Mary’s School Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLubgpY2_w&feature=player_embedded

This is an interesting commentary on why children cannot be empathetic before they are four!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

This is a link to the recent WSJ article about French parenting. Amazingly, this has caused a stir in the online Montessori community, about accepting all cultures, and France not having a perfect (despite almost free) school system, blah, blah, blah.

I think they are missing the point, which, I think, at least from this excerpt is that, apparently, without much work, or being harsh or cruel, children can be taught to be patient, polite, self-entertained, and more enjoyable people to be around than some of us have experienced, here in the US or other places, including, perhaps, Mars.

And that, if this belief in children’s ability to learn these things, and our ability to teach them, that life with children, here or on Mars, may be more enjoyable and even, better for the children.

And this, of course, is something that Montessori said over 100 years ago, and that we Montessori guides have been saying ever since. Glad when it makes it to the WSJ.

Davidson College has a program in which current students can come and shadow alumni in a job in which they might be interested. We had one of these students come right before Christmas break. He is a senior philosophy major, interested in a program called Philosophy For Children which has a program in the Davidson schools. He helped set up the pilot program, and runs the current program. He was interested in what he had read about Montessori and spent the morning with us. He left me his notes, which have been patiently sitting on my desk, waiting to be transcribed. They are fun to read.

“”We can talk”- two children are free to talk and show a willingness to communicate about what they are building

Parallels with Philosophy for Children: P4C is about building a community of collaborative inquiry, Montessori school seems to develop this as well, but more from a practical angle

Could Montessori school be a primer for P4C? It seems that Mary’s School(MS) develops children along the same intellectual, emotional and social lines as P4C; I see emotional confidence and security, intellectual open-mindedness and critical thought; social cooperating

Children cutting with knives; I wouldn’t see that in a standard preschool!

Frankenguinea pig? (Comment about Emma, who just had surgery and has a 4 inch incision!)

Read aloud? An older child is reading aloud to a younger child! Actually, I am not sure he can read, but he is still enthusiastic; it is an important skill to be invested in passing on knowledge

They are learning how to use math; the principle of ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, I wonder if the way children learn math here is mirroring the developmental history of the human species?

Another parallel between MS and P4C: in MS, children learn how to play well with each other, i.e how to build, create and learn together but also how to learn from and listen to each other, so MS teaches rules and procedures for mostly practical collaborative endeavors, with a bit of joint intellectual inquiry thrown in; both teach how to listen to others, to attack ideas, not people, to give reasons, not to interrupt

Girl encourages boy to try pomegranate, boy declines, but that’s okay b/c the boy has a reason and the boy is civil about it. Kids are a little messy with food, but certainly not more than my friends(!)

Baby washing: very thorough and methodical, deep engagement, transferable skill? I imagine this level of engagement will appear whenever the child identifies an activity as worthwhile

Political philosophy: MS seems to instill a libertarian/liberal philosophy; children don’t interfere with others’ personal projects

Penny Counting game- integrating learning across several domains, kid accidentally knocks over pennies and picks them up

Hammer Time! Hammering nails- wow, that girl just hammered it! Lot of trust/responsibility given to the kids here

Acclimation: how quickly do kids acclimate to Montessori School culture?

The kids take turns, brain storm, articulate thought, listen to/pay attention to each other!

Educator with a Bullhorn

Thursday, November 17, 2011
by: Virginia Hughes

“Lakshmi Kripalani, M.A. ’66 doesn’t have much patience for those who blame a failing public education system on lack of money. She once opened a school with little more than a bullhorn.

It was in India in 1947, right after the country had gained its independence, and Kripalani was just 27 years old. She and her family had fled their home in West Pakistan for a refugee camp in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Everyone slept in tents and food was spread thin. In a hut where the milk was stored, dozens of children and their mothers were clawing at one another for a few sips. “It was what I’d call a massacre of children,” Kripalani recalls from a bright blue recliner in her home in Montclair.

The only remedy for the chaos, she thought, was education. Just a year earlier, she had been trained by Maria Montessori, the Italian doctor who created an educational movement that places children in a clean and orderly setting and allows them to direct their own learning.

And so Kripalani told the camp’s commander that the refugees needed a school. He laughed and said something to the effect of, “Lady, we can hardly feed you, and you want a school?” Kripalani insisted she needed no money, only his permission. So he gave her a bullhorn and a challenge: If you think you can build a school with this, go ahead. She took the loudspeaker in her hands and addressed the camp. “I told them, ‘We have lost everything and our children have lost everything. If you want a school for your children, come and help me,’ ” she says.

It was an impossibly hot afternoon. But within an hour, some 150 children and 30 adults were carrying stones out of a shed that would become a school. When it opened the next morning, Kripalani sprinkled white flour and yellow curry powder on the ground to divide the room into sections of different classes. She used
branches to write on the ground, and buds, flowers and pebbles to teach math.

