How control of error makes our lives easier

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that trying to teach my kids anything that’s difficult for them is a one way ticket to screamville, with an optional stop-over in cryingtown. It starts out ok, but then I speak up about a needed correction or to optimize someone’s technique, and next thing I know frustration turns outwards into anger at me – the one wielding the metaphorical red pen of correction.

In general, I try to work with my children’s natures rather than against them. I prefer to make structural or design changes rather than acting as an enforcer – by using our computer’s built-in timers and parental controls to limit screen time, for instance. Or by accepting that nobody in this house will take the extra two seconds to put their coat on a hanger, and eschewing a coat closet in favour of a large entryway lined with coat hooks.

But some things need to be taught, don’t they? Like practicing an instrument – if you keep doing it wrong, you’ll just cement your mistakes. Don’t I have to point them out, even when I’d rather keep the peace?

Not really, no.

In Montessori education there’s this thing called “Control of Error.” Every learning material in a Montessori classroom has a way for the child to check their own work. The teacher does not correct the child’s work or reveal the solution – the materials do this as a matter of course. The child can tell whether or not they have completed the task successfully and they know when they need to work on it some more and when they can say that they’ve mastered the work. If only life were that simple.

When asked what musical instrument she’d like to study, our oldest daughter, K, revealed that she’d actually really like to learn to sing. Only one problem with that – K has a dreadful sense of pitch. She’s not tone deaf (almost nobody really is), but ear training is an area of significant weakness for her.

Now, can you imagine me trying to teach her to sing on pitch? Correcting her every few seconds? Can you imagine her rising frustration and the eventual explosion of anger? No, thank you. I decline. There must be another way.

Ultimately I found it in the form of a (free!) computer program that trains you to sing on pitch. K puts on her headset, listens, and then sings what the computer plays for her. The program displays the pitch she sang as compared to the one she listened to. It’s a bit like biofeedback. K can see whether she’s on pitch or not, and if not, in which direction she should modulate. The control of error is all in the program. No frustration, no screaming, just her trying until she can see that she has succeeded.

N is learning piano. I typically help him with his practice, which means that I interrupt with, “No! Stop! Do it again!” every time he makes a mistake. If I don’t correct him, he’ll barrel right through the piece, unaware of what he could be doing better.

It so happens that N was practicing his song in the music room at school, and somehow was able to record his playing. “Eema,” he told me later, “I don’t sound so good!” I’d been trying to explain this to him for the past few weeks, but it only clicked for him when he heard himself play.

Including control of error in any task is a huge win. For the children, they can truly perceive their errors rather than having to believe that we’re right and they’re wrong. For the parents or teachers, it’s one fewer source of conflict in what (let’s face it) can easily become a combative relationship. And that’s just a relief for all of us.

Montessori principles at play

I have a “hands off” policy when it comes to playground play.

“If you can’t get up there yourself, then you shouldn’t be up there right now,” is my response every time I’m asked to “help” one of my children.

You could call it laziness, perhaps, but as I see it, just as babies need to be free to move so they can roll over, push up, and then crawl and walk, rather than being placed upright in a Bumbo chair, children need to acquire physical skills step-by-step, rather than jumping over the basic skills to do the more exciting ones. This attitude has also led to the observation that when my children explore the playground independently of me, I can see Montessori principles come into play.

Take R, my 6-year-old. She’s been a little monkey since she could crawl. Exploring her new school’s playground for the first time, she was entranced by the monkey bars. I’m sure you can figure out what came next.

“Eema! Help me on the monkey bars!”

 

I didn’t.

For a week, she would jump up to the first monkey bar and hang there, then drop to the ground. Over and over and over again. Then another week went by, and she could travel from the first bar to the second, then the third. And then she got stuck.

The fourth monkey bar is on an angle, as the whole set of bars turns 90 degrees. R couldn’t figure out how to manage the turn. Again, she asked me to help her do it. Again, I refused.

I’m not sure how long it took her – not more than a week or two, since we’ve had only about four weeks of school all together – but she obviously kept on trying.

