Wide Open on the Mommybahn

Montessori Home-schooling and You

2011-02-01T03:18:00.001-05:00

Thank you to Ivy, who writes this in the comment area. I think it should be put to you readers broadly, as it is a topic of much discussion these days. I hope you'll post opinions.

... what do you think about homeschooling Montessori-style? Does it work, or is it a contradiction of terms? With respect to practical life curriculum, I don't see why not. Also, art, math, literature, etc. curricula could be covered by an intelligent adult, no? I stumbled upon your discipline blog, and the statement that the Montessori method relies on peer pressure for normalizing stuck in my mind. Does this mean that a group of kids is necessary for what seems to be a very important ingredient of the learning that goes on in a Montessori environment? And further, I wonder, if peer pressure is considered to be a key influencer, what does this imply for individuality? The thing I regret most from my childhood was in fact the concept of wanting, no, needing to be like others in my group. This worked great in terms of discipline, but not so great in terms of self-esteem. In my teenage years I struggled with the idea of being "average" and did my best to live that down. Luckily, most of the time these efforts were productive, rather than destructive, but it could have gone the other way.

I have a certain bias toward a school model for several reasons. I believe in school for kids older than two, and I think Maria Montessori did, too. I come from a school-based model and a school-based training. I suppose it is possible to find a training program that prepares Montessori teachers for home-schooling, but I don't know of any. (Do you? Did anyone train in one?)

The particular problem I would expect, though, is mostly one of creating an appropriate context. The Montessori classroom is necessarily a space apart, especially "for the children". It does seem a contradiction in terms to have a "children's house" within the confines of the "family house" and operating within the family relationship dynamic. I would think it would be very hard to create such an environment--with the necessary level of remove on the part of the adult--within the family unit. I guess the point is that it is necessary for the child to be very independent of the adult, and especially of the adult's desires and opinions, for a true "Montessori" class to emerge, and it's hard for me to imagine a small child-- whose life, well being, and sense of worth are all utterly intertwined with those of her parents-- being able to isolate her goals effectively from the goals of the parent (to say nothing of the parent's ability to do the same) to a degree that the kind of motivational independence we aim for in a Montessori environment is achieved at home.

I DO think that a Montessori environment can be achieved at home for children two years old and under, because that early time is one of bonding and forming attachments to significant adults, who should optimally (according to Montessori herself) be the parents. The Montessori infant/toddler classroom, however you come down on the particulars, really attempts to re-create such attachments in a group setting while preparing the child for greater independence--which the parent would naturally be doing also. There is not so much separation expected in these very early years. The primary curriculum, however, is built on a school model.

This is not to say that Montessori philosophy can't be used at home. In fact, it has to be for the school program to be optimized. However, what Montessori schools ask of parents is not more Montessori school at home, but reinforcement of principles in a family context, which is not at all the same experience, even if the ultimate goals are one. I do see the difficulty with the idea of "normalizing" a child at home--the one place in the world where every child should be made to feel special, and be allowed to need to be treated specially. Children at home should be showered with affection (I think), and should be exuberantly loved above all others, but this is not really the optimal Montessori teacher-child relationship in school.

I know that many readers are doing Montessori-style home school, and are having success, so please tell me how you do it? What does it look like? What is the same? What is different? What is easy? What is hard?

The Angel-Human Continuum: The Nuvian Theory of Existential Continuity

2010-12-28T01:03:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is a bit off-Montessori, but I couldn't resist posting--at the suggestion of one of our more dedicated lurkers--about Nuvy's Angel-Human life cycle theory, hereafter referred to as NTEC (the Nuvian Theory of Existential Continuity)

According to NTEC, human entities exist at all times as either Angel or Human. Which form is the ground state has not, at the time of writing, been identified. Angel-form populations and Human-form populations intersect at critical periods of life, called "birth" and "death".

"Birth," according to NTEC, is defined as the transition from Angel form to Human form. This transition occurs at a specific point in time (the time of birth), and space (the vagina--she is quite specific on the anatomical point-- of the human mother). No mention has yet been made of Caesarian births, but these can be easily assumed. All human beings are angels until they pass through the mother's body (at the specified point), and become human.

"Death," similarly, is defined as the transtion from Human form to Angel form. The leaving transition, viewed as it is from the human perspective, seems more variable than birth, but she readily allows that, on the angel side, the appearance may be similarly skewed to regular entry, followed by varied circumstances of exit.

Hazards to the family unit have been identified during transition, so that it is imperative that all angel-form family members remain in close contact post-death, to ensure that timely births maintain the family structure. Provisions must also be made for the house and personal effects of the dead (angels), to ensure that those effects are not misappropriated to other living humans during the absence (angelhood) of the family. This is of the utmost importance if family continuity is to be achieved.

It is of further interest that angels must be carefully differentiated from fairies (small, humanoid creatures that exist in the human geometry but just outside the spatial-temporal plane of humanity). This is important to note as there may be, at times (often at the edges of sleep, or in shadowed doorways), angel-human or fairy-human proximity sufficient to produce sensory phenomena. Angels and fairies are easily differentiated, even with relatively little training, by wing structure. Angels are possessed of feathered wings, much like those of a bird, which are sufficiently sturdy to support flight in normal-human-sized organisms. Fairies, on the other hand, have membranous wings more like those of an insect. The obvious physical limitations of such wings may point us to reasons for their small stature.

The duration and experiential specifics of the angel-form phase remain opaque, and will perhaps be the subject of future discussions. There was also something in there about diamonds, and a persistent interest in Van Eyck's depictions of angels. Perhaps for another post.

Mat Sat! Sam Sat!: What to do with Bob Books

2010-12-27T17:30:00.000-05:00

Nuvy Sat. Nuvy read Bob books. Mom and Dad Sat And Tapped.

Why are Bob books so awfully dull?

When the first Bob book came home, I was reminded of all the parents who didn't understand how we use Bob books at school. They would say "why did you send this one home? She can read this one already! Please send home a new book for us to work on."

We didn't, and your child's teacher probably won't either, because that is not what Bob books are for. If you want to read with your child at home, and I hope you do, pick a nice story you both enjoy and read it. When the Bob books (or Mac and Tab) come home, they are for showing off mastered reading skills--not for homework, and parent, be glad!

See, Bob books are boring as hell to read, but they are an awesome reading diagnostic tool. The teacher can tell if your child is associating the right sounds with letters, and can make other assessments about your child's reading by going through the bob books, but we don't use them to "teach" children to read. The rest of the curriculum does that. The books are just there to show us how we're doing, and help us find any problems. Bob books are designed to strip down narrative as much as possible, so that there is some sense to the sounds, but that's all. The pictures help the child self-correct, but are not overly engaging, so as not to compete too much with the text for attention. We send them home because your child is proud of her accomplishment, and wants to share it with you!

When a Bob book comes home, the thing to do is listen to your child as she reads it, and thank her for sharing the story with you. She might make mistakes, but you needn't correct her. She's learning to read! Feel free to be amazed!!

In short, please do not, when "Mat" comes home for the first time, go out and buy all the Bob books and push your child to read them all through. This is a recipe for frustration on all sides, and probably not a good way to encourage a love for reading. She will read them all in time, and probably less time than you think. Instead, read books you love together. Read poetry! Read comic books! Let your child see how much fun written words can be.

Pastries of Mass Destruction: the V-III

2010-12-07T16:43:00.000-05:00

Van is three. This is his red-eyed tree frog cake. When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he said "I want a frog cake", so that's what he had.

I gave up the fondant for buttercream, which is not as pretty, but much yummier. For birthday cake bakers, I'll tell you. It's one stick of butter for every cup of confectioner's sugar, blend it together (easy going--speed kills) and flavor it with whatever you like. With this recipe, you can tell Duncan Hines to go to hell.

The frogs are marzipan, and he ate every one. The boy does love marzipan.

Slate on Tummy Time

2010-12-06T09:33:00.002-05:00

The folks at Slate wrote an article on why babies need more tummy time. In short, they're missing milestones because they are placed on their backs to sleep and mothers don't put them on their tummies at all.

There are plenty of comments about evolution, chemicals in bedding made in china, how nature made us co-sleepers so we wouldn't facilitate dingoes eating babies, "This article is spot on!", "This article is crap!", "Doctors are idiots!", "Mothers are idiots!"

Pretty much exactly what you would expect.

I'm still waiting for someone to say what I always say...

Why don't you take him out of the automatic baby swing with the spinning toys hanging eight inches in front of his face, put him on the floor, back or tummy, whichever makes him happier (I have a guess!) for a few minutes at a time, and see if he doesn't start trying to check off the boxes on your milestone chart?

Elizabeth Grievium

2010-12-02T02:22:00.003-05:00

"I have a very funny number I will tell you about. 'Elizabeth Grievium', that's the name of the number at the end of forever."

--Nuvy, at bedtime, December 1, 2010

Owning Turf vs. Making an Entrance

2010-11-18T13:13:00.005-05:00

Why are teachers so hell bent on everyone getting to school on time? Also, as we recently learned, there's "on time" and there's On Time. The difference can be amazing for some kids (er... like my kid.)

At our house, morning dropoff is a finely calibrated machine. Nuvy's school has a car line between 8:00 and 8:15. Van's school, 10 minutes' drive away, has an early-drop off time of 8:30. (why so late? It's a co-op, which usually means at least one parent--or the au pair girl--is at home with the kids in the morning. Families with two early morning workdays and no nanny need not apply.)

My habit, until recently, had been to get Nuvy to school at the tail end of car line, then swing around and be the first kid to show up at Van's school. Sounds good, right? Like clockwork. Then we had parent-teacher conferences with Nuvy's teacher.

Nuvy, it seems, was very interested in socializing during morning worktime, and less interested in working. Further, she seemed a little insecure about challenging herself at school, and tended to need an audience to support her and motivate her, which disrupted the work of her friends. She had trouble finishing assignments (witness a stack of unfinished picture stories). In teacher speak, this roughly translates to, "your kid is bright and sociable, but unmotivated, and is disrupting our class." Her teacher and I discussed various strategies for motivating and supporting her, including language that demonstrated how much we value her choosing challenging work. The teacher seemed genuinely perplexed, as was I, about how this smart, engaged child could be so academically scattered.

