Babies Project

Welcome to Babies Project!

We are an educational non-profit, offering developmental movement education for babies of all ages: infants, toddlers, parents, caregivers, adults and elders. Our vision is to create a world where babies and adults of all ages get the touch, support and movement they need to thrive.

Beginning in 2017 we offered in-person sessions at our space in Manhattan, but moved out of the space at the end of March 2023.

This was big news for us – the pandemic has had a seismic effect on our operations: families have moved away from the city temporarily, partially, or permanently; we’re navigating our sense of safety about gathering in person; and thresholds have shifted around decisions like getting on the subway and taking babies out in the world. Change is happening all the time, of course, and part of how we grow.

Babies Project is not closing! We’re just giving up having a dedicated space. Going forward, Amy and Sarah will both be available for online sessions, and Sarah will be available for home visits and self-organized baby pods in NYC.

Babies Project was created by Sarah Barnaby and Amy Matthews, who are certified Infant Developmental Movement Educators (IDMEs) trained through the School for Body-Mind Centering. Our work (and play) is inspired by the principles of Body-Mind Centering® and Infant Developmental Movement Education.

Watch part of a by-donation Babies! session with Amy & Sarah:

See below for information about the kinds of developmental movement sessions we offer for babies and caregivers and how you can schedule a session or consultation.

Sign up for our newsletter to get updates on where and how you can participate in Babies Project sessions and events — online and in person in NYC and southern Maine.  

• ONLINE SESSIONS
  • Babies! Group Sessions
  • Private Sessions
• IN-PERSON SESSIONS
  • Babies! Open Group Sessions
  • Self-organized Baby Pods
  • Private Sessions
• BOOKING

What We Offer and How We Work

Are you curious about your baby’s movement development?
Do you have concerns about your baby’s developmental progress?
Do you have questions about how to support your baby as they learn something new?
Do you want to know what your baby might do next?
Do you want to learn ways to pick up, set down and hold your baby?
Are you looking for ideas about how to play with your baby?
Do you want to practice handling skills before your baby arrives?

We are Infant Developmental Movement Educators (IDMEs). All of our developmental movement sessions are opportunities for you to learn to observe, appreciate and facilitate your baby’s movement and perceptual development. We value a child’s process more highly than the timing of their milestones. This means holding space for each child’s process and timing as they find their own way.

All of our sessions are based on the belief that babies and toddlers learn best when they’re led by their curiosity and supported by their sense of safety and comfort. We don’t believe that babies and toddlers need to be taught, entertained or motivated in order to learn. As caregivers, we don’t need to try to get them to do something as a way of furthering their progress. Instead, little ones need our presence, availability and support. In this sense, our sessions are infant-oriented and baby-led.

Based on this perspective, there is no set format or agenda in our sessions with babies and toddlers, whether we are working with one or a group of families. Our intention is to meet each baby and family where they are.

We IDMEs may talk about principles such as “baby ball,” balancing extension with flexion, the value of “small falls”, and prioritizing the process of learning rather than achieving a particular position.

We will share handling suggestions with you. How a baby is handled affects all aspects of their development: their patterns of perception, their problem-solving abilities, their emotional well-being, their cognitive functioning, and their sense of agency in the world. Even small changes in a caregiver’s habits and choices in handling their baby can add up to a significant difference in how a baby’s development is supported (or impeded).

For more about our approach and what you can expect in these sessions, please read about our values and principles, our perspective on developmental movement, and our focus on touch and handling skills.

In-Person Babies Project Sessions

Weekly sessions at Kids at Work, NYC

Thursdays, 12:30-1:30pm
register through Kids at Work

Babies! Open Group Sessions

@ Balance Arts Center

TBD Check back for updates on next sessions!

Self-organized Baby Pods

We’re offering sessions to self-organized groups of 2 to 5 families. We can meet at Balance Arts Center, or at a space you have access to (e.g., a community playroom, or your living room). Babies (and toddlers) do not have to be in the same developmental age range; it’s up to the group.

These hour-long sessions are opportunities to receive semi-private, individualized attention to ask questions, work on specific skills, address your concerns, and spend an hour being with your babies and learning together.

The smaller the group, the more individual attention each family can receive. The larger the group, the more questions we can gather but there may be less individual time. We welcome multiple caregivers to participate and multiples (twins, etc.) are no extra charge. 

• We ask that one parent/family serve as the point person for communicating with us about scheduling and paying for the session or series. 
• Single sessions are $150 for the group. A series of 4-8 weekly or bi-weekly sessions is available for $125/session. If price is an issue, please email us and we will work with you.
• We encourage you to register for multiple sessions so you and your little ones have a chance to orient to our approach and become familiar with the space and other participants.
• Email us to inquire about scheduling a session or series of sessions.

PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT SESSIONS

Online Babies Project Sessions

Babies! Online 12:00-1:00pm ET MONdays

PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT ONLINE SESSIONS

If you’re not sure what you’d like to do or whether you’d like to work with us, please email us at babies@babiesproject.org – we’d be happy to help you figure it out!

Booking

Teaching touch and handling skills to parents (and other caregivers) has become a main focus of our work, and a way of putting our values and principles into practice. We’ve put a lot of consideration into clarifying and articulating these principles, and as of early 2020, we’ve developed an illustrated handout with practical suggestions that come out of our philosophy.