This afternoon she greeted me with, “Eema! You have to see what I can do!” She clambered up the play structure and swung herself from one monkey bar to the next with ease, all the way around the corner and to the end.

“Hannah showed me how to do it!” R explained, “You know, Hannah with the ponytail?”

I did know. This girl is three years older than R, and happens to be a friend of our eldest.

Why am I telling you this story? First of all, because it is so exciting to watch a child’s learning process. But more importantly, because I realized I was watching two Montessori principles in action:

1. Children choose work that interests them, and then work to master the task. Nobody told R to learn how to do the monkey bars; and when she realized that she couldn’t do them, nobody told her to practice. She returned to the monkey bars over and over again until she mastered them.
2. Children benefit from mixed-age groupings. In this case, R learned the trick for rounding the corner from an older child who had already mastered the task and could actually demonstrate (which I don’t have the upper body strength to do.) The older child was happy to be able to teach and help a younger child. Everybody won.

I feel like there’s probably more there, like the need for the adults to sit on their hands and bite their tongues (yes, that again!), but I’m not sure what. So please, comment: what other Montessori principles do you see in action here?

A prepared environment

A few months ago, Montessori Dad and I looked at each other and said, “Our children have become lazy, entitled kids.”

And so it was decided that this school year each child would be responsible for emptying his or her lunchbox, washing the containers, and putting it all out to dry.

At this point, I’d understand if you were thinking, “What does this have to do with the title? You already have a kitchen sink and sponges and a drying rack. What’s to prepare?”

Remember when I blogged about what each of us sees from our own eye level? Or my post about how the small objects matter? Montessorians know that having the right-sized tools at the right heights is essential to being able to carry out any task properly. With kitchen counters 37″ off the ground and faucets placed 22″ from the edge of the counter, our kitchen was hardly set up for children ages 5, 7, and 9 to be able to wash dishes.

In the end I went to IKEA and bought this:

And this:

Also a couple of these:

Put together, they make up our lunchbox cleaning station. There are two small dishpans (one for washing and one for rinsing), two small dish scrubbers, a garbage bin lined with a paper bag for food waste, a dish drying rack, and hooks for storing lunchboxes.

Two dishpans on the top; bin for food scraps on the right; drying rack for containers in the middle basket; hooks for lunch boxes all around the top.

It’s only been three weeks – so I don’t want to get too smug too soon – but the children have been in charge of their own lunch containers since the first day of school. There were complaints at the beginning, but those have died down. It’s becoming a routine – and it’s easy for the children to do, thanks to our setup. Here’s a shot of it in action:

My point is that once again Montessori has saved my sanity. I could have bemoaned my children’s lack of participation in household tasks – and I did for a while. But I stopped complaining and found a way to prepare the environment so that participating would be easy, practical, and maybe even a bit fun for the children.

This still results in work for me. Right now I’m the one to wheel out the cart, fill the dishpans, then later empty and rinse them, empty the food scrap bin, and wheel the cart away again. Maybe the children will take on these tasks someday; I’m not banking on it right now. But they’re taking on a responsibility that is new to them, and Montessori has made it possible.

What sort of prepared environment have you created for your children? Comment and let me learn from you!

 

You can take the mom out of Montessori, but you can’t take the Montessori out of the mom… I hope.

We’ve changed schools. Our new school is not a Montessori, and it was very painful for me to make the choice to move. Montessori, and our school in particular, changed my parenting, my home, and my entire way of relating to children. It was a hard environment to leave.

Now I’ve thrust my children into a world of homework (and homework agendas to be signed by the parents), gym uniforms, and late slips. Suddenly evenings have become battlegrounds and mornings are stressful for everyone as we try to get to school on time, which at this school means ten minutes early, lest we get late slips.

Notice how I said “we” get late slips? It felt that way to me – like I’d experience some kind of consequence for the fact that my kids dawdled in the morning. It was the same with homework: I became emotionally invested in making sure that K (our 9-year-old) actually did her homework properly. I was a stress case, and my frustration and anxiety were leaking into all my interactions with the children.