Kripalani, who turned 91 in August, has dedicated her life to Montessori education. After two decades of teaching in India, in the 1960s she helped see the movement through a bumpy re-emergence in the United States. She’s known equally as a wise elder — she kept all of her original notes from Montessori’s lectures in India — and as a spitfire.

Since 1989, she’s written a quarterly column for the Public School Montessorian, a newspaper that is sent to every Montessori school in the U.S. These articles, which have been bound into two books, often delve into ways in which, in Kripalani’s view, Montessori schools are straying from their namesake’s original teachings.

“She has a very strong sense of how classrooms should operate, and is outspoken about it,” says Dennis Schapiro, editor of the Public School Montessorian. “People might not agree, but they’ll get a clear sense of what she stands for.”
Educator with a BullhornThe Montessori Connection

Kripalani met Maria Montessori in the spring of 1946, during an intensive teacher-training course in Karachi, India. Before that, Kripalani had been teaching in her hometown for a few years. She says her methods were aligned with Montessori’s even before she knew about her. “She explained to me the philosophy that was always at the back of my work,” Kripalani says.

Kripalani and her family left the refugee camp in 1948, when she was asked to start a school in Bombay for the children of members of the Indian Army. There, her biggest challenge was integrating children from vastly different social classes who came from all parts of the country and spoke several different languages.

She accomplished this not with money or fancy teaching materials, but with the basic Montessori tenet: Respect every child. Kripalani began each student at a level they were comfortable with, and then guided each one individually to advance. To overcome class and cultural barriers, she gave all of the children the same uniform, and shared her lunch with all of them.

Tragedy hit in 1962, when Kripalani’s mother died in a kitchen fire. Kripalani was shattered, until her aunt gave her a copy of Time magazine with an article about the resurgence of Montessori education in the United States. She urged Kripalani to inquire about a job.

Within a year, Kripalani was on a plane — her first — to a teaching position in Iowa City, Iowa. But after two years of uneasy interactions at the school, she was desperate to leave the Midwest and accepted a teaching position in Newark. She has been in the Garden State ever since.
Educator with a BullhornNew Jersey Impact

In 1966, she received a master’s degree in education from Seton Hall. Later that year, she opened the Montessori Center of New Jersey in Montclair, which offered a one-year program for Montessori certification. The program was extremely rigorous, according to former students.

For example, one of Montessori’s major principles is learning by doing. To teach addition and subtraction, you might have students work with wooden rods, rather than write numbers on a paper. In that spirit, Kripalani would ask her teachers-in-training to play with and draw a picture of every classroom material.

“This kind of annoyed all of us, at first, because we were all adults,” says Dede Coogan Beardsley, who completed the program in 1975 and went on to found the Mapleton Montessori School in Boulder, Colo. “But it really does allow you to know the material better when you’re measuring it, studying it, and drawing it.”

The training center was located in a house with three stories: a ground floor with a simulated classroom, a second floor for the teachers-in-training, and an attic, where Kripalani slept.

“It was obvious that Montessori wasn’t just an interest in her life, it was the interest in her life,” says Judith Tara Aronson, who did the program around the same time as Coogan Beardsley and is now a preschool teacher at the World Community Education Center in Bedford, Va.

Above all else, Kripalani emphasized the empirical approach of Maria Montessori: Observe each student and see how he or she responds to different learning materials. ”She taught us not to memorize a recipe, but to think like a cook,” Aronson says.

Severe arthritis has slowed down Kripalani, the veteran teacher, but she’s still active in the Montessori community. Last year, she won the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Montessori Society (AMS), and an honorary educator award from Montessorian World International. She regularly answers questions from teachers in online forums, and still travels by herself to Montessori events across the country.

“I always smile when I see Lakshmi at conferences sitting with a group of young teachers around her. She’s like a mother goose,” says Marie Dugan, an educational consultant for the AMS.

“The idea of sharing the information she has, it’s a strong part of her character and something she believes she’s meant to do,” Dugan says. A few years ago, Kripalani donated all of her meticulous notes and articles to the AMS archive at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut. ”It was such a precious gift to us,” Dugan says.

Kripalani has always set ambitious goals for herself, and has no plans to stop. “I have a dream to reach every child with a Montessori education. And, I don’t know, maybe that’s the reason I’m still living,” she says with a chuckle.”

Virginia Hughes is a science writer based in New York City. She can
be reached at virginia.hughes@gmail.com.
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Owners Manual for a Montessori Child

by Donna Bryant Goertz | Montessori Blog

“Dear Parent,

I want to be like you. I want to be just like you, but I want to become like you in my own way, in my own time, and by my own efforts. I want to watch you and imitate you. I do not want to listen to you except for a few words at a time, unless you don’t know I’m listening. I want to struggle, to make a grand effort with something very difficult, something I cannot master immediately. I want you to clear the way for my efforts, to give me the materials and supplies that will allow success to follow initial difficulty. I want you to observe me and see if I need a better tool, an instrument more my size, a taller, safer stepladder, a lower table, a container I can open by myself, a lower shelf, or a clearer demonstration of the process. I don’t want you to do it for me or rush me or feel sorry for me or praise me. Just be quiet and show me how to do it slowly, very slowly.