We send these documents to parents and caregivers in advance of their first session as a way of saying “here’s where we’re coming from.” It’s part of our mission to spread the ideas and practices more broadly, and to make them available to anyone who is interested. To this end, we spent the month of May 2020 on an awareness campaign that included a series of short articles and online events to unpack the information, answer questions, and gather feedback. You can find links to these resources below. The documents are available in English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Slovak – with additional languages in the works.

We believe practices that help us care for ourselves and each other should be shared freely and spread widely – always and especially in this moment. This is our contribution.

Interested in receiving support around learning and practicing these ideas? Email us to schedule a private session, online or in person, with or without a baby.

We invite you to read more and download the documents – the links are below.

Let us know what you think – leave a comment on this page or send us an email.

RESOURCES

Follow the links below for a series of companion articles and recorded zoom sessions (from May 2020) where we expand on and discuss the ideas in our handout.

Guiding Principles: Safety, Orientation, Comfort, Bonding and Curiosity

Baby Ball: A Responsive Container

Four Surfaces: We Are Their Environment

Picking Up, Putting Down, and What to Avoid: Moving Transitions

THE DOCUMENTS

CREDITS
Text: Sarah Barnaby & Amy Matthews
Illustrations: Joanna Cotler
Spanish translation: Maruma Rodríguez
Finnish translation: Satu Palokangas
French translation: Sandie Chanchah do Vale
Italian translation: Gloria Desideri
Brazilian Portuguese translation: Diego Pizarro
Slovak translation: Oľga Silvášiová

We respect your privacy and will never sell, rent, lease or give away your information (name, email, etc.) to any third party. Unless you opt in to our email list, we will send you email only to let you know of updates to these documents.

ALL THE DETAILS

Why handling matters

• How a baby is handled affects all aspects of their development: their patterns of perception, their problem-solving abilities, their emotional well-being, their cognitive functioning, and their sense of agency in the world.
• The tasks of caring for a baby are numerous and repetitive. While they might be routine and task-oriented for the caregiver, they are potentially big experiences for a baby.
• Because they are repetitive, even small changes in a caregiver’s habits and choices can add up to a significant difference in how a baby’s development is supported (or impeded).
• Handling tasks are opportunities for relationship, engagement, participation and co-regulation between the caregiver and baby. They are moments that can help build secure attachment and a felt sense of a safe home base.

Teaching handling skills

• In teaching handling skills to parents who bring their babies to developmental movement sessions, we’ve frequently heard responses such as “I wish I had known this sooner,” “That makes so much sense” and “Nobody ever taught me this!” There is clearly a gap and we want to help fill it.
• Our training and our way in to working with people is movement-based. Handling skills are movement skills, and they are learnable and teachable.
• We developed our Preparing for Caring workshop in 2017 as a way to offer our principles and handling suggestions to people (often before they have a baby), giving them a chance to learn about and intentionally develop their handling skills and habits.
• In January 2020, we offered the workshop to several parenting groups at a community center in East Harlem. In preparation for this outreach effort, we developed an illustrated handout for the participants — something we’ve wanted to do for a long time.  

About our illustrated handout

• The illustrated handout was developed to go along with our Preparing for Caring workshop, and in conjunction with our outreach to an Early Head Start community in NYC. Now we’re using it as a way to start spreading the ideas and suggestions more widely, making them freely available to anyone who’s interested.
• We’ve published the principles and handout documents with a Creative Commons copyright that allows sharing and adapting the work for non-commercial use with credit. Our intention is to encourage collaboration and reuse, while preserving the source credits and lineage of the work.
• Our principles and the handout are being translated into several other languages with the support of Infant Developmental Movement Educators and BMC teachers around the world. The principles and handout are currently available in English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Slovak.

Preparing for Caring by Babies Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://babiesproject.org/preparing-for-caring/.

Please contact us at babies@babiesproject.org with your inquiries, comments and questions.

When you donate to Babies Project, you become a member of a community of people who are supporting babies and the people who care for them – parents, nannies, grandparents – to have more comfort, more sense of their own agency, more skills at learning and moving, and more resilience as they encounter the world. (We’ve heard many touching and powerful stories about what coming to Babies has meant for our caregivers and babies. You can read them here.)

Our approach to working with infants and their caregivers stems from a philosophy that applies to everyone. We believe that while the first year is crucial in supporting optimal development, we can revisit developmental movement patterns at any age – including as adults – in order to find more support and become more resilient.

We invite you to become a Member of Babies Project with a donation of any amount (there are additional benefits for donations of $150 or more) to support our non-profit mission and to participate in our growing community!

AS A MEMBER, you help support:

• Babies! and Toddlers, our by-donation developmental movement sessions for babies (or toddlers) and their caregivers;
• The ability of babies and caregivers to receive low-cost individualized attention in private or small group sessions;
• Outreach to communities who wouldn’t otherwise have access to infant developmental movement education.

BENEFITs for donations of $150 or more:

• Discounts on weekly classes and workshops for adults, and private sessions for infants & caregivers.

to donate and join the community click here.