Handling – Babies Project

Handling Practices: Some Historical Context

written by Sarah Barnaby on 08/15/2023

If you’re familiar at all with our approach to supporting infant movement development, you’re likely aware that a main focus of our work is teaching infant touch and handling skills to parents and other caregivers. (If you’re not familiar, read more about our Preparing for Caring project.)

We’d like to share a bit of context and history about our handling suggestions. Where did they come from? The short answer is that we didn’t make them up! There’s history behind them, though we do like to think we’ve honed, curated and elaborated upon them over the years.

The longer story … Read more

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

This is the first of four in a series of companion articles and recorded zoom sessions. It is part of our Preparing for Caring Project to build awareness and educate about the importance of handling skills in caring for a baby. Read more about how these ideas play out in practical suggestions.

We have built our work at Babies Project around the progressive states of safety, orientation, comfort, bonding and curiosity. While it is similar to Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”, this layering of ideas comes out of a Body-Mind Centering® approach to developmental movement.*

Watch a recorded Zoom session

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Update: Preparing for Caring at Early Head Start

Our project with Ellyce DiPaola, IDME and EdD candidate at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, which involves offering our Preparing for Caring: Touch, Handling & Bonding Practices (PFC) workshop to an Early Head Start community in NYC, continues.

In March 2019, we held a focus group with prospective participants and received valuable feedback about how we can best present the material to suit the population.
The three of us (Ellyce, Amy and Sarah) gave a presentation titled Preparing for Caring: Circles of Support about the project at the Body-Mind Centering Association annual conference in July 2019. We were heartened by the

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Our Vision, Mission and Values

Our Vision

To create a world where babies and adults of all ages get the touch, support and movement they need to thrive.

Our Mission

To nurture resilience, healthy interdependence and connection by educating about touch, handling and movement.

We serve babies of all ages: infants, toddlers, parents, caregivers, adults and elders.

We do this by using principles of Body-Mind Centering to support each person’s developmental process of learning, exploration, change and growth. We offer classes and workshops, training for professional caregivers, and writings about our ideas and work.

Our Values

Our core values are AGENCY, COMFORT, CURIOSITY … Read more

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Our Principles

We believe:

Babies come in as whole people, not as blank slates. Babies are fully and intensely immersed in becoming themselves – always whole, and always changing.

A baby’s experience is real and valid, though it might not be comprehensible to us. We can offer comfort without denying their experience, or our own. We can acknowledge and validate their feelings and emotions while also saying “no” to particular behavior.

Babies learn best when they’re led by their curiosity – which comes from a sense of safety and comfort. We are a baby’s environment when we hold and handle them, and … Read more

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Our Values (the long form)

At Babies Project, the principles we teach, play, facilitate, explore and live from arise from our core values of AGENCY, COMFORT, CURIOSITY and MOVEMENT. We believe these values are embedded in developmental movement, and they can guide us to be more responsible, resilient, interdependent, self-regulating and relational.

How do we raise children (of all genders) to respect themselves and others?
How can we model a way of being in the world that encourages self-awareness and awareness of others?
As caregivers, how can we re-pattern what we were taught and no longer value, and find a different way

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About IDME

All of our classes for caregivers and their babies are taught by IDMEs (Infant Developmental Movement Educators) trained and certified by the School for Body-Mind Centering. IDME training includes four core developmental movement courses in addition to two 10-day modules on working with infants. This training takes place over several years and includes over 500 hours of course work, observations and sessions.

We meet each baby at their own level, and help parents and caregivers understand what kind and amount of stimulus and support is appropriate and helpful at each stage of development.

We teach parents and caregivers the skills they … Read more

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