I will demand to do an entire project by myself all at once just because I see you doing it, but that’s not what will work for me. Be firm and draw the line for me here. I need for you to give me just one small part of the whole project and let me repeat it over and over until I perfect it. You break down the project into parts that will be very difficult but possible for me to master through much effort, following many repetitions, and after long concentration.

I want to think like you, behave like you, and hold your values. I want to do all this through my own efforts by imitating you. Slow down when speak. Let your words be few and wise. Slow down your movements. Perform your tasks in slow motion so I can absorb and imitate them. If you trust and respect me by preparing my home environment and giving me freedom within it, I will discipline myself and cooperate with you more often and more readily. The more you discipline yourself, the more I will discipline myself. The more you obey the laws of my development the, more I will obey you.

We are both so fortunate that within me I have a secret plan for my own way of being like you. I am driven by my secret plan. I am safe and happy following it. It is irresistible to me. If you interfere with my work of unfolding myself according to my secret plan and try to force me to be like you in your own way, in your own time, by your own efforts, I will forget to work on my secret plan and begin to struggle against you. I will decide to wage a war against you and everything you stand for. That’s my nature It’s my way of protecting myself. You could call it integrity.

Depending on my personality, I will wage the war more openly or more covertly; I will fight you more aggressively or more passively. A great deal of my incredible energy, talent, and intelligence will be wasted. You will probably win in the end, but I will be only a weak version, a poor substitute, a forgery of what I am capable of being, and you will be exhausted. Please take the pressure off both of us by preparing my home environment so I can do my work of creating a human being and you can stick to your work of bringing one up. I’ll do what I do best and you do what you do best.

I am capable of being the finest example of your best attributes and values expressed in my very own way. If you will prepare a home environment carefully and thoroughly for me, keep my materials and tools in order and good repair, set the limits clearly and firmly, give me long slow periods of time to work on my secret plan, I will do the work of developing a new human being, me! Did I mention that I need materials to be set out in every room of the house? I need to have materials available for quick and easy access wherever I happen to be in the house and wherever you are. I need to have the option of working and playing close to you. Most of the time, I need to use activities close to the shelf where they belong in order to form the habit of putting away.

My secret plan for developing myself is carried out entirely by hand, hands that is, my own two, to be precise. I am a fine artist, a master craftsman, and require the finest tools and supplies. Don’t give me a lot of junk, just a few fine materials that are complete and in good repair. Excess is worse than unnecessary; it’s distracting. It disturbs my creative process. It makes me irritable and uncooperative. I know it’s hard to believe that through my chosen activities carried out independently and in a state of deep concentration I am developing my character, but it’s true. I can’t make fine character out of a lot of junk in a big mess.

My home is my studio and my workshop, so be sure it is quiet and peaceful. Play soft, soothing music while I am awake. Watch TV only after I am in bed. While I’m up, I will make all the noise we need. Oh, and I need everything to be kept in order. I can’t do my best work in a mess. I don’t know how to make order for myself but I crave it, so I will need you to do it for me at least three times a day. If you make order for me in a practical and esthetically pleasing way that makes sense to my logical mind, I will gradually begin to imitate you more and more.

Eventually you will be able to require that I put away for myself, when I’m six or so, providing you always remember to check in with me about it three times a day until I’m nine. I can’t cope with an entire day’s accumulation of things to put away, much less an entire week’s worth. I will certainly never be able to cope with a month’s worth of mess. If you get distracted and forget to help me put away during the day and the mess builds up, you will have to put it away yourself every night.

I hate to be so demanding, but I need to have all my supplies organized and displayed in complete sets within my reach so I can get them for myself. If I have to ask you for what I need all the time, I will begin to feel like either a commanding general or a whining invalid. Stop and think, I could really get into one or the other of those roles. Neither of us wants that. I need independence like I need oxygen. It brings out the best in me. The time you spend setting up my environment will be time you save by not dealing with my petulant, obstreperous, recalcitrant side.

Television is a big interruption in my development. Sorry! I know you don’t want to hear this, I need hands on activities and I need lots of processing time. TV distracts me from more important activities and fills my head with more than I have time to process. Read to me every day because reading goes slowly, allowing for processing along the way. TV packs more in than I know what to do with, so I shut down and either become passive or frenetic. I know you might think some shows are good for me, and I know you might think you deserve the break TV provides, but we both pay a heavy price for every half-hour I watch.

I can’t resist the TV, but that’s okay because every three-to-six-year-old has a parent, and that’s what parents are for. TV makes me distracted, irritable, and uncooperative. The more I watch, the more I want to watch, so it creates issues between us. If you can’t say no to a daily TV viewing habit for me now, where is my example for developing the strength to say no to other bad habits later? Besides, the more I watch TV, the less I want to be like you. Remember, I imitate what I watch. Oh, yes, nix also to the video and computer games I beg for and all my friends have. Come on, I know you can do it.