And then over the weekend it occurred to me that my job as a parent is the same as it’s always been: to prepare the environment so that the children have what they need to do their work. It’s their job to do their homework; my job is to provide the appropriate space, supplies, and time. Likewise, I can’t ride their bikes faster for them. I can only make sure that everyone has a bike to ride, and that I start the morning with enough time to get out of the house and bike to school.

Making that small mental shift had instant results.

At homework time, I went down to the homework table with our children and made sure they understood their assignments (they did.) Then the 9-year-old started to complain and whine about how she didn’t know what to write, that the assignment was stupid to begin with, and that she didn’t want to do it. Tears (hers, not mine) ensued.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s your homework, and you know you need to do it. So I’m going to excuse myself to do my work while you do yours.” Ten minutes later she surfaced from the basement and announced that she had finished her homework.

Now, I don’t know what the quality of her work was. I don’t know whether she did a half-assed job. And frankly, I don’t need to know. It’s between her and her teacher, and I trust the teacher to evaluate the work fairly (meaning that she’ll tell my kid if the work is sub-par.) It’s not my problem.

The morning bike ride hasn’t changed much, except that I’m now much calmer when the 5-year-old stops her bike, drops it, and starts wailing about how “I CAAAN’T DOOOO IT!” I stand there and say calmly, “We have X minutes to get to school, and after that you need to go to the office for a late slip. Only you can decide to get back on the bike and be on time.”

And I’m truly able to not care if she gets a late slip. I’ve done my job – everybody has appropriate clothing, everybody gets access to breakfast, and I start moving them out of the house in plenty of time to bike to school, barring any major meltdowns. If the child decides she’d rather give in to her frustration than suck it up and be on time, the consequences are hers. Not mine.

I have a friend, a Montessori teacher, who says, “the hardest part of being a Montessori teacher is sitting on your hands and biting your tongue.”

And so the challenge lies before me: to sit on my hands and bite my tongue; to be a Montessori parent in a non-Montessori world.

This could get interesting.

 

Baby at work

There are some household jobs that I just can’t do with a baby in the room. Cleaning the toilet, for example. Loading and unloading the dishwasher has been on the list as well; my babies typically try to climb up on the open door and get inside. Sometimes, though, I just have to get it done. Yesterday was one of those times.

So there I was, loading the dishwasher, and there R was, trying to get inside it. After saying “no” and pulling her out of the appliance several times, I decided to see whether she could be redirected to a more productive task.

“R,” I said, “do you want to help me load the dishwasher?”

“Dah!” She chirped. (No, we don’t speak Russian at home. “Dah!” is the R version of “Yeah!”)

I took some of the dirty spoons from the sink and placed them on the open dishwasher door. “Look,” I said, and picked up a single spoon and placed it in the cutlery basket. “Can you put the spoons into the basket?”

“Dah!”

We worked side-by-side for a few minutes. Actually, R worked. I kept stealing glances at her and marveling at her focus and concentration. It always amazes me, this capacity for focused work that even a one-year-old has. I continued to pass her the cutlery (minus the sharp knives, of course) and she continued to work.

Lest this sound like more sanctiMommyous bragging, I made sure to take a “reality check” picture. Yes, R worked diligently, but look where the cutlery ended up:

I had to place the cutlery in the basket after R finished her work, so clearly the point of the exercise wasn’t for her to lighten my load by helping with the cutlery. No, useful child labour doesn’t kick in until roughly age four. The point is that as a parent I often have two choices – admonish the child for misbehaviour or channel their interest into purposeful work – and this time I chose the latter. The result? Ten quiet, peaceful, purposeful minutes with my baby, and a baby who already knows the satisfaction of being a contributing member of the family.

Lessons from summer camp

My kids aren’t going to day camp this summer. The little ones are too young and I also like having the flexibility to sleep in, hang out, and not rush the children to go anywhere.

It comes at a price, though… having three little kids at home all day can result in a very, very messy house, and since my oldest doesn’t nap anymore, there’s no kid-free time to clean it.