Then I thought about her mornings. Was she eating the right foods before school? Was she adequately prepared? Was it all that TV? Then it occurred to me--she is a latecomer. Every morning she misses, not just 15 minutes of playtime in the morning, but the chance to ground herself at school before worktime begins.

I am, sadly, a habitual latecomer. I am not early for many things in life. I push deadlines, meeting times, theater curtains, everything. I often enter rooms filled with people who are already doing something when I arrive. I am used to making an entrance--being greeted by a crowd--and transitioning into whatever is already in progress. I realize now that this dynamic is not working for Nuvy. So, I have started taking her in 10-15 minutes earlier, and arriving at Van's school annoyingly early.

She is, by all accounts, a new child. She greets her friends in the morning, one by one as they arrive-- whereas before, she came in to a gaggle of children and seemed to behave in an outsized way to announce herself. This more measured approach to social life seems to be carrying through for her during the day. She is still sociable, but seems more confident at school, and more open to academic challenges.

Amazing what 15 minutes can do!!

12 Steps to TV Freedom in Real Life Without Becoming a Sanctimonious Jerk

2010-11-13T16:25:00.007-05:00

More on TV. I know. It's just so immediate for me right now that I can't stop talking about it!

I know there are many parents, probably many of you, dear readers, for whom this is not a problem. Either you watch and don't mind, or you just don't watch. Waldorf-ians have already pledged to eliminate TV (this is for the cheaters). Montessori schools often don't require such heroism, but they do whisper about us--we with our Disney princess sneakers and Lightnin' McQueen lunchpails. Well, this is not about appearances. This is about freedom.

I am here to tell you how to get free of your TV without putting a "kill your TV" sticker on anything you own, or telling anybody else that they can't let your kids watch the Wiggles at their house. We can be conscientous parents without being obnoxious--even a little bit. (That is, unless we decide to blog it all for everybody to see--but I'll accept the label of "passive agressive" from my immediate family--it beats the usual just plain "aggressive", and I might deserve it, anyway.)

1. Recognize the problem. If you wonder if your kids watch too much TV, they do.

2. Understand the limits of your control. If grandma wants to have movie night, or let them watch a fun show, who cares! They don't live at grandma's so they aren't going to become TV junkies by watching at her house. If your neighbor kid's mom doesn't mind them begging for TV as soons as they hit her front door, it's no skin off your back. This is between you, the kids, and the idiot box. If you try to involve persons of authority who do not share your enthusiasm, what you get is civil disobedience or worse, subterfuge.

2. Sign up for something they have to "go to". School is obvious, but if you aren't doing that yet, some other activity you have to show up for will also break up the day, and make it feel a little less daunting.

3. Don't put the TV and food in the same room. If your TV is in the living room, throw away your TV trays and don't eat there anymore. If you have a TV in the kitchen, get rid of it. Everybody knows the one about TV in the bedroom, so I don't even have to go there, do I?

4. Ban sippy cups inside the house. Nobody needs to have a drink while they build a block tower or read a book in a temperature controlled room. The only reason for a sippy cup in the house is to walk around with a drink in your hand, and the only reason to walk around at home (unless you're entertaining) with a drink in your hand is if you're cruising for a TV to watch while you have your drink. Baby teacups by the bathroom sink suffice at our house for thirsty kids in the playroom, and otherwise, they drink from a glass at the table.

5. Organize play areas, and display toys attractively. This is sort of key, as far as I'm concerned. If your kids walk into the living room and everything is put away in a drawer, and the TV is off, they will look around the clean room and not see anything they want to do. Likewise, if they look at a heap of jumbled toys in a corner, nothing will call to them, saying "come play with me!" If they walk into a room and there is no TV, and there are attractively displayed activities, it's as natural as breathing for a child to go and start to play with them. Why do you think they are always after your curio cabinet?

6. Turn some music on. It doesn't matter what it is. You will get different moods from singalong songs vs. Bach on the cello. Thrash metal will produce a different reaction than, say, Barry White songs, but use whatever you like. I find that music helps children move smoothly from activity to activity, providing nice little "buttons" for the in-between moments (sort of like NPR's musical segues) and, even if it doesn't promote very deep concentration, provides a nice rhythm for the mind to tap its toe to. It also provides passive sound, which I find to be a kind of "TV methadone" for hard-core junkies.

7. No pronouncements. Don't say, "we aren't watching TV in our house anymore" to your kids. It's enough, when they ask, to say "it's not time for TV right now." Take a one-minute-at-a-time approach. That way, if you give in once or twice, you haven't caved.

8. No arguments. You don't need a reason. If the kids pitch a fit, change the subject, or just go do something else. I have found that it is perfectly ok to let their anger at being denied TV just hang in the air until it goes away. It will go away--right before the magic starts!

9. Do your own thing. Let your kids see you reading a book, or knitting, or dusting. Let them "help" you work, or "help" you with a jigsaw puzzle, or just ignore them and let them do whatever they find to do. At our house, at least, they pretty much busied themselves around and were no more or less a pain in my ass than they had been when sitting in front of the TV, hollering for more juice or for me to change the channel.

10. Let yourself be a little absent. They can play with no guidance from you, but they won't do it if you get involved. I don't mean that we should never interject ourselves into our children's play--that's one of my favorite hobbies--but I recognize that my involvement changes the experience for them pretty dramatically.

11. Make your own rules. If you want to have "movie night" on fridays, great! if you want to let the babysitter use the TV, fine! If you want to make the babysitter bring her guitar and felting wool, and tell her not to turn on the set, more power to you! Find a level you can live with, and set about the task of living with it. It's all adjustable--you made up the rules anyway!

12. Keep quitting until you've quit. Ok, so everybody gets the flu, or you're 11 months pregnant and you can't move, so you cave. So what? It's never too late to rein it in, and it's never a hopeless task. Go for it!

Confessions of a Recovering TV Abuser

2010-11-13T12:58:00.006-05:00

I knew better. I knew exactly why I didn't want TV for a babysitter. I knew as well as anybody could, and it still happened to us.

It started so innocently. We started watching wholesome "Baby Signing Time" videos. The kids were learning sign language! Van was signing all over the place!

Then there was nap time. Nuvy, for all my efforts to make her self-directing, could not entertain herself while I was putting Van down for a nap, which was causing me considerable unrest--so I plopped her on the couch and put in a movie. Baby Signing Time became Disney princess movies (with some interim steps) and she was hooked.

Of course, when Nuvy watches TV, Van watches TV, and Van cannot get enough. We started in with the really hard stuff. Nick-Jr. On Demand, Sprout, endless reruns of Yo Gabba Gabba (I can see how that show got made---but WHY!!!?). Kent and I began following cable drama series, comedy series, watching the MSNBC triumvirate of time wasting (Hardball, Countdown, Maddow) for four solid hours of a weekday evening (they rerun them the same night!)--the 2008 election season was particularly riveting for us. Then, the winter olympics. Unmissable TV events all.

I had excuses, and they weren't too embarrassing. It's too cold out. It's too hot out. It's raining. It's a beautiful day, but I'm so busy--there'll be another pretty day tomorrow. We'll go out after nap. We'll go out all day on Saturday. I'll just run this load of laundry/dishes/answer this email/make this phone call and then turn it off. Turn it off in the middle of a program? They'll go nuts! Watch another one? It's only 25 minutes, right? It's an educational show, right? No? Ok, but there's a lesson in everything right? Right???

My two-year-old knew more sign language than I did, more spanish, chinese, even!! But then I noticed his pincer grasp wasn't all that solid, his toys were dusty, his tricycle buried in the back of the garage, he asked for TV from sun to sun--I was raising a TV junkie!

We cut the cable cord. That saved us a few bucks a month, but it solved nothing. Who needs it? You can download anything you want, plus there's PBS! Good-for-you TV, right? SuperWhy! Dinosaur Train! Charlie Rose! Sesame street! This was TV that admonished you to get off the couch and go read a book or play outside--but there we were, watching the world go by on TV.

I was disgusted, yes, but so busy. I have a business to run! A house to maintain! A life! When Kent brought it up, I said "Well, you're always plopping them in front of the TV, so what are you complaining about? Why don't you do something about it?"

Wait.

People do this. A lot of people make this choice. A lot of people I know do it.

The Waldorf parents sign a contract promising to do it. We can do it, too.

We turned it off. "Mommy, TV!" from Van. "Can we watch Toy Story 2?" from Nuvy. "Please, Mommy?" All the sugar of a can of Nehi Grape in her voice. "No TV, guys. Go play."

Howls of protest. Disbelief. Anguish. Rage. Oh, God, this is never going to work. Shouldn't we ease into this?

No, we would not ease into it. We went cold turkey. No prononouncements, no threats, no lying that it's "broken" (then magically "fixed" for the evening news). No lectures. We just turned it off. Radio silence.

Ok, radio silence was too radical for me, but I have music! I hit shuffle on the old iPod and the household just switched gears. I found I didn't need to entertain them. They cried, but they did not die. They did not run away. Eventually, they just found something else to do. We started listening to a lot of music. I love the shuffle function, because you can get Edith Piaf, Neil Young, Erykah Badu, Bach, and Tibetan Monks chanting "Om mani padme hum" for 25 minutes--all in the same sitting. The monks generated a lot of conversation, but I think that's for another post.

After a week or so of rediscovering old toys and re-reading the old board books, we got some jigsaw puzzles. My girl is a jigsaw puzzle wizard! Who knew?

Kent and I are both mostly just amazed at how easy it was. Nuvy is almost 5 now, she doesn't need Walt Disney to occupy her while Van goes down for a nap. She can look at a book, or do a puzzle, or dress herself up, draw, any of a hundred things she can find to do of an afternoon. I did have to give up a little screen time myself, but how much of that was I spending reading The Daily Dish anyway? I find that, now that we just quit TV, it's not any harder to entertain the kids than it was WITH the TV. They can play by themselves, they sometimes fight, but unless they're killing each other, they are learning to negotiate--sort of chaotically--something that is hard to tolerate when you get used to TV-induced quiet.