I will usually be so consumed with my work and play that I won’t hear you when you speak to me. Don’t make it worse by speaking from a distance or repeating yourself. Just get down on my level within a foot of my face, get my attention, and look into my eyes before you speak. Then let your words be few, firm, and respectful. You will save both of us a lot of senseless suffering if you can remember to do that. I know it will not be easy for you to remember, but if you work hard you can train yourself to make it a habit. After all, if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, how can you expect me to do what I’m supposed to do?

If you don’t have the time or energy or, I hate to say it, self discipline to follow through on what you say, just don’t say it. Idle threats and empty promises make me despise you. You look foolish, arbitrary, and weak. I know I act like I want to run the universe myself, but that’s just a show of bravado. I really need a parent to run my world. When I can’t depend on you to mean what you say, I can’t trust you. That causes me to feel deeply insecure and go to extremes. It’s frightening to me because I love you so much. I need to respect you and trust you to say what you mean and mean what you say. You are the most important part of my home environment.

You’ll be glad to hear that part of my secret plan calls for helping you around the house and yard. No, it can’t be when you have time or are in the mood, or even when it would really be helpful to you. It has to go by my interest. Sorry, I can’t be flexible about that. After all, I’m the one who’s creating a human being. You’re just bringing one up. Well, I guess it won’t really be a help to you at all, not immediately or directly. It’ll really be a big hindrance. I have to be given the right size equipment, careful demonstrations, and lots of time and patience.

Just when I master a certain skill and become capable of making a real contribution, I’ll tire of it and choose not to do it again. Then I’ll want to learn a new job requiring far more skill and expertise and you will have start all over again. This will happen about once a week for the next six years and take up a lot of your valuable and scarce time. In the long run it really will be a big help, though, because I’ll feel so invested in our home and family that I’ll be a lot more reasonable and cooperative about our family’s values and rules. I’ll also be so skilled, capable, independent, and self-disciplined by the time I’m nine years old that it will be reasonable to expect me to do my share around the house and yard. I will have developed obedience.

I know my needs are great and many. I know I’m asking a lot of you, but you are all I’ve really got. I love you and I know you love me beyond reason or measure. If I can’t count on you, who can I count on? But let’s not kid each other. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I’m tough and resilient. I’ll survive and make the best of it. Just thought you might want to have the chapter on the Primary Montessori Home Environment from the Owner’s Manual for a Montessori Primary Child. You could make the next three years a lot more fun for both of us by taking care of me according to my needs. Hey, can we just shoot for meeting 50% of my needs? Okay, okay, I’ll settle for 25%.

Love, hugs, and kisses,

Your Three-to-Six-Year-Old

P.S. I know I’m very lucky. Not many children have parents that will really listen and pay attention to their needs instead of just giving in to their whines and tantrums. Maybe they’re scared their kids will stop loving them. Maybe they’re scared their kids won’t be popular. I’ll save that subject for Chapter Six.

The more TV I watch the more I will complain of boredom because I will gradually lose my natural bent for following my Sensitive Periods–you know, those drives for certain activities during certain stages of development. Without interference of TV, a restless sense of creative dissatisfaction prompts me to explore my environment and fix my attention on an activity, concentration on it, and repeat it. Under the influence of TV, that same restless sense becomes a pouty monster called boredom that tyrannizes you and me both, wears on our relationship, and compromises my best development.”

Donna Bryant Goertz, founder of Austin Montessori School in Austin, Texas, acts as a resource to schools around the world. Donna’s book, Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful: Preventing Exclusion in the Early Elementary Classroom draws on her thirty years of experience guiding a community of thirty-five six-to-nine year-olds. She received her Montessori elementary diploma from the Fondazione Centro Internazionale Studi Montessori.

This comment falls under the “Change is Hard, Duh” category. I have been reading from the blog of Crewton Ramone (”Crewton Ramone’s House of Math”) about great applications of the Montessori math materials, and have been trying them out, with great success on the part of the kids, at school.

I am not doing so well.

One of the techniques is to “correct positively” when a mistake is made. This goes along with Montessori in general: ‘Teach by teaching, not by correcting”, as well as following best practices research. And yet I am struggling with this in the new application.

He even gives a script, knowing that we will struggle. “That is two, we want three.” Did you notice that there is no word : “no” in that sentence? Yes, that is important. And yet the “no” keeps sneaking in….

I am almost slapping myself whenever I do it, but I am getting better, slowly. Fortunately, the games are really fun and so the children overlook my boorishness.

I remember all change for the positive in how I treat children being hard, but my falling into this old hole recently has reminded me of how hard it is to do better, even when I know how.