In keeping with Montessori philosophy, our home is a place that we all need to keep clean so that it is ready for us to use and enjoy. That means everybody does their part, everybody cleans up their own messes, and everybody can be productive. Even the babies. But how to implement it in a way that won’t make the little ones rebel?

Good thing this Montessori Mom learned a few tricks at summer camp:

1. Cleanup after breakfast

Young children crave order and repetition. My young kids seem happy to have a set morning routine: Wake up, get washed and dressed, eat breakfast (oatmeal from the crockpot – mmm!) and then, just like at camp, you go back to your bunk and clean up before you go outside to play. We call it “Nikayon” (Hebrew for “cleaning”) just like we did at camp, and everyone gets a task.

N and K love scrubbing the toilet. I let them, although sometimes I make a big fuss about it being “my turn” just to keep them interested. They like it when I let them get into an empty tub and scrub it with baking soda. We also have a sticky roller on a long handle that they enjoy pushing around to pick up dust and crumbs. Seriously, they fight over these tasks. It’s very cool.

Nikayon time also includes tidying up the toys in the living room and picking up everything from the bedroom floor. Beds get made. Our nanny does the kitchen cleanup while I finish off the bathroom. The place is clean… and then we go out.

2. Mealtime routine

At summer camp there is always some kind of system for clearing the table, usually involving a dishpan of soapy water, a slop bucket, and a scraper. It’s a fabulous example of Montessori’s “prepared environment”; the children are able to clear the dishes because all of the necessary tools and facilities are readily available and easy to use.

We’ve taken to filling the plastic sink in the children’s play kitchen with soapy water. When they are finished eating they carry their plates to the kitchen, scrape them into the green bin with a rubber spatula, and put their dishes in their sink. The table is clear and the dishes are ready for the dishwasher regardless of how long it takes for me to get back there and load them all in.

3. Get outside

At summer camp you’re only in your bunk to get dressed and to sleep. The rest of the time is spent outdoors. Same deal here: we clean up and then we leave the house, even if just for the backyard. Remember: they can’t mess up the house if they’re not in the house! Seriously, keeping the kids outside as much as possible really helps cut down on the indoor chaos.

4. Daily activities

We have tons of games, crafts, and toys here at home. Every day we try to bring out one new thing for the kids to play with in the morning. We’ve done a water table, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, bikes, and we usually set up some kind of beading craft. Even just handing them the garden hose counts, as this morning’s mud bath proved. Prepare the environment and then get out of their way, and the kids will do fascinating – and fun – things. It works at school, it works at camp, and it works at home.

5. Rest hour

Or as we say at Jewish summer camps, “Menucha.” It doesn’t matter how old you are, how tired you’re not, or whether or not you ever sleep during the day. After lunch we have rest hour, which means everybody is quiet and in their own “bunk.”

More often than not, rest hour turns into “rest couple of hours,” which is fine by me. Sometimes even I get to do some napping.

 

And that’s how things are at Camp Jewish Montessori Mom. I have to run – I’m in the mood for some water sports. Happy camping!

Yes, that’s me… the ultimate happy camper!

Montessori parenting really is different

We have a toddler shabbat program at our school now. Like the dozens of other toddler shabbat programs in Toronto, this one gives very young children – accompanied by their parents – the opportunity to set the Shabbat table, say the blessings, enjoy some challah and grape juice, and sing with friends. The children also have about thirty minutes of time to work with some very basic Montessori materials.

It is during this work period that I’ve been fascinated by the contrast between how most of the parents interact with their children, and how the Montessori-trained staff do.

Constant narration

In the current parenting culture, we seem to believe that we have to talk at our children nonstop. This used to irritate me when people did it to my kids, although I couldn’t articulate why other than a vague comment that “it’s insulting to a kid’s intelligence when you make their every experience verbally explicit.” Honestly, many experiences in life are more potent when you just shut up and experience them. Right?