However, I found that I can and should accommodate myself to a little more noise, and stay out of it a little more, which I also have to do now that I can't keep them still long enough to do housework or make phone calls. This is their "homework".

One thing I learned is that it was the dutiful control-freak in me that made me vulnerable. "Helicopter parenting" of little kids is exhausting, so it's easy to give in to that beguiling boob tube. It gave me time to breathe, and to think about something else for a minute.

The big news is that by stepping back a little, and allowing a little inter-sibling chaos, everybody at our house is happier and more productive. We even gave up "ambient TV" (the news) and watch our news programs after their bedtime, through the wonder of streaming video. The only TV our kids see at our house is when the babysitter is here, which makes them happy to see the babysitter, so it works out for everybody.

Anybody got a TV thought to share?

Unipedes, Metal Insects, and Southanqueues: The Montessori Language Divide

2010-10-14T21:29:00.006-04:00

Montessori school words become integrated into the child's mother tongue, but they are always a second language for parents. How does this play out in a parent's ability to understand the child's school experience?

Thank you, NOLAMom! I do miss this blog, and see how she's grown! I know it's kind of a fashion-y picture, but we're all fashion-y now, and if she could pick a photo for you to know her by, this would be the one. Nuvy is a very more-ish four-and-a-half. Silver hair ribbons to match her shoes, twirly rainbow flower skirt and twirly hair, twirling and twirling all over the piazza. Her image is heartbreakingly important to her now, and she loved how she looked on this day.

She's in her second year of the primary curriculum, and what a difference a year makes. I'm pretty sure she spent the better part of the first year "normalizing" (read, "as a forceful and challenging personality"), but this year I don't hear about her "having time out"--which phrase I am assured nobody ever uses with her, so it's curious that she persists in using it herself--I guess other kids gave that experience that name for her. Last year I heard about "time out" most days at pick up time.

This year, I am beginning to hear the words I have been listening for. "Unipedes!" she said proudly! I have spent a lot of time around children in Montessori classrooms, so the translation to "unit beads" was made almost without my noticing it, and before she ever rattled off "tinbars" and "southanqueues" (If your child comes home speaking in tongues in this way, she is talking about the bank game--very big work!).

In a school like Nuvy's, though, that experience makes me wonder what it must be like for un-trained parents. Even for those of us who stay at home and are able to volunteer at school, Montessori school can be a bit of a black box. The classroom is for the children, and parents--when they are invited in at all--are at the extreme periphery. We man the Christmas ornament project or the Thanksgiving feast. We try to be very quiet and respectful on observation days, and we try not to overstay our welcome. We understand that the classroom is for the children, and buy all the reasons why we should allow them that space, but I wonder what a parent who really has only a parent's-eye view must imagine when faced with words like "unipede", "tinbar", or "metal insect". Are these biological curiosities I have either forgotten or never learned? What are the locomotive habits of the unipede? is it terrestrial? aquatic?

Different schools have different means of addressing the Montessori language divide, and I think they are widely various in their success. Nuvy's school seems very much in the black box category. I drop her off in a car line, pick her up in a car line, and am invited to observe her in the classroom for half an hour, twice a year, and have a mid-year conference. I am invited to a curriculum program each year, and am free, of course, to ask any questions that arise.

My "old" school was not much more communicative, except from an advertising angle--but we did have curriculum tours, two curriculum programs a year (sensorial/math and practical life/language), and a kindergarten "tea", to demonstrate the value of staying for year three instead of going off to the well-regarded local public kindergarten. Parents still stayed out of the classroom and out of the curriculum, as I believe is appropriate, but it must pique the curiosity, no?

How does your school handle this?

what do you do when they just want to touch everything?

2009-07-28T15:16:00.003-04:00

I'll keep it short on this one, but I invite you all to give us suggestions--especially all the teachers out there. A reader asked this about the handwashing lesson, and this is such a good question, I had to get into it. I want to give the handwashing lesson, but my child just wants to play in the water and touch everything! What do I do?

One of the challenges of a home environment, is that it is more than a carefully constructed children's environment, it is YOUR environment. Everyone in your house has to live there, and chances are, everyone in your house will not, at all times, conduct himself or herself in the manner of an astute Montessori teacher. This will, of course, have implications for your child's interaction with household materials.

Raise your hand if this has yet to become apparent to you. That's pretty much what I suspected.

This is hard, especially at home, because our ambitions for our children's independence often have more complex motivations than their schoolteacher's would. Montessori teachers invite the children to discover new and wonderful things they can do on their own. WE want them to be able to do things for themselves that will otherwise have to be done for them. Their teacher has the luxury of inviting them to explore a world that is all their own, where WE are inviting them to explore OUR world--a world made by us, for us, and into which we have brought them. It's not wrong, it's just different, and I think you have to respect that difference, and understand that it is going to alter your ability to be your own child's Montessori teacher. So, in short, adjust your expectations for Montessori lessons at home. Teach your child to do the things you do at home, in the way you do them at home. Unless you are homeschooling, leave the academic lessons at school, and create enrichments in your home environment. The magic of Montessori school is, in part, that everything there is just for the child. If it is at home, it is also for Mommy/Daddy/Brother/Sister, and so a little of the glitter falls away, see? But on to handwashing, which I think can and should be done at home, along with much of the practical life curriculum.

I don't know if this will help or not, but I think that if the child just wants to touch everything instead of observing the lesson, the lesson is being given at the wrong time. Handwashing is complicated. If the child wants to play with water but can't make it all the way through handwashing, I think you should try a simpler water lesson. Transferring with a sponge is a favorite of mine for manipulating water. Be sure you set it up on a rugged surface, and on a towel. The eyedropper lesson is a nice one, the work is detailed, and the instructions are short.

if you don't know the eyedropper lesson, it is this:

materials:

tray

placemat

tiny pitcher or vessel for water (maybe the jar the pipette came in?)

rubber soap holder (you know, the one with the little suction-cup thingies on it?)

small eyedropper or pipette.

tiny sponge

setup:

on top of the tray goes the placemat. arranged from left to right are:

vessel

eyedropper

soap holder

sponge

procedure:

water is drawn from water source into the vessel and is returned to the table (it should be a really tiny, transparent vessel. you do not need a lot of water for this. The water is drawn from the vessel into the pipette, and transferred, drop-by-drop, onto the little cups of the soap holder. When all of the cups are filled, the water is removed from them with the sponge. The child repeats this until he is satisfied, then the work is put away.

anybody who would be willing to post a picture of this from your album? Please do!

Remember, handwashing is complicated. It's a big lesson. If you are doing handwashing, pick a time when your child is really ready. Otherwise, help her wash her hands according to the procedure, and don't try to give the lesson. It'll just frustrate you both. Start smaller.

Surprising Quirks of Dr. Montessori: She was into AP!

2009-07-06T15:26:00.005-04:00

Move over, Dr. Montanaro, Dr. Montessori is IN!

I'm not sure where I've been all this time, but it sure wasn't reading Montessori's chapter on "The First Days of Life" in The Absorbent Mind.

I remember this chapter being sort of glossed-over in my infant-toddler training. As I recall, it was glossed over in no more than a few sentences, something to the effect that, "Montessori clearly believed that the first two years of life should ideally be spent with the mother. However, as we are charged with the care of children under two, we believe that this is the next best thing." The only further information about extended nursing and babywearing was from Montanaro and others writing after. The admonitions to wean at the first sign of readiness for other food, and against wearing the child in a "contraption" seem directly at odds with Montessori's sentiments in The Absorbent Mind. I'll pull a few choice quotes for you.

Montessori discusses "the many peoples of the world who live at different cultural levels from our own (eek)." She states that, " In the matter of child rearing, almost all of these seem to be more enlightened than ourselves--with all our Western ultramodern ideals. Nowhere else, in fact, do we find children treated in a fashion so opposed to their natural needs."

Elevating the "primitives." This is getting interesting...

She goes on to say,

"In almost all countries, the baby accompanies his mother wherever she goes. Mother and child are inseparable. All the while they are out together, mother talks and baby listens....And this lasts for the whole period of maternal feeding, which is the reason for this close alliance. For the mother has to feed her child, and therefore she cannot leave him at home when she goes out. To this need for food is added their mutual fondness and love. In this way, the child's need for nutrition, and the love that unites these two beings, both combine in solving the problem of the child's adaptation to the world, and this happens in the most natural way possible. Mother and child are one. Except where civilization has broken down this custom, no mother ever entrusts her child to someone else. The child shares the mother's life, and is always listening."

Well, knock me over with a feather! I mean, yes, you did say that Montessori believed mothers should be with their babies and all, but certainly she would not go in for such primitive practices as babywearing and extended nursing, right?

Wrong.

"All the great human groups, nations and races, have their individual differences; for example they have different ways of carrying the baby....In most parts of the world, mothers put the baby in a small bed or a large bag, they do not carry him in their arms...some hang the child from their necks, others tie him to their backs, and others again put him in a small basket; but in all countries mothers have found a way of taking their children about with them."

Now before you say that Montessori is just reporting that all this primitive business goes on and is not really advocating it, I submit to you this:

"One observes, too, that the little one, going about with his mother, never cries unless he is ill or hurt in some way. Sometimes he may fall asleep, but he does not cry....Yet the crying of children is a problem in Western countries. How often do we hear parents complain of their children's incessant crying? They discuss what to do to quieten the baby, and how to keep him happy. The reply of modern psychology is this: "the baby cries and becomes disturbed, has screaming fits and rages, because he is suffering from mental hunger." And this is the truth. The child is bored. He is being mentally starved, kept prisoner in a confined space, offered nothing but frustration to the exercise of his powers. The only remedy is to release him from solitude and let him join in social life. this treatment is naturally and unconsciously adopted in many countries. With us, it must become understood and applied deliberately, as a result of conscious thought."