Two thoughts occurred this week; I will post separately. One was from spending yesterday in pursuits which are unfamiliar, mostly involving computers, but also involving taking a vacuum cleaner apart. I don’t think I am alone in getting really frustrated, annoyed and tired from attempting something with which I am not familiar and confident, and, especially, several in one day. Also, being unsuccessful (so far, at least) at some.

I was reflecting that this must be how new children at school feel. There is little we can do to help, too, tho we try.

How do you get a friend, get help, find something to do, do it, put it away, walk around without stepping on someone’s work, go to the bathroom when you are outside, get something to drink, have snack….

So, I am feeling very empathetic to children those first weeks at school….

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 9:50 AM, John Goodrich/Mary Willis wrote:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-death-of-preschool&offset=3

Someone kindly sent me a link to the above article, which pushed me to write a little about what I’ve been reading about the last decade’s research on learning, and, of course, the impact of standardized testing and “No Child Left Behind.”

The research is clear that what is called “discovery learning” is more motivating, more fun, and more successful than what is described in the article, direct instruction.

Direct instruction is the way we were all taught in school (for the most part): “this is an equilateral triangle, and equilateral triangle has blah, blah…now, show we which one is an equilateral triangle…”. And, yes, we need to be directly taught a lot of things, like the name of a fork, or a sheep, or the sound a cow makes.

However, when all learning is someone pointing out something, naming it, giving lots of information about it, then quizzing us back…well, we know what that’s like. That’s like the worst parts of school. The parts that are boring, except when we have the satisfaction of raising our hand and giving the right answer. And, for some of us, that is the main fun in school. So it’s really a bummer for those who rarely could raise their hands with the right answer.

And, of course, standardized testing causes “teaching to the test”. Yes, it is documented, no matter how wonderful the teachers, they can’t help but teach toward those things on which they and their students are being evaluated. How could they?

The Montessori school in the article (how mortifying) is caught up in this trap. The parents at this school want their children to get into the best private schools, and they will be tested by…..standardized, fact based tests. They will not be tested on how confident they feel, or how good they are at initiating play, or saying “no”, or being kind, or being helpful to younger children, or knowing how to ask for help….So it is easy to see how everyone is learning that knowing lots of facts is pretty darn important.

Interesting enough, this completely contradicts what Montessori said about how children learn. First of all, she said that they learn from direct experience. That children, or any of us, have difficulty understanding abstractions apart from experience. Research in learning shows that children cannot learn past their experience base. So, children who have seen a variety of animals, who have experienced water, dirt, things growing, how things work, how to make food, how to fold laundry, how to notice small differences (like the difference between a pepper plant and a tomato plant, or the differences between a goat and a sheep, or the differences between a b and a d, or the differences between a two or four cylinder engine), they can apply that learning to new experiences, and, finally, to abstract experiences. Or, if they have few experiences, they have difficulty learning new things. So, Montessori said that all learning should start with concrete experiences, and exploring them independently with someone’s support, if needed.

I can write more about what this means at school, but, for parents, it is a reminder of the vital importance of sharing your enthusiasms for real things: cooking, gardening, painting, origame, building, fixing, hiking, biking, fishing….that doing your enthusiasms with you and talking to you about them is the biggest gift anyone can give a child. Imagine the difference between seeing a snake in your yard and reading a book about snakes. In addition, that the most precious learning is independent, a “discovery” that you make on your own. Sometimes that means that we are simply watching a child make a discovery, like how pouring water towards you makes you wet, or that snow is cold, without even, perhaps, giving words. Just sit back and watch the learning happen, and let it be theirs. We are so lucky to be able to watch it happen.

Warmly,
Mary

This is the term the Montessori coined. I don’t know what it implies in Italian, but we were taught that it meant a child who: could choose meaningful work, could work alone or with others, who could self-soothe when upset, could take direction, who was interested in new lessons, who enjoyed both fine motor and gross motor activities, who was competent in his/her body, who could make constructive choices in behavior and work, who was a positive member of the community.

As with so many things, it is easier to say what it is not; a normalized child is not one who: whines, complains, expresses helplessness, does not ask for help, cannot control frustration/anger/sadness, talks incessantly or, inversely, does not express needs, teases others, is aggressive with others, demands too much attention, cannot use hands to do what is needed/wanted for self, cannot focus attention for long enough to master tasks, cannot find activities in the classroom to entice him/her to extend attention, disturbs others who are working, is defiant, either actively or passively.

If your child can be identified in paragraph two in any way, fear not! There would be a rare (and by rare I mean, unmet by me) child who would not occasionally be associated with one of those phrases, usually as a default mode when tired, ill or stressed. We all have our weak points.

Also, it is an equally rare child who comes into the classroom without many of these choices from door number two, again, no need for alarm.

Montessori said a child became nomalized through work, her word for meaningful activity, mostly independent of an adult. It is very hard to do enough teaching and allow enough independence to develop much “work” when one is home with a child, trying to do adult things. There are too many things that you need to do without the child (paying bills comes to mind), so you need them out of your hair; then there are many things that are very hard to do with a child (cleaning, cooking, running errands, exercizing).

