Less Teaching, More Learning

The case for letting babies teach themselves

Here’s the idea, probably the most controversial one I’ve shared so far. Your baby can learn to roll over, crawl, walk, run, jump – without you doing anything, except creating a safe environment where they can learn.

When I first encountered this concept, I thought: But aren’t parents supposed to teach their children? Isn’t that literally the job?

Turns out, that the instinct to be our baby’s teacher might be more about our own recollection of childhood than about how babies actually learn. Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at Berkeley, argues that the parent-as-teacher model is a surprisingly modern invention, shaped by our own memories of sitting in classrooms. But babies? They’re not students waiting for instruction. They’re more like scientists running experiments.

Kids learn through observation and experimentation. Watching, trying, failing, adjusting, trying again. Our job isn’t to teach the curriculum. It’s to make sure the lab is safe.

Getting out of our babies’ ways during gross motor development is one of the most foundational concepts of RIE parenting, but I didn’t get why it was such a big deal until I had these two experiences:

Moment 1: M Rolls Over!

When M first rolled over onto her stomach, she was thrilled. As were we! But then, after a few blissful minutes, she started crying.

My first instinct was to say, Let me roll you back over, explain to you how to do it, and then move your arms and legs for you so you can start practicing.

That’d be helpful, right? Scaffolding the learning process?

Nope. According to my RIE teacher, that would only get in M’s way. Instead, she told me to wait before jumping in—maybe this was just temporary frustration and M would actually prefer to stay on her stomach. And if M was genuinely unhappy? My job wasn’t to teach her how to roll back. It was just to pick her up, put her back where she started, and let her figure out the rest. (While narrating what I was doing, of course.)

Over the following weeks, M taught herself to roll both ways. I watched the whole process unfold: days of getting stuck on her stomach and fussing, then one afternoon—total silence, followed by a squeal of delight. She’d figured it out. The next day, she seemed to have forgotten how. Then it clicked again. Within a week, she was rolling back and forth like it was the most obvious thing in the world, with this expression of quiet pride that I might never have seen if I’d rushed in to ‘help’ her through it.

Moment 2: Walk! Walk!

When M was ten months old, we went away for a long weekend with a precious baby named Mikey, who had just turned fourteen months. Mikey was learning to walk, and whenever he was awake and not eating, he was shouting “Walk! Walk!” and demanding that his mom help him walk around by holding his arms. This was happening for hours a day, starting at around 5am.

Mikey was in the pre-milestone moment where kids become fixated on learning a specific developmental skill. This happens to all kids, but in this case, Mikey believed he needed his mom to learn to walk.

For this whole long weekend, Mikey and his mom were locked in this exhausting cycle. What started as her casually trying to help him learn turned into an unintended dependence that was hard for both of them.

This experience reminded me that my temptation to insert myself into M’s learning process would only create the kind of dependence that leads to ‘Walk! Walk!’ being shouted at 5am.

So when people started asking me, ‘Is M walking yet?’—and they asked constantly—I had to hold myself back from trying to speed her up process towards the milestone.

What this actually looked like: I sat on my hands (literally, sometimes). I physically and mentally restrained myself from intervening unless she clearly communicated she wanted help. I watched her pull herself up, fall, try a different approach, fall again, take a week off, start cruising along the couch for weeks, then suddenly walk across the room like she’d been doing it for months.

It wasn’t always easy for me to stay out of her way. But she learned to walk and I got to witness the whole scientific process unfold.

Why This Is Hard

• We all just want to feel like good parents, and teaching really scratches that itch—even when we know it’s not the most effective option.

• These are some of the first skills we’ve ever seen our babies master, and it’s genuinely hard to believe they can do things without us. We’re still learning what they’re capable of, and they’re changing faster than we can keep up.

• I often feel the desperate need to jump in and help at the smallest sign of frustration or distress, and those occur regularly while M is learning new things. My biggest challenge as a parent is resisting that urge so she has the chance to solve some of her own problems. Staying calm and silent while she was mastering the art of falling and getting back up again was a heroic feat for me.

Why It’s Worth It

Some research shows that babies who are assisted in learning to walk do learn slightly sooner. But the goal isn’t speed—it’s confidence, stability, and the deeply ingrained belief that they can figure hard things out.

The lore about Magda Gerber, RIE’s founder, is that she could tell just by watching a toddler walk whether they’d learned alone or with help. The ones who learned themselves knew their own bodies better—more stable, more confident, able to discern how to take appropriate risks.

The bigger payoff for me wasn’t M’s physical confidence. It was watching her develop the capacity to struggle with something, get frustrated, take a break, and come back to it. That’s not a motor skill. That’s a life skill.

Your challenge this week

Notice something your child is trying to learn right now - rolling, talking, crawling, walking, painting, drawing, stacking. Find a way you can be less involved in this process, and see what happens.

If you’re thinking, but hey I’m already letting my baby direct their own learning, try not speaking while you’re watching them learn something. See how long you can last. It’s harder than it sounds.

Let me know how it goes in the comments!

** Everything I’ve shared here is based on my experience, and refers to typically developing kiddos. If you’ve got any worries about your little one’s development, chat with your pediatrician. And of course, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all deal – every baby is unique, and you know yours best.