Of course, this is only the babywearing part. I feel validated in my decision to go against my training and wear my little babies. But my favorite part is Montessori's distinctly non-judgmental view of the late weaners:

"Another point is the custom of prolonging the period of maternal feeding. sometimes this lasts for a year and a half; sometimes for two, or even three years. This has nothing to do with the child's nutritional needs, because for some time he has been able to assimilate other kinds of food; but prolonged lactation requires the mother to remain with her child, and this satisfies her unconscious need to give her offspring the help of a full social life on which to construct his mind...watch how his face lights up when his mother argues at a booth about the price of fruit. You will readily see what a depth of interest the words and gestures arouse in him."

Why have I missed this before? Can it be that Montessori herself is more aligned with the Dr. Sears set than with her own proponents in Montanaro, Gerber, and all the rest? Or is it that she holds up these examples as lofty ideals, to which real western women of certain means or ambition should look for inspiration, rather than as concrete examples of how to get by without wet nurses.

Is it that Montessori's actual ideas on infant life are at odds with the idea of women in the professional workplace? There's a real dilemma. I can see where that would present a problem, particularly for people trying to organize child care for women who choose not to live according to Montessori's "natural" ideal of mother-child unity. Clearly, as a professional woman herself, she would have advocated some kind of compromise, and might even have made some outline for how that should look. I do think it's interesting, if this were the case, that the pendulum has swung so far the other way as to suggest that to wear a baby around in a sling, or to wean later 9 months of age is to compromise the child's progress toward independence. Call me crazy, but did I not just read that Montessori herself held these practices up as not only acceptable, but superior?

Somebody please straighten me out on this! I'm starting to think that Dr. Montessori wants me to wear my baby and nurse him as long as I want!!

Also, thanks to Chris for backing me up on the tummy time thing. (comments on "Motomontessori"). This comment is a really interesting developmental perspective from someone who deals with musculoskeletal problems in adults. It agrees with both my training and my instinct. Boy, I was beginning to feel a little lonely out here...

Ciao Time! The Montessori Table

2009-03-29T19:29:00.006-04:00

The weaning post precipitated some discussion about Montessori and food. As with just about everything else, Montessori has pretty strong opinions about how children ought to eat.

This is not a post about table setting, at least not yet, but about Montessori's ideas about food. NOLA mom remembered "something about broth"--which I had to look up. What I found was a really nice article by Jan Katzen-Luchenta detailing Montessori's writing on the subject.

She points out what preschool teachers have noticed for as long as I can remember, that the kid who's bouncing off the walls in your class is very likely the one who had a Pop Tart for breakfast, and the one who's focused and busy is likely to be the one who had an egg. The one who's a puddle of tears by 10am is often the one who woke up late that morning and came to school on an empty stomach.

At the time of weaning, Montessori points out, it is important to make sure there is adequate fat in the child's diet as breast milk is removed. Breast milk is very fatty, as we know, and Montessori worried about crashing levels of fat in the child's body at weaning time. (Nice segue, eh?)

I am a big believer in this, and I have often peered into children's lunchboxes when looking for the causes of behavior problems. As Katzen-Luchenta repeats: you are what you eat. This is true in a big way for kids, in my opinion.

Want some more of my opinions about kids' nutrition? Here they are.

I think that the uptick in preschool ADD/ADHD diagnoses based on school behavior (I don't mean the real ADHD kids, I mean the regular kids who are being called ADHD. I realize there is a big difference), can be attributed to two things: 1)the marketing explosion surrounding sugary breakfast foods and quickie substitutes for real breakfast and 2) the conflation by parents of the fear of childhood obesity and the idea the eating fat is what makes you fat. In my opinion, and the opinions of many nutrition specialists, kids need fat in ways that adults do not, and use it differently in metabolism. Building a body is not the same job as maintaining one, and so does not require the same raw materials. Kids need to eat fat. Fat slows stomach clearing, provides the metabolic precursors to myelin, a critical part of brain development, and helps stabilize blood sugar. Yes, your body can make fat out of sugar, but it's not the same, and eliminating fat from a child's diet alters the whole schedule of the body's metabolism, and in a way that makes the child less likely to conform to what we usually consider an appropriate eating schedule.

Montessori's "thing about the broth" was the suggestion that fat should be added to broth made for children, rather than removed. She observed (like we all do) that people are born predisposed to eat sweet things and salty things, and she cautions that many of the things that satisfy these cravings (refined sugar candies, salty pretzels) will immediately satisfy the child's hunger, but will not help the child to be stable in mood, and focused in her work. She considered it a real disservice to the child to feed him improperly, and thus to set him up for failure in his work--a failure caused by an inability to concentrate due to unstable blood chemistry. I can find little reason to disagree.

So what about childhood obesity? Are we supposed to feed our kids cheesecake and fried chicken every day and expect them to grow up to make healthy food choices? No, but this is not really as far off the mark in my view as you might think.

First, I think we can all agree that overeating and underactivity are the fundamental causes of overweight in everyone--but here, especially children. Young children are still following their bodies' signals to eat, and we pretty much agree that they should be allowed to eat when hungry and be given adequate opportunity for physical activity. So tell me what you think of this:

If the fat content of a child's diet is inadequate, her blood sugar (and the associated signalling chemicals) will be unstable and will cause the child's period of satiety to be shorter than normal. Thus, the child will feel the need to eat more frequently. If the child feels the need to eat frequently, and is given calorie-rich, but fat-poor foods (how many "fat free" snacks are available in the supermarket these days?), the child will end up eating more calories than she needs, and will gain excess weight. Couple that with a few hours of screen time every day, and you can see where you're headed. Fatty foods in a child's diet help the child develop better eating habits.

Can you believe it?

A child who has eaten a fat-rich meal (something with cheese or cream in it) will stay full longer, and in a better mood longer. Now, watch me tie this to ADHD. Ready?

Remember when your kid was a little baby, and all the baby books said "crying is a late sign of hunger." What they meant was that, if your kid is crying from hunger, you have missed some earlier signals, and now your baby is REALLY hungry. Anyone remember the "early" sign you were supposed to look for?

Right. Heightened alertness, increased activity, irritability. I believe that was the order. These are early signs of hunger in children. They are nature's way of inducing the body to get up from whatever else it's doing and feed itself, and they come on before the child is able to articulate that what she needs is to eat. If the other thing it's doing is, say, school activities, and food is not offered, that extra activity will be seen in other ways. Things we would consider misbehavior, lack of focus, hyperactivity.

I rest my case.

The Crisis of Weaning

2009-03-05T14:32:00.005-05:00

So, it's come down to this. My dear, sweet, beautiful boy has got to be weaned if he's to live to see his second birthday. Van, alas, is a nipple biter. It's fun to bite them, and funny to have Mommy scream "ouch!" and push him away by his face (yes, I know the smother-him-with-your-boob trick, but when I tried this with Van, he nearly bit it clean off.) This is not the loving, respectful interaction I always imagined.

As many of you know, we have, to date, been living the joy that is tandem nursing. If you want to know my opinion about tandem nursing, it's don't do it. Friends, I have loved, and do sometimes still love, nursing my children. It's sweet, snuggly, and oh so convenient, but I must tell you that after three years plus of nursing, and a year and a quarter of nursing two, a lot of the time I just wish the little parasites would let me go. If you're enjoying your tandem nursing experience, please let me and everyone else know how you did it. I'll raise my glass to you. If know what I mean when I say I want to go hide somewhere where nobody is touching me, you can come over here and sit by me (but not too close!). If you're knocked up and on the fence about this, my humble advice is to wean the first one while your milk is out. You'll be supermom anyway. Trust me.

La Leche League Ladies, I love you, and I love your work. I'm just saying...

And yes, I know Montessori is outwardly opposed to extended nursing. Nursing past about 9 months, according to Montessori and Silvana Montanaro (Understanding the Human Being--my post about it here) prolongs the child's dependence on the mother unnecessarily, and both agree that weaning to a cup should take place immediately after solid foods are introduced, I don't know if I would go that far. Montessori was weaning orphans from a bottle, and Montanaro extrapolates this to weaning a baby from the breast. I do think there is some emotional bonding that occurs after 9 months for extended nursers that is valuable, even if it's not indispensible. So, while I have already made several posts as an extended nursing apologist, the time has finally come for me to cry "uncle".

So here I am ready to sit down across the table from Drs. Montessori and Montanaro for another crow sandwich and a slice of humble pie. As I've quoted before, Montanaro asserts that we late weaners hang onto nursing out of fear that that children will take off into the environment and leave us, unneeded and cast-off, in a corner somewhere to wither and die. I must admit that I live with another fear: I am afraid of the hell my peaceful house will be with two screaming weaners in it. Patience with shrieking infants is not something that comes naturally to me. That, fundamentally, has been the driving force behind my extended nursing. There is a lot I am willing to do for peace in the house.

Epilogue:

I left off the last paragraph at least three weeks ago, and we are still nursing--all three of us. Peace reigns, more or less, and we have sort of worked out a way around the biting. Even now, in my better mood, I would caution all you girls who are pregnant with a second one and still nursing the first, this is no small feat, nursing two. I'm doing it now, but I would have done it differently. We'll continue to work the wean in our own way, and if it's ever done, I'll let you know. The minute...

Montessori and The Two Week Shark Tale Marathon

2009-01-29T22:13:00.006-05:00

So, after all that static about TV, we have a TV crisis.

It started on a rainy afternoon when the babysitter had called off or something, and Nuvy said, innocently (or so I thought), "Maybe I could ask T.T. (next door neighbor--9 years old) to come over and watch Shark Tale. Can I, Mommy?

T.T. and I hang out a lot together. She comes over to bake, borrow cups of olive oil, make macaroni and cheese, clean mirrors (her favorite housekeeping task, and one that never even comes up on my radar unless T.T. is around). All very Montessori-friendly activities. So, I thought, "I won't fight her on this one. A little cartoon movie won't hurt anything, and we'll be back to making braided breads tomorrow." That's how it started. After they watched it, I turned off the TV and they went up to the playroom to make imaginary tea or write on the chalkboard or something, and I thought everything was copacetic.

Heh. Don't ever think that.

It crept in on little cat's feet. We went out to dinner and left the kids with the babysitter, came home and they were watching Shark Tale. Then I went to yoga (repeatedly), came home, Shark Tale was on (every time). Some days I turned it off and endured the screaming long enough to find a book or some other activity, some days I made a few phone calls and looked the other way. Then, about a week ago, the bottom dropped out.