Also, in our culture, there seems to be a lot of pressure on parents to “help” more; that our children should not ever be frustrated or struggle, and that we should anticipate or “fix” all problems to be a good parent. This would be quite a barrier to normalization, if you were to attempt it, and, if you have attempted it, you know that you cannot remove frustration or struggles, especially as your child gets older. You cannot make sure your child will always be successful the first time, or get invited to the prom by the girl he likes. All we can do is teach what we can, and support them when mistakes are made and things are hard.

Then there is the crazy idea that our culture has invented (and it is a relatively new one, believe me) that you should entertain or play with your child, and that if you do not, and/or your child is not “happy” most of the time (and by “happy” I mean entertained, liking everything that is happening), you are a bad parent. What are we trying to prepare them for, a world unlike the one we live in now, one when there are never unwanted tasks, unliked food choices, unfulfilled promises, hard times? Where would that be?

Okay, time to debunk all that, if you buy into Montessori philosophy. Oh, and did I say that the normalized child is a happy child? That the glow of confidence, both confidence in current competence, and confidence that, yes, I can figure out this new problem, too beats out the thrill of a new toy 500 to 1?

So, time to quit playing and start teaching. And, as you teach, you constantly pull back your attention/help. Too much of either will impede progress in every way. Look busy, be busy. Turn your back, and they will have managed more than you imagined they could. Then, you don’t need to be effusive in praise, it is just what humans do, be proud with them.

And you won’t need to talk or give commentary all the time, what a relief! You don’t even have to respond to everything they say or ask! That is what we do to teach toddlers language, and research shows how vital that is, but, when the vocabulary is there, you can pull back and teach conversation, which is so much more that just “naming”. You can not respond when they ask rhetorical questions (that they already know the answer to), that was something they learned as toddlers, and was a great tool, then. I had one toddler at school that learned that “Where is you (sic) Mommy?” was a great conversation starter, as everyone had a mommy and an answer. But, after that, we need to teach other ways to relate.

In this light, Montessori observed that young children cannot function in two modalities at the same time. That is, they cannot talk and listen, talk and do, listen and do, listen and watch, talk and watch. So, when you are showing, be quiet. When they are showing, be quiet. When they are talking, don’t “do”. It is hard, as our brains and lives are quick, quick!!!! and their’s are not. So model for them how to watch in silence, how to listen without doing something (sometimes, it is hard), how to talk without doing something. Their learning and retention will increase by orders of magnitude!

Two years olds can begin to (and by three, can be competent at ), undressing, dressing, putting clothes in hamper, helping to cook, including slicing, mixing, putting things in and out of the dishwasher, making beds, helping to clean (scrubbing toilet, for example), to change the toilet paper/paper towel roll, to bring in and put away groceries, to dust, to vacuum/use the dust buster, putting things in and out of the washer, dryer (when front-loaders are especially wonderful), not to mention wash the dog, the car, scrub the floor (remember how much they love water?), and, of course, gardening. There are hundreds of other things that I have not thought of. I recently watched a video of a young three making, independently, french toast, including cooking it on the gas range. He was as calm and competent as the chef at your favorite restaurant. Think of a) how long this took to train, tiny steps from toddlerhood on and b) the large number of skills this child now has to build upon for all other skills.

I don’t mean that they are always great, efficient help, especially at first, quite the opposite but they are made to be part of the functioning of the family, and want that, to feel useful, to know their place in the world. We all need that. And their growing competence will do more for their self-esteem than anything else you could do.

One more caveat. If you hate cooking with your child, don’t do it, or at least, not often. Save up your energy. However, if you love taking hikes, riding bikes, folding origami, cleaning the bathroom, watching the Discovery Channel with them, do that. If you are the rare parent who likes playing pretend play, do that, but don’t let them boss you around, that’s no fun. It needs to be fun for you, in addition to good for them. Your well-being is really important, your joy. You are in this for the long term, after all.

Dear folks,

I got an awesome email today from a parent concerned about gun play. Boy, does that resonate with me.

I am the most anti-gun liberal this side of the Brady Act. I had on my 1970 Ford Truck the bumper sticker ” I support the right to arm bears”. I am appalled the gun death statistics in the US, and the easy access to a huge variety of non-hunting weapons here.

I also studied psych at Davidson with one of the pioneers in researching TV violence and its effect on children (Palmer).

As a result, I was determined that my children would never own toy guns, play gun play or violent play or watch TV.

Peter, Mr. Non-Violent, chewed his pb&j into a gun at aged 2. We never had cable, and his TV viewing at that time was limited to tapes of Mr. Rogers that his grandmother made for him. The only gun he ever owned was a pop-gun from Tweetsie that my father bought him; I disposed of it because of the noise as much as the imagery.

