The Parent's Role in Montessori Education

As a parent you want not to just teach your child, but to prepare him for life.  Dr. Montessori’s scientific observation of young children led to her discovery that they are motivated by an inner guidance at specific periods in their early lives which leads to self-directed learning.  By observing your child, determining his needs, and making activities available to him, you will be assisting in his self-development.  Montessori called this “following the child”.  There are several ways you can do this:

Observe:  Listen to and watch your child carefully and be alert to changes in his interests.  Make activities available to him based on his cues.  For example, if he becomes fascinated with water, make water play activities available to him, such as pouring and sponging.

Facilitate:  Slowly and with as little speaking as necessary, demonstrate for your child how to do an activity. Rather than just giving him the tools and letting him succeed or fail, demonstrating will help your child achieve his goals.  Your job is to show your child the correct way to pour the water so that he will have a greater chance of success. 

Prepare the Environment:  Set up your home or your child’s space with his interests in mind.  The materials and activities that he uses should be set out in an orderly manner and be pleasing to his eye.  Make activities easy for him to access without your help.

Show Respect: Give your child the freedom to choose the activities he wants to do.  Allow him to use an activity for as long as he wants to and avoid interfering with his work, criticizing, or interrupting his concentration.  Show respect for his independence.

Be a Role Model: You are the most important person in your child’s life and he wants to be just like you.  By living the values and behavior you want your child to learn, you are teaching by example.

The Montessori Method prepares children for life by helping them reach their fullest potential at their own unique pace.

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The Absorbent Mind - Another Secret of Childhood

All animals, with the exception of humans, are born with instincts.  These are innate, inherited, unlearned patterns of behavior that enable them to perform the tasks necessary to protect and preserve their existence.

A human baby begins life with no knowledge.  He learns through spontaneous, intense mental activity from the moment of birth, using all of his senses, what Maria Montessori called the “Absorbent Mind”.  This happens in two phases:

• Birth to three years: unconscious acquisition of basic abilities, such as speaking, walking, physical control of his body
• Age three to six: conscious, purposeful activity, with active participation in learning

Let’s take language as an example.  Although a baby hears all of the sounds in his environment, he has the unconscious ability to pick out those of language and grammar and separate them from all the rest.  He absorbs them before he is actually able to begin the motor process of speech.  In general, babies start to “babble” and speak words such as “mama” and “dada” between four and six months of age.  By 18 to 24 months, they are speaking two to three-word sentences.   Between two and three years, children begin to use pronouns properly, string nouns and verbs together, and have a vocabulary of up to 300 words.  This ability to acquire, order, and understand the language process comes from their absorbent mind. 

Children have the natural power to construct their minds in an orderly manner until they acquire within themselves the abilities to remember, understand, and think.  The Montessori philosophy and learning materials recognize this and take advantage of this crucial formative period.  Montessori stresses a sensory-rich environment that helps children classify and order all of the information they take in.

“Education must conform to the facts of human life.” – Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind.

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