Montessori philosophy pretty much agrees with me on this one (and it’s about time I was right about something, because so far today I’ve been wrong about many, many things. Just ask my four-year-old.) The child is supposed to learn from working with the materials, not from listening to an adult describe said work. When the adult comments or exclaims on the child’s efforts, they shift the focus from the work to themselves, breaking the child’s concentration.

Praise

Oh, I could write a book about the evils of constant praise, but many people already have. May I just say that I hate it? In a single afternoon, many weekends ago, I heard the following:

• “Good waiting, you guys.” (I figured the fact that waiting patiently will get you a snack was reinforcement enough, but some parents apparently disagreed.)
• “Good using your words!” (again, isn’t the reward of using your words that people understand and respond to you?)
• “Wow, great jumping!” (It’s a bouncy castle. Kids love to jump in those. Just what was this parent hoping to achieve by praising something that the kid does – and enjoys – naturally?)
• “Good eating snack, everybody!” (Has it come to this? We’re praising our kids foreating? You have got to be kidding me.)

Why exactly do we praise kids for every single thing they do? And what do you think happens to kids when they grow up and discover that nobody is going to praise them for taking out the garbage, showering, or fulfilling their job description?

The Montessori attitude seems to be that self-esteem comes from achieving mastery. Of course, praise that flows naturally from a place of delight with a child’s efforts is always okay. But when giving positive feedback, Montessorians generally stick to the facts, as in, “Wow. You poured water into all six glasses and didn’t spill a drop!” or, “You read that whole book without stumbling over the hard words.”

Can I just say, on a personal note, that I feel really validated by this approach? I want my kids to have self-esteem because they know that they are competent, capable, and talented – not because their mom thinks they’re cool.

Respect

Sure, we pay lip service to respecting our kids, but do we really? I know that I fail on this count multiple times a day, rushing them along when they actually need to finish what they’re doing, etc. But do we even respect the importance of what we believe our kids should be doing?

That sounded convoluted. Sorry. Maybe I’ll just skip to the anecdote.

When the mothers (and they are all mothers, although fathers are certainly invited and welcomed) arrive with their toddlers, the children immediately gravitate to the Montessori materials and begin working. What do the mothers do?

Oh, come on. Guess.

Yep. They talk. Loudly. About everything from their kids to their clothes to what’s for dinner. And this feels okay, because the kids are doing what they’re supposed to do, and the moms are doing what moms are supposed to do.

It would be okay in any other drop-in setting, in the sense that nobody would think to ask the moms to stop talking while their children played. But imagine that people kept coming into your workplace while you were trying to concentrate on an important project. And imagine those people, while not demanding your attention, were conversing loudly about things that had absolutely nothing to do with you and your work. Wouldn’t you stick your head up and say, “Excuse me, but I’m trying to work here!”? Wouldn’t you expect them to respect your right to a quiet workplace?

Montessorians respect children’s work, including their need for an appropriate workspace, materials, and yes, silence. We can talk loudly while the children play because they’re “just playing.” But if we take into account all the skills that our children are developing when they work so intently with the Montessori materials, it very quickly becomes very clear that we need to respect and support their work. And that means keeping the environment conducive to focus and attention.

Expectations

I often (about five times a day) say that the key to happiness is lower expectations. It’s true inasmuch as expecting my house to be a mess and at least one of my kids to be unhappy at any given moment helps me to face the chaos that is parenting with my sense of humour intact. And yet, my time observing the toddler program has reminded me that we (as a society) place very low expectations on young children.

Over the six-week program I’ve heard mothers exclaim “I had no idea s/he’d be able to do that!” over the following:

• a fifteen-month-old using ice tongs to transfer pom-poms from one bowl to another… for upwards of fifteen minutes
• five toddlers, all under the age of two, resisting the urge to drink their grape juice until after the blessing was said
• a child (again, under the age of two) carrying a ceramic bowl containing water, without spilling or dropping it

And those are just the things the mothers exclaimed about. Other things, like the fact that all the toddlers drank from glass cups without any being broken, were taken for granted within the classroom but might surprise non-Montessorians.

