RIE® Before Baby™ Course
Before Baby™ is an introductory RIE® course for families expecting, waiting to adopt or thinking about becoming parents. Before Baby™ is designed to start you on your family building journey with confidence in yourselves as parents and trust in your baby's unique ability to show you the way.
Before Baby™ will help you establish healthy patterns from the beginning of life and includes:
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Diapering
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Bathing
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Feeding
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Time Together
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What crying means and how to respond
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Sleep for baby and parents
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Setting up the nursery
Class sizes are kept small so parents can receive meaningful and personalized information. There will be demonstrations and opportunities for practice of caregiving techniques, videos, and time for sharing questions and concerns.
The price for this RIE® certified course is $350 per family with two parents or caregivers. Like all Respectful Caregiving offerings, this course welcomes families with alternative parenting & family structures such as queer & trans families, polyamorous families, and single parents by choice. Custom prices are available for families with more than two main caregivers, which might include coparents, grandparents, or nannies. Financial assistance is available.
What is class like?
This course is taught in a mixed format that includes five weeks of live Zoom discussion, videos, and group exercises. An online platform hosts recordings and additional resources for you to explore.
In order to receive a certificate of completion, you will need to give the course your full attention and have your video on to demonstrate your engagement. You should expect the Zoom sessions to be interactive and full of discussion, questions, and group activities.
A Group Learning Experience
You will learn in a small group of other expecting families, with time spent in large and small group discussion. This course is intentionally kept small at 10-14 participants, so you will have ample opportunity to come to know your fellow students as you learn together throughout the course.
Assignments
While this course does not have formal assignments, you will be offered the opportunity to participate in weekly reflective journal questions that will help you identify your values as a parent and think about strategies for the beginning of your parenting journey. You can submit your journal entries to your instructor for feedback and discussion, or you can keep them private.
A Reasonable Time Commitment
You can expect to devote a total of 1.5-3 hours per week to this course, including our Zoom time, reading, and/or journaling. You might also wish to re-watch videos after we have watched them together in class to help you absorb the information. If you are taking this course with a partner or other caregiving relative, you may want to set aside 1 hour a week to discuss what you are learning with each other and consider how you will apply the methods to your own family.
Respectful Caregiving students say...
About Your Instructor: Christina Vlinder
I have been working with infants, toddlers, and older children in child care and private homes since 1999. I began my career with some ideas about what I didn't want to do, but no concrete plan for what I did want to do. I worked with many families and slowly began to figure out what felt right. Once I began studying child development in a more rigorous way, I was able to relate those gut feelings to the huge body of scientific knowledge we now have about what children need and what helps them thrive.
I discovered that the approach that most accurately satisfies both my gut and the research about infants and toddlers is the Educaring Approach (also known as RIE for Resources for Infant Educarers), created by infant specialist Magda Gerber. I began studying with RIE in 2010 and became a RIE Associate in 2017.
Since then, I have taught RIE Parent-Infant Guidance™ Classes, RIE Before Baby™, RIE Nurturing Nanny™ and RIE Foundations. I have served as a guest speaker at conferences and podcasts, hosted local events, and led workshops for large groups of learners. I look forward to sharing what I know with you and to hearing your thoughtful questions and feedback.
As this is a certified RIE course, I participate in a peer mentoring program. You can expect one or two other RIE Associates or Pathways students to be either observing or actively participating in instruction during the course.
Upcoming Courses
Looking for a possibility not listed here? If you have a group of 10-14 people who would like to take the course, you can use the contact form to request a private course.
Other Offerings
Attachment Theory
For Nannies
Attachment Theory is the primary theory for how infants and toddlers develop during the first three years of life. In this self-paced online course, you will have an opportunity to learn how babies form their first relationships and how the quality of these relationships has a profound impact on the rest of their life.
Scholarship Fund
Every session, there are many students who would like to learn about better ways of caring for infants and toddlers but who can't afford the cost of the course.
Respectful Caregiving scholarships come from two places: donations and our Amazon affiliate program. The affiliate program sends a small portion of each sale you make after clicking on one of our Amazon links to the scholarship fund. So, thank you for using links from this site!
You can also make a difference by donating. 100% of your donation goes to scholarships. Thank you for helping others to improve the lives of infants and toddlers!
