, which should come in its own right time
. No matter, where you live, you can always find new ways to make some space for movement. The changes can be small at the beginning, but they will grow with the time. After a few months I can see in all the children, how they are becoming a new person, not only moving more confidently, with pleasure in their own body and with such a grace… but they also are becoming someone, who has more trust in relationships, more openess to other people and more curiousity in the world.
Are you geting interested now? You would not be the first person… Emmi Pikler started her work with babies, who were orphan’s just after the 2. world war in Budapest. And achieved wonders… And since then, there are more and more parents and professionals, who get inspired by her ideas…
Would you start with a book? Here is a nice one: Moving with Pleasure from the Beginning by Agnes Szanto-Feder, 2020.
There is a great interwiew Pennie Brownlee about Pikler Approach, named Refocusing our Image of the Child, to watch here:
She had also written a great book “Dance with me in the Heart: The adults’ guide to great infant – parent partnerships”.
You can get it here