Even Magda Gerber Struggled as a Young Parent

08/01/2022

Even Magda Gerber Struggled as a Young Parent

Infants and toddlers are extraordinarily competent sensory motor scientists who systematically investigate their world using their scientific tools: mouth, eyes, skin, ears, and their developing muscles.
Jim Greenman, Early Childhood Expert, 1950-2009

In a New Yorker story on less anxious parenting, Janet Lansbury quotes the late Magda Gerber: "I was amazed at how difficult it was to be a parent. I was angry. I thought I was the only one who didn’t know what to do with babies and somehow in my education someone had forgotten to tell me."

Lansbury describes Gerber's first encounter with Dr. Emmi Pikler as she treated Gerber’s 4-year-old: "Gerber was dazzled by Pikler’s insistence that her daughter could speak for herself—that even the youngest children could be enlisted in stunning feats of cooperation. ‘It made me feel that this was the answer to all my questions and doubts,’ Gerber wrote. She devoted the rest of her life to learning from Pikler and disseminating her ideas."

Gerber's collected works are available at magdagerber.org.

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.