We are thrilled to announce that Janet Lansbury's warm and wise guidance has been captured in a new book. Below is the Introduction to Elevating Childcare, A Guide to Respectful Parenting.
Finding A Passion For Parenting
Parenting is one of life’s most fulfilling experiences. It can also be exhausting, frustrating and utterly confounding.
The difficulties I faced as a new mother caught me off guard. I had looked forward to motherhood all my life and assumed that caring for a baby would happen naturally. Instead, I soon found that I had no clue.
My baby was adorable, yet never in my life had I felt so tired, lost, inept and disappointed in myself. The mothering instincts I had assumed would provide me with clarity and guidance never materialized. My life had become a monotonous succession of feeding, burping, diapering, entertaining, and soothing tears (lots and lots of tears, most of them my daughter’s). Though I combed desperately through stacks of popular parenting books, I found nothing that resonated.
At my wits end, I fatefully stumbled upon RIE (Resources for Infant Educators), the respectful approach to parenting founded by infant specialist and child care pioneer Magda Gerber. The approach made immediate sense to me, and I embraced it like a drowning victim with a life preserver.
Before long I had experienced a radical transformation in both perception and experience: first, by discovering my baby’s astounding natural abilities to learn without being taught, to develop motor and cognitive skills, communicate, face age appropriate struggles, initiate and direct independent play for extended periods and much more; then by realizing the tremendous energy and stress I had been wasting by struggling to entertain and second-guess my child.
Over the years, Magda became my dear friend and mentor, and her philosophy of child care my passion. I became a RIE parenting teacher, a lecturer at Early Childhood conferences, an active blogger with millions of readers worldwide, a personal parenting consultant, and an author.
This book is a collection of 30 popular and widely read articles from my website. They focus on some of the most common aspects of infant and toddler child care and how respectful parenting can be applied.
You will find Magda’s name or a quote from her on nearly every page of this book. Everything I know and write about springs from her wisdom and my own experience – with the hundreds of infants and toddlers who have come to through my classes, and with my own three children (now 21, 17 and 12). Janet Lansbury, Elevating Childcare
Do less, observe more, enjoy most. - Magda Gerber
Our Reviews:
"More than anyone, Janet Lansbury has been responsible for faithfully practicing, sharing and spreading the concepts Magda Gerber introduced and taught for years. Janet has a gift for "seeing babies with new eyes", and for teaching, writing, and mentoring parents to do the same. She has built upon what she learned from Magda Gerber through her own parenting and professional practice. This book is inspiring, and will give you the tools and information you need to transform your relationship with your baby, and to find your own passion for parenting. Check it out today! You won't be sorry you did." Lisa Sunbury Gerber
"This book is loaded with well thought out, valuable, caring and parenting suggestions. The approach presented is fine tuned by Janet Lansbury’s experience as mentor to parents and made personal with touching stories about her own children. Janet is an expert in sensitive observation, and the importance of allowing children to experience their own feelings, while learning and growing at their own pace. For me, it is especially touching the way she expresses these ideas so true to the way they were taught by my mother, Magda Gerber." Bence Gerber