We have had the plague at our house for about a week. Everybody got snotty noses, junky coughs, high fevers and secondary infections. In short, it was the sort of thing that nailed our feet to the floor. Between doses of Tylenol and Motrin, I thought, Hey! We have a copy of Shark Tale, and Nuvy's sick and entitled to a little indulgence, so I'll prop her up on the couch and pop it in the DVR and presto! Some healthy cartoon entertainment for a feverish three-year-old. (We actually have a long and checkered history with Shark Tale, starting, as so many tumultous relationships do, in the back of my Mom's car.)

Nuvy watched Shark tale four times that day, Then four times the next day, then, for the rest of her illness, we pretty much had it on a continuous loop. I felt sick, but Nuvy felt sicker, and this was keeping her entertained and distracted both of us from her misery. After three days of straight Shark Tales, I started to worry that I was scrambling her brain, but my Montessori logic bent and twisted so as to hold up even in the face of this insult. I reasoned (rationalized?) that, as we all know, repetition is very important to 3-year-olds in the Montessori classroom. She was clearly working through something with the endless repetition of this show, so I decided I would not introduce any other TV, and I would not try to dissuade her from watching it over and over. I would wait her out. Nobody can watch the same show over and over forever, right?

On the fourth day, an interesting thing happened. She stopped just watching. She insisted that I sit with her, and was suddenly full of questions about the motivations of all the characters. She asked who was good and who was bad, and why, why, why at every line of dialogue. After a day of this, She started asking to replay certain segments that particularly interested her. She was especially fond of the part where Lola (the Angelina Jolie fish) enters the movie with a sort of pole-dance/MTV sex appeal, to the tune of "Golddigger" ("She's dangerous/super-bad/better watch out she'll take your cash/she's a golddigger/she's a golddigger), which our neighbor, Destiny (15) helpfully sat with her and replayed for--well, I don't know how long, but a long time. I found it interesting that she so fixated on the sparkly, red, icon of cartoon feminine identity that was the sexy golddigger fish. I don't even read Vogue magazine around her.

Yesterday, her last day home sick from school and a snow day to boot, I watched one round of Shark Tale with her, and was stunned to find that she accompanied each scene with her own little discourse on what was happening and why. "Frankie's bad because he wants to eat Oscar./Lenny is sad because the anchor fell on his brother and he died/Leno is mad because Lenny is not a good shark, but Lenny IS good, because he doesn't eat people!/the worm is scared because he thinks Lenny is going to eat him, but Lenny will not eat him because Lenny is nice and doesn't eat anyone/Lola is mad because Oscar loves Angie. She is bad, but Angie is good). She did this all through the movie.

Where she still seems confused, even now that Amoxicillin has made everyone feel better, she went to school, (we only saw the movie once today. Let's call it a wean) is with the character, Luca the Octopus-who is the Don's sidekick (comes in for schtick-y things like picking up the phone to order a pizza during a threatening call, or mistakenly replaces the creepy godfather music with "I like big butts" in a scene where the big shark is talking tough to an underling). Nuvy just cannot get her head around what is funny about an incompetent and laughable henchman, who undermines all the Don's intimidation tactics. I am at a loss to help her understand this subtlety, and it frustrates her.

They say there's a lesson in everything...

A Horse of a Different Color

2009-01-28T02:10:00.005-05:00

I wanted to do that thing that you're not supposed to do in this post--in all the infant developmental posts, really--compare your children to each other. I wanted to do it in a sort of academic way, rather than in a "why can't you be more like your brother/sister" way. In that spirit, Van is a horse of a different color (I know they look the same color to you: very, very vanilla, but they have vastly various flavors on the inside!)

Van's 14 months old, and I posted about Nuvy's development during this stage , but sparsely. By the time I got her all posted, she had largely outgrown the stage. Now that Van is in early Stage 5 (stage 5 is 12-18 months), I want to take the opportunity to explore this stage more fully.

Reading my previous post on this stage (link above), I can see that I missed a lot of the emergence of skills in my writing about her. Let's take a look at Van:

Neurological and Physical Development:

Significant specialization occurs in all areas the brain at Stage 5, and of particular interest is the specialization of the hemispheres (the old "left-brain/right-brain" thing all those Signals t-shirts are always chirping about). This specialization and coordination between hemispheres precipitates:

evidence of hand-dominance ("lefty" or "righty")

Van is still pretty ambidextrous, but seems to lean more left than Nuvy ever did. Interestingly, he picks up finger foods with the left, but will move the spoon to his right.

heterolateral movement--

meaning alternating movement evenly on both sides of the body, such as stair-climbing with both legs, swinging arms while walking, and other left/right/left/right activities.

Van does not yet walk, but he climbs stairs and swings his legs alternately. His crawling is rhythmic and even, very different from the one-legged crab crawl Nuvy had from the very beginning of her crawling.

cross-patterning--

or the ability to reach across the center of the body to do something, like shaking hands, opening doors, or grabbing a spoon from the left side of your plate, using your right hand. Follow?

he is beginning to do some definitely diagnostic cross-patterning things. He has a wagon and a shopping cart, both of which he likes to push, and he can now maneuver himself, hand-over-hand from the front of the wagon around to the back where the bar is, for the purpose of pushing it.

Cycles of activity are getting established, and with this come the old sleeping and eating routines. You might get some speech at this stage, but many times it comes a little later.

With Van, we are having more trouble with sleep than we had with Nuvy. Maybe that's it, or maybe I'm more sleep-deprived now, having TWO children who don't sleep through the night, but there are some marked differences, and some remarkable similarities. Both children take substantial daytime naps. If I'm lucky, they'll both sleep for two hours at the same time!

The big disadvantage with Van is that he does not suck his thumb. I didn't give him a pacifier (by which I mean, I AM his pacifier), and I started nursing him to sleep very early. This is a big no-no, I know, and I also know first hand why. I had some excuse I used when he was very little, and still on Phenobarbital (anti-convulsant from his peri-natal rough patch. He doesn't need any seizure medication anymore, and has not had seizures since we left the hospital a week after his birth), which interrupted his sleep. So, for whatever reasons, he still does not sleep through the night, and I still nurse him down a couple of times between midnight and 5am.

Their eating patterns are similar for the age: She also refused breakfast at his age, and she also went on a three month blueberry binge, after which she would not touch a blueberry for almost a year. Van has recently ended his blueberry binge. He has also, generally, started eating less. End of a growth spurt, as I understand.

New Physical Skills

undressing--a variably convenient skill for parents. Van is still pretty much limited to hats, socks and shoes, though he "helps" when I'm undressing him.
walking steadily and carrying objects while walking

opening and closing things (doors, jars, boxes...)
I had forgotten about this one. Man does he like to open and unpack things. His particular obsession right now is a tube of peachy-pink sparkly lip gloss with some minty/orangy flavor and ostensible lip-plumping properties. I think he likes how it makes his tongue feel like it's asleep. I like champagne for the same reason.

resisting any new barriers--such as newly placed baby gates.
Kent is going to test this theory this weekend by installing a new gate on the stairs from the second to the third level of our house. I will spare you the details of how I broke the other one, but my excuse is sleep deprivation.

Stage 5 children abhor any kind of physical restraint, so if it's not too late for you, go ahead and get those baby gates up long before you think you'll need them. A barrier placed before Stage 5 is likely to be viewed as a natural part of the environment (at least for a little while) while one placed during Stage 5 will probably become an object of resistance.

jumping on both feet -- not yet, he's still not walking.

catching and throwing things -- He does have a pretty good arm. As I recall, Nuvy did, too.

leaning forward on tiptoe -- another walking skill we haven't achieved yet.

digging and building -- he stacks and builds much more than his sister did. I haven't observed a whole lot of digging, but it is the dead of winter...

Van is also an avid self-feeder. He does not much go for the spoon anymore. He really wants to feed himself, but hasn't had much success navigating the spoon to his mouth, unless it's peanut butter or mashed potatoes. So, he quickly digs in with his hands, abandoning spoons altogether. He does seem more interested in spearing things with a fork than I remember with his sister. Perhaps it's because I was less willing to let her play with forks at this age...

Cognitive Development

An interesting cognitive milestone is reached at about this time--the Stage 5 child begins to learn from trial and error, and to alter her strategy to accomplish a goal. If she has a goal, and her current strategy for reaching it isn't working, she'll try it another way. Just a few months ago, she would keep trying the same thing over and over until she either succeeded or abandoned the goal altogether.

She can also go back to an interrupted task--another development that is variably useful for parents--at her next opportunity. Just a little while ago, she would have forgotten all about the interrupted activity and gone on to something else.

Repetition continues to be important, but the sequences become more and more comples, so you see building and stacking. She is gratified by creating tall things or lifting heavy things. She can identify familiar objects and people in a picture, and can categorize based on a simple common feature (e.g. same color, different color).

We are seeing the persistence at a task, but not so much the sorting and categorizing. He does seem to recognize pictures, but it's hard to tell what he's identifying, as he's not demonstrating much expressive language yet. He does delight in familiar books and pictures, though, so I'm confident he's recognizing things.

Emotional and Social Development

The Stage 5 child's interpersonal skills acquire remerkable subtlety. She starts to consciously regulate her emotions, and realizes the influence her behavior has on others--particularly her parents. She can curb her anger if there's positive incentive to do so, tests limits, and enjoys applause. She loves an audience and tries on various roles to see how they feel.

We are seeing this kind of behavior with Van to a degree, although he seems generally more committed to his emotions than Nuvy did. He seems somehow less distractable.

She has a strong sense of self and ownership. She can take turns to some degree, but is a long way yet from sharing. She begins to take an interest in other children, often preferring them to adults.

This is definitely evident in my experience with Van. He likes to pass things back and forth, "sharing" in his way, but only on his own terms. He absolutely loves our neighbors' children (9 and 15 respectively) and adores his baby cousin, Gracie.

Speech is emerging, and she will name things and remember their names. She experiments vocally with animal sounds and rhythms. she enjoys rhyming as a linguistic point of interest.