In short, very young children are capable of a lot more than we think they are. My kids surprise me with this every day: yesterday K insisted on carrying a cafeteria-style tray laden with food – and real china plates – to our table at Aroma. I said “no” again and again until she wore me down with her insistence that she could do it. She did it. No tipping, no spilling. I was amazed. I also apologized for doubting her.

All of this makes me wonder, what else are our children capable of?

Imagine how the landscape of parenting in North America would be different if every parent allowed their child the time and space to focus on their interests, respected the child’s “work” (be it play, reading, or practicing new skills,) and had high expectations of their child’s ability to function competently in the world. How would our children be different? And how different would our schools look?

I can only imagine. Well, except for that last question. The answer to that is staring me in the face every morning at 9  a.m.

What abilities have your children surprised you with? Do you tend to praise? Over-praise? Or under-praise (like me)? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Why physical milestones matter

Yes, I’m guilty of blog neglect. I apologize. I’m also guilty of hating to read post after post about how “I’d like to post more often but life got in the way,” so I’m just going to launch into the topic now:

Sometime last week I commented on a friend’s link on Facebook. It was about babies not getting much tummy time and consequently not meeting physical development milestones “on time.” I enthused about the rate of R’s development compared to that of my other two children and attributed it to her spending all of her playtime (most of her waking hours, in fact) on the floor.

Apparently these days talking about how some parenting decision has worked out really, really well for you is similar to wearing no panties to a bar notorious for its hookup culture. Ill advised, perhaps. Inviting abuse? Surely not. And I didn’t get abused; it was more like a light slap on the wrist.

“Who cares when your kid crawled or rolled over?” One woman commented, “I am so tired of this line of thinking. They’re not going to university not knowing how to sit up! We don’t need to push our children to achieve. They’ll do it in their own time.”

She’s right and wrong at the same time. Montessori philosophy agrees with her that children will learn and develop at their own pace, but there’s a caveat: they have to be given the right environment and the right tools at the right time. In the case of developing physical milestones, if we don’t give them enough spaces and opportunities for free movement, they won’t develop the normal milestones until much, much later.

Which brings me back to the question of why we should care that our children aren’t meeting milestones as early as they used to. In short, it matters because strengthening the muscles takes a lot of time and practice (as anyone who does resistance training can tell you,) and complete proficiency and strength in the basic exercises are a necessary foundation for the activities that come next, at which we do care if our children excel: paying attention, sitting at a desk, writing, reading.

I’ve been reading a blog called Pediatric OT, written by an occupational therapist who works with children who are having difficulty in school. I’ve learned a lot from her blog. One of the more unexpected points she has made is that in the absence of strong neck and spinal muscles, the eye muscles’ fine motor functioning is compromised and as a result, the child will have difficulties with visual perception that may present as difficulty reading, writing, and participating in team sports. And why would a child have weak neck and spinal muscles? It comes, says this therapist, from children being less active as babies and toddlers: when they are constantly supported in a swing, bouncy chair, bumbo, exersaucer, or carseat they don’t have to strengthen their core muscles – they already have a stable base from which to work. When we take that base away, though, their body is not strong enough to remain steady and support the neck and head.

And once again we circle around to the question, “why does it matter whether they crawl/roll over/sit up as young babies?” The answer, finally, is that it matters because rolling over, crawling, and sitting up earlier are indicators that a child has had plenty of time for free movement, and has spent that time strengthening her core muscles… and since she can crawl, she does, thus increasing her strength and endurance. Can you imagine all the hours and hours of exercise and strengthening our children are missing if their physical milestones are delayed by even a couple of months?

You may be thinking that a delay of a couple of months is fine, that it just pushes everything up by a couple of months – but it doesn’t. Our children’s physical strength isn’t developing as soon as it used to, but they’re expected to go to school and learn to read and write at increasingly younger ages. See the problem?

What does this have to do with Montessori, anyway?

