About this ebook
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About the author
Fleming Reginald is a child development specialist and parent educator with over eighteen years of experience working with children ages birth through five and their families. She holds a Master's degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of Washington, where her graduate research focused on the impact of unstructured play on executive function development in toddlers.
Reginald began her career as a classroom teacher in a Montessori preschool in Portland, Oregon, where she spent eight years observing and documenting how young children engage with open-ended materials and self-directed play. That experience became the foundation for her philosophy: that children learn best when they are trusted to lead their own exploration, and that the adult's primary role is to prepare the environment and then step back.
She has since worked as a parent educator for several nonprofit organizations, leading workshops on topics including sensory processing, positive discipline, early literacy, and the developmental risks of excessive screen time in early childhood. She has trained hundreds of early childhood educators across the Pacific Northwest through a series of professional development seminars she developed and delivered in partnership with local school districts and childcare centers.
Reginald writes the popular newsletter *The Floor Is Where It Happens*, which reaches over fifteen thousand subscribers with weekly insights on toddler development, low-prep activity ideas, and honest reflections on the realities of parenting young children. Her writing has appeared in *Parenting Science Weekly*, *The Early Childhood Journal*, and the *Washington Family Magazine*, where she contributes a monthly column on screen-free play.
She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner and their two children, ages three and five, who serve as her daily reminder that no amount of research and theory can fully prepare you for the reality of a toddler armed with a tube of glitter glue. When she is not writing or working, she can be found hiking in the Cascade foothills, reading middle-grade novels she definitely bought for her children, and perfecting her recipe for playdough that does not dry out overnight.
*The Hands-On Toddler* is her first book.
