Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/emmi-pikler/5025666/
Who was Emmi Pikler?
Many of us who are passionate about quality care of young children are familiar with Emmi Pikler’s wise, insightful, path-breaking ideas, which have been written about extensively in articles and books. But how many of us know much about the woman, her life and training, the influences on her, her work as a private pediatrician, her heroic World War II activities and what it was like to work for her?
Emilie Madeleine Reich was born in Vienna in 1902, the only child of an Austrian Jewish kindergarten teacher and a Hungarian Jewish artisan/manufacturer of baking implements. When she was six, her family moved to Budapest and six years later, her mother died. When I asked Pikler’s daughter, Anna Tardos (a child psychologist who works at the Pikler Institute) if her mother’s death might have influenced Pikler’s choice of profession and her passionate commitment to orphaned children, she answered that she thought it might have.
If so, Pikler managed to spin the threads of tragedy into gold that has reached nearly every corner of the world, influencing the way thousands of young children are raised in institutions, early childhood programs and in families. The latest Pikler Symposium, held in ...