A lot, actually. The Montessori curriculum involves a series of exercises, each building on the last, both physically and intellectually. Long before they learn to write, two- and three-year-olds are using a three-fingered grip to manipulate pegged puzzle pieces, use eye droppers and tweezers, and polish metal with a q-tip. This grip is practiced (and the hands and wrists strengthened) in increasingly challenging ways, for many months, before the child holds a pencil to begin writing. Montessori educators understand that in order to be able to write a literary essay in grade seven, the child must first have developed his visual discrimination (identifying different shapes and colours,) visual tracking (being able to move the eyes smoothly so as to keep focusing on a moving object or on text,) pencil grip, wrist strength and control, and so on. Children require a great deal of practice to develop the fundamental skills they need, and Montessori ensures that they get it.

Attacking the other end of the problem, that of children being expected to do academic work before their bodies are physically ready, well, Montessori solves that quite neatly as well: a child simply does not move onto harder work until she has the required knowledge and physical ability to handle it. This means that some (very few) children will learn to write and read at age three, and others will learn it at age five, or maybe even six… just as some babies will learn to crawl at six months, and others at eleven months. They simply need the time and opportunity to develop their muscles in a natural progression.

Neither of her siblings crawled at six months, but then they both spent much more time in "baby containment devices." The plural of anecdote is not data, I know, but it's a fascinating contrast nonetheless.

 

What does a Montessori mom do all day?

I’ve written a lot about the physical aspects of Montessori at home – what equipment you do and don’t need for children. It occurred to me today, as I ran errands with N and R, that you might want to hear a bit more about how Montessori philosophy affects our daily activities. Montessori parents have to run errands as all parents do; how different could it be?

Come on a virtual ride-along, and let’s see.

There were four items on our list this morning:

1. Drop off purged clothing in a donation box
2. Take expired medications and some old sharps (relics of IVF gone by) to the pharmacy for disposal
3. Drop off Montessori Dad’s shirts at the dry cleaners (Pesach is coming, you know. Are your clothes ready for the holiday?); at the same time, return wire hangers for reuse/recycling
4. Buy fruit and vegetables

With so many stops (all within a 1 kM radius of our home) and some sunny weather, I decided to take the bike. N helped me to put the bags into the bakfiets, and soon he and R were snuggled in among bales of clothing:

I biked over to the pharmacy first, where N carried the little bag of stuff to the pharmacy counter while I carried R. Then we hopped back on (and in) the bike and went looking for the clothing donation box, which wasn’t where I thought it was.

We have a great dry cleaner here who, in addition to using non-toxic chemicals in the dry-cleaning process, also has a covered drive-through area. You still have to get out of your car (or off your bike,) but it’s a few short steps to the back counter – totally safe (and dry) for leaving little ones in their seats, if that’s your style. It’s not mine (and not for safety reasons.) After parking the bike I gave N the wire hangers and showed him the bin for hanger recycling. He promptly dropped all but one hanger on the floor near the bike, so while I discussed stains and pickup times with the man at the desk, he went back and forth from the bike to the desk, carrying one or two hangers at a time. Finally they were all in the bin – no more to carry… so N took two out and started over again! That’s the Montessori toddler right there: repeating a task over and over to attain mastery.

But let’s move on. We needed some produce and so headed to the small supermarket up the street. Since I was wearing R, I gave N the task of pulling the basket:

You can see that most of the produce is way too high for him to reach. The bananas were sufficiently low, though, and he helped me choose a bunch and place it in the basket. N has a tendency to throw things, so first I modeled putting something in gently, then asked him to copy me. I did that with each item – I put in one apple, he put in the next:

An elderly gentleman took one look at the three of us and said kindly, “It might be easier to get one of those carts with the seat and put him in it.” I thanked him and said, “He’s learning how to grocery shop.” I know that we could be done a lot faster if I just put them both in the cart and did all the shopping myself, but that would transform N into a passive observer rather than an active participant in our daily activities.

(Lest I sound like a saint here, know this: I take the kids along on short shopping trips to small stores. When I go with a long list  to the huge, crowded supermarket, I go alone.)

