1. Guiding Principles: Safety, Orientation, Comfort, Bonding and Curiosity
This is the first of four in a series of companion articles and recorded zoom sessions. It is part of our Preparing for Caring project to build awareness and educate about the importance of handling skills in caring for a baby.
We have built our work at Babies Project around the progressive states of safety, orientation, comfort, bonding and curiosity. In this post, we unpack these ideas.
Developmental Movement: Elders & Babies
At Babies Project, we offer developmental movement education for "babies of all ages." What do we mean by this?
We have a common personal history. We were all once babies and our earliest experiences as babies are still with us.
Developmental Movement: On Track or Behind?
A good part of our work at Babies Project involves talking about developmental movement— what it is and why it's important. The topic comes up in our discussions with parents and caregivers who bring their babies to Babies Project, often with questions like these:
“Is my baby on track?"
"Are they behind?"
"Should we be concerned?”
Our Values (the long form)
At Babies Project, the principles we teach, play, facilitate, explore and live from arise from our core values of agency, comfort, curiosity and movement. We believe these values are embedded in developmental movement, and they can guide us to be more responsible, resilient, interdependent, self-regulating and relational.
Developmental Movement for Babies & Toddlers: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach
The study of developmental movement is the study of how we learn to move in our first years of life. In Body-Mind Centering®, we specifically study the basic movement patterns, reflexive pathways and integration of our senses, as well as the progressive layering of rhythms, experiences and relationships that help an infant find a sense of self, integration and ease.
Toddlers - Guidelines for Caregivers
We developed these guidelines as a way to help orient families to our approach and our space. They were sent to caregivers before their first visit to our weekly Toddlers session when we had our space in Manhattan (2017-2023).