Then came Clara, then Adam. There were sticks, and the sticks were all kinds of weapons. When I taught at Mountain Pathways, we had a “no gun play, no violent play, and no fantasy play” rule (well, three rules), and all it did was made the children go underground and lie to us. One little boy told me he only shot “love bullets.” Children who went to church a lot played “Old Testament”, including David and Goliath, Joshua and Jericho. Quite a bit of violence in those stories, too. It was really confusing when a Bible kid tried to play with a Ninja Turtle kid.

Years ago I had a kid at school who played a lot of “shoot” games that included the word “kill”. This was not so long after Columbine. I asked Peter (then about 16) how I was supposed to know that this kid wasn’t going to grow up to be a Columbine kid. He said: “Because you are taking to him about it, and his mom is talking to him about it.”

So, my long view is: kids have been playing “war play” since there were kids. My mama says she played war play during WWII, Tom Sawyer played pirates, my father played cowboys and Indians. At least they were reading about stories, not just downloading them directly into their brains like they can with TV fantasy, but that’s another story.

I don’t want the kids lying to me, and I don’t want to be a spy. What I note at school is that most of the kids we get do not watch a lot of TV, aren’t obsessed with violent play, but that anytime there is a cylindrical object longer than 3 inches, the word “pow” usually is associated with it.

So I have made some rules that work for me. Nothing in the classroom is, or should be used as a gun. Outside, you can’t pretend to shoot anyone (or call them a “bad guy”) without their permission. Somehow, “May I shoot you?” seems to take the fun out of it. Also, anyone who uses the word “kill” about another living thing (other than mosquitoes and yellow jackets) is given a boring lecture and the game is shut down. I just won’t have it.

I think it has something to do with penises, but until we outlaw those, I don’t know what can be done to eradicate gun play; guess we’ll just have to keep talking about it.

love,
Mary

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

This got a lot of flack on Facebook. I imagine Ms.Chua was inspired to write after hearing 800 parents say to her : “Oh, you are so lucky! My children hate to practice the piano/do their homework/study…”. And her thought being: “What does ‘liking it’ have to do with anything?’”

She is right about the American parenting paradigm. How many times did you say “no!” to a screamed request for candy in the check out line (stated like this: “ CANDY, NOW!”), and had a sweet little old lady lean in and say, loudly: “Oh, poor thing, why can’t she have a little candy?”

This is what I feel that we are up against, that our job is to make them happy, in addition to smart, or accomplished, or successful, or competent, or even polite- happy! The one thing we really can’t provide, because, as Ms. Chua states, happiness comes from accomplishing something.

Of course I don’t think we should be calling our children”garbage”, or threatening them to get them to practice an instrument, but I do think that we get what we expect, and our expectations have gotten pretty low.

Why is that that a kid who studies a lot is a “nerd” or a “loser’?

As many of you know, I am a Montessorian. Montessori thought that self-esteem came through competence, and competence came through persistence. Watch a child learn to walk; if we aren’t born with persistence, I don’t know what you would call it. Learning to walk, over weeks or months, with all that falling down, is more work than I have put into anything in a loonnng time, and children do it for no reward other than a higher point of view. Crawling really works fine, so why is it not good enough?

So, the Chinese mothers have it right in a lot of ways, in my book. Expect a lot, be a role model of persistence, if not excellence, and I wonder what we will get in return. I am amazed by childrens’ abilities every day.
_________________
www.marysmontessori.com

The primary job of the Montessori teacher (or “guide”, as we are really known) is to “prepare the environment”; that’s what they told us in our training.

Really? Not teach the children, not be nice? No, because from age zero to age six, Montessori said that children were in the “absorbant mind.” That means that they are absorbing everything to which they are exposed: beauty, fine gradations in color and sound, order or disorder, calm or panic or anger. So, we adults are the Keepers of the Environment, and, of course, we are part of the environment as well.

As stated in the Michael Olaf catalogue (written by Susan Stephenson, who has Montessori training for all ages, from infants through adolescents!): “Constant preparation and adaptation of the environment to the ever-changing needs and tendencies of growing children is essential in the Montessori method of raising and educating children. The first consideration is physical safety, and then the proper support for free movement, exploration, making choices, concentrating, creating, completing cycles—all of which contribute to the optimum development of the child.

Natural materials instead of plastic, and attention to simplicity, muted colors, beauty, all contribute to the mental and physical health and self-respect of the child.

Reflecting the Child’s Culture and Introducing the World

It is important that the environment reflect the child’s heritage but also introduce the world. Look for items that are made by local artisans, or make them with your children, explore ethnic neighborhoods.

Make your home a unique reflection of your own unique part of the world. Include music, books, foods, crafts, stories from your parents and grandparents lives, but also include the same elements of cultures from around the world so your child learns that everyone is connected and he is a member of an international community.”

And I would add, note and emphasize what you love: the art, the music, the activities, the books that you love. If you share these with your children, you will share you joys and have a deep connection to your child.

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http://sewliberated.typepad.com/sew_liberated/2010/09/making-felted-soap-with-a-toddler.html

Greetings!