We rode home and I gave N a small cookie to snack on (he had chosen his own cookie at the store.) R was still sleeping in the bike, so we wandered around the front yard and inspected the budding trees, the tiny baby daffodils, and the pebbles in the path. We picked and smelled some of the herbs (our parsley came back this year, the thyme never died, and I think even the rosemary is somewhat alive.) After a while, N sat down on the path and took in his surroundings, pointing and naming as many objects as he could identify:

When he was good and ready, N came up the steps and into the house. I was “good and ready” a full half hour before he was, but I refrained from picking him up and carrying him inside. “Follow the child. Follow the child.” I muttered, and rememinded myself that N needs time to concentrate on things that interest him without being interrupted (who likes being interrupted in the middle of something fascinating? Not me.)

And that was our morning. Four errands, three of which allowed for N to take an active part in their completion. When not in the bike, N walked under his own steam (and without hand-holding) and R was carried on my hip in the sling, which forces her to use her arms and legs to grip my body and her back and neck muscles to stay upright when I bend or lean over. Both children were included in the social niceties at each stop, and at the end N had a chance to spend time outside on his own terms. Life as a Montessori child isn’t just about all the pretty wooden toys and tiny tools; it’s about learning to take your place as a productive member of society – even when you’re just a toddler.

Saga of the big-boy bed

Bed or crib? Apparently, neither. He prefers to run around and rattle the bars of his prison.

We’ve been trying for the past couple of weeks to transition N to his toddler bed. He loves the bed: he hurls himself into it delightedly, pulls up the covers, and sucks his thumb. You’d think he could just stay in there and fall asleep, wouldn’t you?

Alas, as good as N was at going to sleep happily in his crib, he isn’t transferring those skills to the new bed. He gets up and runs around (we finally closed off the kids’ room with a baby gate.) He climbs into K’s bed and disturbs her. He opens and closes the bedroom door, thus darkening the room and causing K to panic (“I can’t see! It’s too dark!”) He rattles the baby gate. He babbles.

Okay, so it’s clear that he’s not ready for the responsibility of the big-boy bed, right? Mr. December and I reluctantly put N back in the crib to sleep… and he started screaming. “Bed! BED! BED! BEEEEHHHHD!” And suddenly we’re in a no-win situation: put him in the crib and he screams, keeping K awake and causing her to be exhausted and miserable the next day; put him in the bed and he fools around, keeping K awake and causing her to be exhausted and miserable the next day. You can see the bind we’re in.

This is not, strictly speaking, a Montessori-related problem. If we were “classic” (read: “hardcore”) Montessori parents, N would have been sleeping on a mattress on the floor from day one. He would understand that bed is the place to sleep, and we would be fine with him moving around his room quietly until he was ready to fall asleep. Oh, wait – that IS the state of affairs (his understanding and our acceptance of moving around until sleepy.) The only complicating factor is that N shares a room with his big sister.

It leads me to wonder – what do hardcore Montessori parents do when their children share a room? Does the situation even come up very frequently? Is Montessori parenting a phenomenon of the middle and upper classes? Does every young child of Montessori parents have his own bedroom? Or am I missing some semi-obvious way of teaching a very young child (20 months now) to respect his sleepy sibling?

It is an often-heard criticism of Montessori that it’s an expensive program and only available to the rich. It’s also incorrect. There are some (albeit not many) public-school Montessori programs. In fact, Maria Montessori developed her philosophy while teaching working-class Italian children. Nothing about Montessori requires affluence, because although there are many beautiful – and expensive – Montessori materials, you can just as easily apply most of the philosophy without them.

Which is all fine and good, but I’m still stuck with the problem of how to keep N from pestering K until he’s ready to fall asleep. They have to share a bedroom, and that won’t change unless we move or renovate (maybe in a couple of years, but not now.) Do I put her in a loft bed that he can’t climb? Sit in their room until K falls asleep, since N won’t get out of bed if he thinks we’re watching him? Get one of those puppy shock collars that zaps him every time he leaves his bed? (I kid! I kid! … okay, I considered it for a millisecond, but you know I’d never do that. Put down the phone. There’s no need to call CAS.)

Advice, anybody? What would Maria Montessori do?