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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