I’ve been saying that to people lately, and the look they give me is not appreciative….:)

I say this when someone is saying : “they won’t stop whining/put their shoes on/quit hitting their sister/eat their lunch/take a nap/do their homework”…and I USED to say: “you should do THIS” (or “stop doing THIS…”).

Sometimes, people WOULD look appreciative, and I’m sure that’s why I did it for so long, but mostly they would look: “Duh.” or “What on earth are you talking about?” or “You obviously don’t get it at all; oh well.”

That is because, brilliant as I am, I am not you, and I don’t live with your children.

That is why Positive Discipline really is amazing. It puts you into your child’s mind and experience, so that you can respond to that, in the uniqueness of your relationships to everyone involved, and the uniqueness of your strong hopes and dreams and empathies for your children. Also, your awareness of your OWN feelings and motivations and parenting and childhood history and experiences. And that IS complicated, and personal, and important.

Also, there are the TOOLS. It is as if someone said: “I have tried to have a deck like yours, but I only have a hammer and have no wood. I must be a failure.” Positive Discipline gives you new tools to try, lots and lots, and practice using them.

(This work is based on some of the best psychology of childhood work, for those of us who care what something is based on.)

The books are great, but the classes give you the experiences, the practice, and the support. Your story is not the worst, and you are in good, good company.

After 18 years of teaching in Montessori classrooms, I am once more given some information that has blown me away.

I have long been familiar with the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Driekurs, starting with my LOVE of the “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk” series that I literally carried around with me so that I could (successfully) talk to my own young children, to the Big Blue Book of Driekurs used in my in-laws’ family, to the work of Redirecting Children’s Behavior that they used to train the staff at Mountain Pathways, “back in the day”.

Redirecting Childrens’ Behavior was where I first learned about children’s “mistaken goals”; things that they believed (wrongly) that caused them to misbehave. Like, in wanting to feel special, demanding so much un-needed attention that you want them to just go away!- making them feel even more un-special….

I since have very much liked the work of Jane Nelson, based also on Adler and Driekurs; I first heard her speak at a Montessori conference. She also is very respectful of children and of parents.

In the recent workshop I went to, however, I was so pleased to get a workbook on how to do exercises and activities with parents so that the concepts go from “what I say” to getting into the minds and feelings of your beloved children so that you can a) change the behavior AND b) stay in relationship with them…

As a mother of three children in their 20s, I know how important the second thing is!

More to come!

For those of you who want to immunize as little as possible, or want to be selective about what immunizations you get, here is the State’s minimum immunization doses required by Kindergarten:
5DPT/Dta/DT shots (if 4th dose is after 4th birthday, 5th dose in not required)
4 Oral Polio doses (if 3rd dose is after 4th birthday, 4th dose is not required)
Hib- if younger than 5, 3 doses and a booster on/after 1st birthday are required. Over 5 years of age-not required. 1 dose on/after 15 months meets this requirement.
Hep. B- 3 doses required
2 MMR with the 1st dose on or after 1st birthday
1 Varicella on or after age 12 months and before 19 months, if born on or after April 1, 2001

A child brought a crystal heart pendant to school, obviously very special, and I asked her to be careful, that I knew she didn’t want to lose it and she said : “That’s okay, my mom made me a string for it.”

Days later, that line came to me, with an image of a “string” from the mom to the child, a string that was always connecting them. And an idea, that that is what we are making, building, we hope, with our children, in the midst of the reminding and the explaining and the story reading and telling and the walks to the mailbox and the homework helping and the bathing and the doing of laundry and cooking of meals and saying : “no!” and “yes!” and making decisions and weighing alternatives and making mistakes and apologizing is : a string, a connection to hold us together, forever.

So, there is something (else) to think about: is this, what I am doing/saying now, building the string; making it flexible, able to withstand strain and stress and anger and fear, or is this on another path entirely, that has nothing to do with the string, and is about how everything looks, or how it feels, or how it ought to be, or how it used to be, or how I wish it were, or how I wish someone else were…?

Ultimately, in the long run, I think there is only the string. And, need it be said that it is hard to build, because of differences in temperament, and expectations, and desires, and time tables, and interests, and abilities, and god knows what else?

With my own string, I am very, very thankful when I feel that it is there, because, mostly, proximity and time, and, sometimes, common goals are not there, now, with my children. They are not at home every day, week or month. They are off, on their own path, and I am hearing about it, mostly after the fact. And this is as it should be; but now, there is only the string, and I hope I accidently managed to build it well from my end.

(If you know me, you know that I don’t believe that this means that you always say: “yes”, or try to be “nice Mommy”; “nice Daddy”. That doesn’t have much to do with the string, if you think about those agreeable friends you have had in your life, who were willing to go along with whatever you were doing but are not part of your life now. Maybe you will “Friend” them on Facebook, but you don’t call them when things are wonderful or horrible, nor they, you.)