Here he is developing rather differently from Nuvy. He does not talk, and makes only the "cow" sound. Oh, but he sings! He loves rhythm and songs with fingerplay (itsy bitsy spider, twinkle little star, pat-a-cake) and mimics the sounds of the words in the songs. This imitation does not seem to be as pronounced in speech, though. He doesn't really repeat sounds. He does, however, mimic the rhythms and inflections of speech with a degree of sophistication that continues to impress me. Of course, I may be a little partial...

Here are the Stage 5 environmental supports, for those who are setting up environments. In the next post, I hope to discuss our second-child adaptations/abandonments. You know, for your amusement.

The End of the Beginning

2009-01-17T23:20:00.009-05:00

After any decision is made, there is a pause for breath. In part, it is a breath of relief--perhaps the removal of anxiety making space in the chest for air. Perhaps it's a sigh of resignation, and the extra breathing room comes from letting go of a fight. Or it could be a deep breath before the dive into a new adventure.

As I contemplated my decision about Nuvy's next year of preschool, I had a parallel imagination of the future of this blog. It was sure to take one of two courses. Either we would stay with our lovely neighborhood co-op school, and my writing would shift to a discussion of how my Montessori sensibility would comingle with an excellent non-Montessori early childhood experience, or we would spend the next few years discussing the finer points of primary Montessori education from my triple-mirror perspective as parent, infant-toddler teacher, and primary administrator.

So, I went to visit the Neighborhood Catholic Montessori (hereafter referred to as NCM). I did not get what I wanted. What I wanted was for NCM to help me make the easiest possible choice, the choice to stay right where, happily, I was. I wanted NCM to be nice, but not too nice. Not nice enough to leave the co-op for. Not nice enough to be missed. No such luck.

Everything was picture perfect. Practical life was full of coordinated yellow trays topped with various vessels of green-dyed water for transferring activities, full of peacefully busy children. Children pouring, sponging, eating snack three at a time at the snack table, washing hands in a ceramic basin, hanging paintings on the wall, introducing themselves to me with direct gazes and outstretched hands, I was home.

Geography was populated with children punching and filling in maps of South America. Language housed a small child (maybe an older three or a young four?) surrounded by a bevy of five year old girls giving him sound lessons with a box of tiny objects. In math, someone was tracing the hundred board, and another child was doing coin work (a material my school did not have). As many Montessori teachers would expect for 11am, the sensorial area was a ghost town, but it was devoid of dust, and clearly all the materials had regular use.

I toured the elementary 1-3 class, which was equally delectable, taught by a sister of Saint Joseph who wore pants and a black turtleneck sweater, an arty sort of cross necklace, and a demeanor that indicated a lifelong devotion to doing just what she was doing--just then and there. If there were such a thing, she seemed like my kind of nun. In this class, no fewer than four children came to me, apparently unbidden, to introduce themselves, ask my name, and shake my hand with the same confidence with which they met my gaze. I raised my impressed eyebrows to their teacher , and she beamed and shrugged saying, "oh, they're the welcoming committee." Oh, let me tell you, I was sunk.

So, we are going to catholic Montessori school next year. Yes, there will be Hail Marys and Our Fathers to be sure, and there will be no celebrations of Diwali or Eid or Kwanzaa or Purim. I will miss those. But we will have the pink tower and the broad stair and the banker's game and the map cabinet. We will have sandpaper letters and the hundred board. And yes, Virginia, we will have line time and the birthday ritual and constructive triangles and knobbed cylinders, too.

As excited as I am, it is a wistful excitement. I love our preschool. Nuvy has been so tenderly loved and nurtured there this year. And though she may have only the faintest windswept memories of this place, I will remember. It's hard to leave the co-op, with all its parent control and home-made snacks. I felt a hitch in my breath at NCM when I saw the anonymous, ubiquitous animal crackers and juice provided for snack--easy self-service items for the snack table. I will miss my monthly co-op day, and everyone else's, too. It's a great community, and a great place for children, but having seen what I've always imagined I wanted for my child, I just can't let her miss it.

Where's Waldorf?

2009-01-12T23:54:00.006-05:00

NOLA mom, who's always got a useful question (if this were a paying gig, she'd be hired!), asked what I think of Waldorf. In short, I like it, but not for me. I like it for people who like it. Let me explain.

Waldorf and Montessori meet philosophically at a point on the horizon that I agree is where we all want to go. It is a place where we have happy, well adjusted, engaged, creative independent little kids who love school and life. They differ substantially in how we get from here to there, largely because they don't quite agree about where "here" is. Caveat: I am a Montessori person, not a Waldorf person, so my point of view is skewed. If you are a Waldorf teacher (or Waldorf parent who knows the ins and outs of the method) I invite you to post, just so we can have an accurate picture.

Here's my understanding from touring my local Waldorf, and having a lovely and fascinating dinner with a very enthusiastic Waldorf proponent. Waldorf and Montessori have different takes on following the child, but they both maintain this as a core value. Both are disinclined to try to "teach" preschoolers anything, rather they set them up to "discover" things. Both approaches involve a degree of controlled freedom within the classroom. both involve ample engagement with a prepared immediate environment, and both are partial to simple wooden toys over noisy plastic ones. Both eschew screens (tv or computer) as learning tools, and both are typically taught by peaceable young-to-middling-aged women partial to dansko clogs and organic produce. However, Waldorf teachers seem to do more needle felting than Montessori teachers, and to use more batik and tye-dyed textiles to create a soft, diffuse comfort in their classroom decor. Montessori teachers seem more inclined to watercolors than needlecraft, and prefer sun-drenched rooms with glossy polished shelves and neat and spare interiors.

Rudolph Steiner (the Waldorf guy) created a very open early childhood curriculum based pretty rigorously on age readiness. Reading and math are introduced formally much later in Waldorf classrooms than in Montessori classrooms, with the reason that no lesson should be presented before the child's mind is fully ready to receive it. From this point of view, Montessori is essentially "hiding the vegetables" in math-and-reading driven activities that young children enjoy, even if they cannot yet synthesize them. From a Montessori perspective, the young child absorbs concrete information, to be abstracted and synthesized later. Waldorf argues that this is an unnecessary preparation of an immature brain, and that the child's energy is better spent in imaginative fantasy play and games of his own creation, and in largely unguided exploration, particularly in the very early years. Waldorf develops more structure as the child gets older and, like Montessori, becomes somewhat more teacher-driven as the mind develops readiness for greater abstraction.

The imagery that illustrates my understanding of the differences is this. Waldorf seems to endeavor to encircle and encourage free exploration, gathering the child's consciousness from the edges and spiraling it upward toward abstract thought. It begins with largely unbridled experience, and focuses it through the grades through manipulation at the edges of a mind that is left as free from intrusion as possible. Montessori, on the other hand, feels to me as if it prefers to infiltrate the developing mind, following the child's discovery of the pieces of intellect, and leaving markers in the places where it meets the child's free exploration. The child then draws those markers together through her unique experience and discovers the order inside and outside herself at once.

I think my preference for Montessori has something to do with my education, and a lot to do with how I'm wired. I'm a tinkerer and a dissector of things and ideas by nature. I like that the curriculum anticipates the interest of the child in a variety of directions, and waits to see how the child will discover it, and how she will bring it all together. The Waldorf method feels, to my Montessori sensibility, a little too timid. It feels as if it is always a step behind the child, rather than waiting for the child's arrival. Waldorf feels more like a gentle push, where as Montessori feels like a gentle pull.

Also, while both Montessori and Waldorf are very environment-focused, Waldorf seems to invite a more sweeping sense of wonder, an artists sense. Montessori feels like a more penetrating sort of wonder, a scientist's sense. It invites a more experimental kind of exploration, where Waldorf seems to invite reflection more than experimentation. I think I just have a rather analytical mind, and so the Montessori curriculum speaks to me, and Waldorf feels too passive. Where Montessori steps forward with curiosity, Waldorf steps back in awe.

Choices: Observations in the Co-op Preschool

2009-01-12T14:16:00.009-05:00

As you all know, I am busy agonizing over Nuvy's next year in preschool. Do we stay at our current sort of "non-denominational" (in preschool terms) school, or do we make a change to the local Catholic Montessori, and take our Montessori with a side of Catholic?

I have crossed the Grande Dame school out in the main line off our list because of the commute (30 minutes each way= 5 extra hours a week in the car for her, 10 for me), and honestly, I think the tuition is outrageous, and not comparable to other quality Montessori programs in our area. Yes, Montessori schools can be expensive, but when preschool tuition starts pushing $2000/month for a 9-3 program that includes a two-hour nap (that's with a "finance charge" of 7.5% for not shelling out your $15,000 all at once in August--when they say poverty is expensive, this is akin to what they mean!), I have to ask myself what I am willing to give up in other life enrichments to send my daughter (and son!) to this school. After all, I'd also like to send them to piano lessons, college and abroad at some point in their lives...

So we are back to our own neighborhood and our two choices. This morning I had an "observation day" in the four-year-old class at our current school, and I have a tour Wednesday of the Catholic Montessori up the street. Here's what I observed.

I Loved:

I loved what I always love about this school. I loved the dad who was on co-op today, hanging out at the sand table chatting up the boys.

I loved the cardboard boxes that had become bear caves for hibernation. This is very Waldorf to me, and is one of the things I like about Waldorf.

I loved the calm atmosphere and the languid, quiet voices of the teachers giving almost imperceptible guidance--leading the children with the lightest touch, with the utmost respect, but with absolute authority. You don't see that everywhere.

I loved the freedom and peace with which the children moved in the space. It is the hallmark of a well designed environment that there is no "track" that calls children to roar past their work choices with undue speed to some attractive destination across the room. The room is arranged to invite lingering over one's choices from the first steps into the environment.

I Noticed:

I noticed that the teachers deftly redirected individuals and groups when their play became chaotic, but that the chaos might have been put off a little longer by more careful planning of the smaller elements of the environment. The foods that the bears pretended to eat were presented in big plastic bags without any obvious orderly way to play with them (no feast to arrange, or matching work, or plastic bush to gather the berries from), so they became projectiles pretty quickly. At one point, I saw that the teachers started a little guided imaginative play in that the concept of a park ranger was introduced, and an idea of bears eating "natural foods" rather than things stolen from park visitors came up--which seemed to move the whole natural bear environment into a more human-controlled arena. Not necessarily bad, just not where my mind tended to take the scenario.

