Day Care of Hard Knocks

Harper's day care follows what is called RIE philosophy. RIE stands for Resources for Infant Educators. However, it might as well be called RIP, because they don't interfere with your child unless they're about to kill themselves.

The philosophy basically boils down to the idea that if a child can get into a situation, they can get out of it. RIE also promotes letting kids work out issues on their own. It seems to me that it would be much simpler (and cheaper) to put all the kids in a room with a sheep dog and let them have at it.

All that being said, I should note that we absolutely LOVE our day care and adhere to RIE-esque parenting at home. We don't coddle Harper and we encourage her to stretch herself with new challenges. However, this "hands off" approach does result in a few more falls and scrapes than if we dressed her in one of those over padded sumo outfits that bigshot companies rent for happy hours or executive retreats.

So as a result, Harper consistently comes home with injury reports. Most of the time the injury reports simply detail some fall or scrape resulting in minor bumps and bruises. Although, it was an exciting moment when we read about her first bee sting. It's just a classic childhood rite of passage.

A couple weeks ago, however, Harper got an injury report that McCall thought was hilarious. I think the humor stems from the sheer journalistic simplicity of reporting only the facts. Regardless, it seems that Harper received a valuable lesson in the fine art of negotiating.


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