I noticed that the room was dominated by "art" work, and that the children were not particularly drawn to the painting area. In Montessori classrooms, we often struggle to keep kids away from the drawing materials and guide them to the Montessori work--because it is seen as rather an undefined activity--which may be what draws the children to it in the classroom. In this room, the painting area was available and attractive, but I was struck by the degree to which the children failed to flock to it. Other areas of the room seemed to hold equal appeal.

I noticed that morning cleanup was a big job, but that the children willingly participated itn it. Because everything was left out for the children to use, they had no concept of taking something out, using it, and putting it away for another person's use. In a Montessori class, this is something four-year-olds do pretty well. The teachers made a game of the cleanup (assigning objects to put away by color, and coordinating the color with something the child wore), and the children cooperated well. It was a pleasant, creative approach, but it seemed a little foreign to my Montessori sensibility.

I noticed that the children went outdoors even with icy mud on the playground. You don't see that everywhere, either. I admire the teachers for that.

I noticed that everyone was very, very polite. That was nice.

I Missed:

I missed order. I missed the children's lessons in care of the environment. I missed trays and mats. After my observation, I bored my husband to tears (I'm sure) with a discussion of the benefits of presenting individual portions of play-dough on trays on a shelf for each child to manage, over the more usual preschool presentation of a "play-dough station" where a table is laid with portions of play-dough at each chair for children to come to, play with, and leave where they found it. (If anyone wants more discussion of that, let me know in the comments)

I missed depth in the planned curriculum. The children made bear caves for hibernation, and imagined that they were bears, and hibernated inside. This is a theme for the time of year. Good start. Now, I want to see fruits and berries that bears would eat available with matching/labeling cards. I want to see available activities for identifying different species of bears, different places a bear might hibernate (do they find a cave? dig one?)I want to see other animals that hibernate inside a cave to be taken out and discovered. I want activities about snow and cold weather, zipper frames for learning to close jackets, and bear costumes. I want more choices for the hibernating bear activities.

I missed the mixed age group. I wanted to see five-year-olds working at complicated things, and three-year-olds working at simpler things side by side. I wanted to see more opportunities for children to teach and learn from each other. Yes, I love the long chain bead work and the banker's game, but wow. I really love young children learning from older children, and miss it more than I'd realized.

The Graduate

2009-01-09T02:28:00.003-05:00

She's three now. This means she's outgrown my Assistants to Infancy training and poised for primary. Now we have a decision to make.

Right now, Nuvy's enjoying our neighborhood co-op nursery school, which is sweet and lovely, very play-centered and child-centered, and lots of parent involvement (with the co-op thing and all). She is there because she was too young this year for the area Montessori primary programs, and I didn't find an infant-toddler Montessori program within half an hour's drive. It was an easy choice. It's very well thought of in our area, and with good reason.

The next choice, however, is not so easy. We love our preschool, but it is not a Montessori program. The philosophy combines some traditional elements, some Montessori-appropriate elements, lots of Waldorf-appropriate elements, and a lot of attention to detail, which makes for a really lovely preschool. However, I'm wondering if I will be able to square my Montessorian educational philosophy with this approach. No Montessori handwashing, no beautiful lunch, no long chains, no practical life, no work mats, no birthday ritual, no gardening, these are the elements of the Montessori Curriculum that made me fall in love.

On the other hand, she's happy. It's very close to home, so the community is made up of our neighbors. It feeds some very nice elementary schools. The nearest Montessori program that is like the ones I'm used to is half an hour's commute away (but it's fantastic!). The nearer program is well reputed, but it's a religious school, which I'm not sure is what we're looking for. (we had our ups and downs as non-catholics in a catholic school as kids. If we're doing religion, I think I want it on my own terms.) There are a few other "Montessori" schools nearby, but none has passed my sniff test. (One "lost its accreditation and is working toward restoring it" um...no.)

So now I'm torn. Do I take a chance and move her to the local catholic-infused Montessori school (yes, I know Montessori was a catholic--but she was not running a Catholic School.)? Do I haul her out to the main line every day to attend the grande dame Montessori in town? If I leave her where she is, will I squander her absorbent mind? Will it just be absorbent, and get all the good stuff regardless? Can I fill in the practical life at home? Will I make her teachers hate me with all my Montessori crap? Could I ever forgive myself (no matter what I decide) if she has trouble in high school?

The re-enrollment form is due at the end of January. So I have a few weeks to think about it. Oh, wouldn't you rather just talk about Van's infant-toddler development?

The world is full of what she wants.

2008-11-24T23:52:00.004-05:00

Quickly now, so the Montessorians don't hear...

My girl believes in Santa Claus. She's beginning to have childish wants, instead of just babyish needs. She is interested in Santa because she wants something, and she believes he can deliver. This feels like a big beginning to me, the beginning of Nuvy's desires. It also feels like a goodbye. Goodbye to the baby for whom I was everything.

There's also quid pro quo. If you are very, very good...

Before, if anyone asked me what Nuvy "wanted", I smiled to myself knowing she wanted nothing. There was no need I couldn't meet, and I just saw that turn on a dime. I just watched a great big well of want open up, and with it bubbled up excitement and anticipation, and all those wonderful wide-eyed emotions. They will be followed shortly by disappointment and loss and letdown, too. Someday, the "Believe" in Macy's window will look like a cheap "buy" to her, too, and she will begin to look for the machinery that drives the magic--but not yet.

Montessori's Stealth Grace and Courtesy Lessons

2008-11-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

While still mulling around my ramblings about authoritarian parenting and the toppling of totalitarian political regimes, I ran into a friend who has a company that endeavors to teach children social graces in a "fun, engaging way". We talked a little about the importance of grace and courtesy to a Montessori model of education, and she aked me for a consult. I hope I will be able to give her a good one, but while I love white-glove tea parties as much as the next girl, I worry that many of my ideas about grace and courtesy might not be marketable as fun and engaging.

As it happens, I ran into her in just the kind of social situation we would like to prepare young people to enjoy, and as I looked around the room at all the very well-behaved ladies, I mused that, while it's all well and good to learn how to pour tea, putting on manners is rather less than what we want in graceful and courteous people.

Somebody said that fashion is for people who lack style, and manners are for people who lack breeding. This is how, I hear, social climbers of the hoi-polloi are tsk-ed about by their (our) betters at the tables to which they (we) are not invited. This is also where Montessori has it all over modern parents who want their pre-teens to learn how to act in public where there are no interactive electronic media available to occupy them. The breeding in question is more a matter of cultivating habits. The catch is that habits of grace and courtesy are meant to be invisible. In the company of "cultivated" people, only the mistakes show.

The core of grace and courtesy in the Montessori philosophy is respect. It is the mutual respect between child and teacher, and among children. This is also the core of Montessori's philosophy of self-discipline. I am amazed that I don't see more of this around on parenting sites. Aren't you? There was plenty of advice to be found about making sure you model good table manners at the dinner table each night (like we all do, right?), and about how you should never ridicule or put anyone down in your child's presence (as if it might be ok if the child were out of earshot?), and plenty of how you should let your child "practice" thoughtfulness, such as pulling out chairs for people (could be dangerous without sufficient practice!)

I looked all over the internet for comparisons of discipline strategies for an idea of respecting children, and I kept coming up with the same tired trifecta: Authoritarian, Permissive, and Authoritative. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Authoritative is the preferred style by, well, by just about everyone. While I do think the "Authoritative" parent sounds much better than the other two (I don't know which of the bazillion of these articles to link to , just google parenting style), I think there should be a fourth option--the "Respectful" parent.

Here's a brief outline of what I think are Montessori's most important lessons in grace and courtesy. Primary teachers and Assistants to Infancy may note that these lessons in respect are not always filed under the Grace and Courtesy tab in your binder, but then Grace and Courtesy are hard to define in lots of situations, aren't they?

1. Teach, Don't Correct.
The cardinal rule of good behavior is that you never, ever call someone out on a faux pas. (Some day I'll tell you about the fancy business lunch at which I goofily put my bread on the charger instead of the bread plate--thus flummoxing the waitress who wanted to deliver my soup into making this very grave error. Poor thing. ;-) ) Montessori teaches that the way to teach children is by modeling and positive direction, and that the graceful way to handle a mistake is to overlook it, and re-introduce the correct behavior. ("See, I can chew with my lips closed, like this. Can you?" not "Close your mouth when you chew. It's disgusting to chew with your mouth open.") In all areas, Montessori cultivates this model of teaching. Graceful! Courteous!

2. Defining one's space.
The cross-legged posture and the work mat are two of the most sublime peacekeeping tools in the Montessori arsenal. It is the very beginning of "Mind Your Own Business" to define what is one's own business. The mat clearly indicates to the self and to others what is the child's business at hand. The cross-legged posture allows the child to sit comfortably while taking up a minimum of space on the floor, thus avoiding collisions and conflicts. Is there anything more completely polite than to mind one's own business and, by absence of intrusion, to facilitate the business of others?

3. Walking on the line.
Walking on the line goes hand in hand with defining one's space. Children carefully walk along a line drawn on the floor as an exercise. They do it slowly, quickly, to music, carrying objects, alone, and with friends. The idea is to develop a kinesthetic sense (that is, knowing where all your parts are located at any given time) and a sense of balance. Great for ballerinas and basketball players, but also great for grace and courtesy. It's the preventive part of politeness--the ability to avoid upsetting other people's things, and so their feelings. Doesn't it conjure images of girls in finishing school walking around with books on their heads? Good posture and balance aren't just for looks, see?

Montessori goes on to develop a whole curriculum of politeness, including the art of introductions, holding up one's end of the conversation, ceremonious meals, offering and receiving things, and a whole host of other etiquette lessons which are extremely useful, but I keep coming back to the above three as the base that holds the whole thing up. After all, a charming person can make charming mistakes, and "correctness" can be obnoxious without its underlying community spirit.

And now for something completely different...

2008-11-18T00:12:00.002-05:00

Yep, you guessed it. Van's first birthday was yesterday.

I know this is supposed to be a Montessori baby-mama blog where we always talk about how best to respect and nurture our joyful children, but some of you are already familiar with my occasional dabbling in Nuclear Homemaking, often in the form of Pastries of Mass Destruction.

(see, I was able to get that out with no reference at all to yellowcake... almost.)

So here is a photo of his birthday cake. Laugh all you want. I'll give you the whole story.

Some of you will recall the Martha Stewart 15th anniversary series where she did a year's worth of "best of" issues, the crown jewel of which was the "year of cakes" issue. I still haven't recovered. This was my attempt at making Miss October, the "Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake", which I have dreamed of making for Van's birthday since about the 12th week of his gestation. Sadly, it took about six hours to make and wound up looking like a fairly substantial cow pie. This is why God made burnt sugar decorations. (Oh, wait. I made those, too...)

If I may, this is the worst cake recipe I have ever attempted. The instructions are completely asinine, and the thing simply will not hold together with the "meringue buttercream", It slid around like a jello mold until the glaze hardened to hold it together. Why anyone would take a beautiful meringue and deflate the thing with three and a half sticks of butter is beyond me. It further calls for a mysterious product called "hazelnut cream" which apparently no one on the first ten pages of a google search can identify, other than that every Whole Foods on earth is out of it. I have heard of people using everything from hazelnut coffeemate to Nutella (I chose the latter) to get hazelnut filling to go between the bazillion crepes it takes to make it this tall. It did slice in a nice stripe-y way, but collapsed after about half of it had been served, so the last third of it had to be eaten layer by layer, short-stack fashion.

The recipe included the cool candied hazelnuts with the long spikes, but when I tried to follow the sugar-candy recipe, I began to understand why so many of the other fallen bakers used strawberries to decorate theirs. What lunacy!! For the record:

Anyone who tells you that the first step to making caramel sugar is to add water to the sugar and boil the resulting syrup until it browns IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!

As I knew (but wanted to be a team player, so I tried it Martha's way), the way to make caramel sugar is to dump sugar in a pot, light a fire under it, and stir. Water is not necessary or helpful. I dutifully added it though, then boiled it away until all I had left was a bunch of lumpy sugar that made a cloudy, grainy syrup. Once I threw that away, I made the caramel sugar the right way, and got not only gorgeous candied hazelnuts, but plenty of extra caramel for making birdcages and other sugar-string delights with which to gild my cow pie. Splendid fun!

Van also had developmental follow-up today, so there is actually a relevant post to be made--but it's for another day! The one year Montessori stuff from Nuvy is here, disjointed as it was in the middle of our move. I'll try to do better this time.

And when she was bad, she was horrid.

2008-11-05T13:47:00.005-05:00

It's another discipline post. Really it is. But first...

Here's Nuvy in her "Purple Butterfly With A Big Dress" costume, stuffing a chocolate between houses on Halloween night. I love this costume, but I was looking forward to making her into a "Shark", the first iteration. The second, "A Pink Bear with Big Purple Teeth," left me totally at a loss.

So, butterfly worked out great, third year in a row. Poor Van, he got stuffed into Nuvy's old butterfly costume from two years ago--completely adorable, by the way--Sans wings-- and was a caterpillar.

Anyway, on to the discipline part. NOLA mom asks what I think about ignoring bad behavior, as negative reinforcement is still reinforcement. This is a topic that keeps me up at night from time to time, because I read that, too, and I'm pretty jumbled in my feelings about it, and will now make another overlong post to that effect.

I think it's a nice idea that you can effectively discipline a person (or an animal) with no negative feedback, but I have to admit that I also think the approach is somewhat limited.

Here is an article I read about using dolphin training methods to train your husband, which espouses pretty much the same idea. Reward positive behaviors, and ignore negative ones. This woman reports some success training her husband in this way, and I can certainly see the appeal of the idea. It's a fun read.

The Montessori Approach
Montessori relies heavily on peer pressure to guide children's behavior. The teacher models the correct behavior and points it out in other children. Likewise, the other children point out to the errant child his error, and so there is a kind of "movement" toward good, community-oriented behavior. Acting out produces its own consequence, in that the offender is shunned by others who don't want to play with him in his current state of activity, and so the teacher is pretty much there to help reintroduce the child to the group once the acting out is over. Fights and other group expressions of inappropriate behavior are usually discussed in a general way at circle time, and the children will come to an understanding of why a behavior is inappropriate or ineffective. It's not called "normalization" for nothing.

This works splendidly in large groups of children. (Please remember that Montessori herself worked with orphaned or otherwise abandoned children whose parents exerted no influence, and who lived in the facility.) I have always maintained that Montessori teachers have a much easier time than parents, since there is nobody else to point to at home, it's just you and your child. Oh, and all your emotional baggage.

My Home-modified Montessori Approach
Now that we're staring down the juggernaut of our own tempestuous offspring, let's get real. For children, there are certainly some behaviors that it does not pay to reinforce in any way. There are also some behaviors that have to have immediate, real consequences, and some of the Montessori school consequences just don't have as much weight at home. My own modification of Montessori school discipline includes some categories of behavior that need different categories of response.

Acting Out
Acting out or "protest to the contrary", I define as an outsized emotional response to an authoritative decision the child opposes. For example, "I want/don't want to go to school/bed/table/bath", but the decision is already made. Really, I don't advocate negotiating on this, once you've made a pronouncement, and I think this is a good time to ignore bad behavior. Here's why: If the tantrum precipitates "five more minutes", then the tantrum has been successful. If the tantrum elicits yelling or violence from the parent, this is the kind of negative reinforcement you don't want. Not necessarily because it's "attention," but because it's "effect." While she didn't get what she wanted, at least she managed to make you as miserable as you made her, so it's a draw.

This is why I think it's important to be completely unmoved by protest tantrums. This kind of behavior will not get you anywhere in life. It will not get you friends, or a job, or a loan from the bank. You have to keep your wits about you, and learn how to play ball. The lesson is that tantrums get you nothing at all.

Violence against others
In real life, contrary to a little raging hyssy-fit, violence against others will get you something indeed. It will get you arrested. That is why I think hurting other people is an actionable offense, and should not be ignored. With toddlers, I think you have to express disapproval in no uncertain terms, and I think it should be personal. "Nuvy, I will not let you hurt Colin (hit Van/bite me/throw things at people...). If you hurt us, we cannot work/play with you." I think a toddler needs to know not only that violence against others is not allowed, but that you, the parent, intend to prevent it.

When Nuvy is violent with me, I feel like it's ok for me to show her a little attitude, because I really think this is the logical consequence. I mean, on the playground (or in the girls' restroom in high school) what is the usual result of physically assaulting someone? They get really pissed off, right? Naturally, I don't hit her back, but after the first "I will not let you..." I say sharply "Go away from me, now! I won't let you hit me!" Likewise, after the first warning with others, I remove her abruptly from the situation. So far, this works pretty well. She seems to understand it.

Interrupting another person's work (snatching toys, mostly)
This one is hard with toddlers, and I think it's more a situation for dialog than for "consequences." Even though she's pushing three now, I still think the concept of sharing is a little nebulous for her. "Share" means "give it to me." For now, when she fights her brother or her friend over a toy, I try to walk through it with her. "Hey, wait a minute. I know you want that spoon, but Van wants it, too. Please let him finish his turn, then you can have one." The advantage is that Van is 11 months old, so once she gives up the object of desire, I can easily redirect him, so she can have what she's after. Positive reinforcement for waiting your turn, not punishment for grabbing. In Montessori school, it's easy to tell when someone is "finished" with something, because the child has returned the work to the shelf. Not always so at home, unless you are very well disciplined in your environment. Sometimes you'll want to help it along...

By the way--It is a little trick I've developed in the "non-Montessori" parts of the day at school, and at home, to ask one child to wait her turn, then quickly encourage the other child to another activity, giving the first one over to the waiting child to quickly achieve positive reinforcement for waiting.

So there's a start--anyone have more?

NO! NO! NO!: Logical Consequences and the Crisis of Opposition

2008-10-15T14:05:00.005-04:00

I had forgotten how much I love writing this blog. Thanks for all the 'welcome back' messages!

I got a comment about oppositional behavior, and I just couldn't wait to post about it. Remember when I last left off talking about Montanaro's three crises? Remember how I said I was hoping against hope that "this" was the terrible twos?

It wasn't.

There are lots of useful analogies about challenging toddlers. People often say it's like having a preverbal teenager, which is my favorite, and a sentiment I can totally get behind. Before I go on, I just have to say that, for us, entering the crisis of opposition has been a little like early labor for a first time mother. There comes a point at which the hurt is so intense, so unlike anything you've ever felt before, that you're sure it can't get any worse than this, and then it does.

In any case, I think we're really here, now. Nuvy is a delight as long as I don't ask anything of her. She is adorably verbal, heartbreakingly affectionate, and generally sweet and well meaning. But...

THE MINUTE I invade her interior monologue to ask her to (insert benign request here--come to dinner, put on shoes, take off shoes, get sweater, etc.), it all falls apart. I am given to understand that this is not only normal, but healthy, and that it is a phase she'll grow out of. Here's hoping.

So in the absence of having raised up a perfectly cooperative two-year-old, I consulted the literature. I found a few articles here, and here, that are good opening discussions of the "natural and logical consequences" discipline strategy. I think (have been trained to think) that this is a superior method to corporal punishment or "time out". In my educational experience, it is miraculous. In my limited parenting experience, it does work, but somewhat less dramatically for parents than for teachers. By now, this should surprise nobody.

I will state for the record that I am absolutely opposed to corporal punishment and all sorts of intimidation tactics in child-rearing. In the next breath, I have to admit that I am bossy as hell and tend to insist on my own way (I'm glaring in your direction, peanut gallery dwellers), and sometimes pretty forcefully. I have, in fact, yelled at my toddler on more occasions than I like to think about, and have, in extremely tense situations, impulsively smacked her on the hand or bottom three times that I can remember right now. I'm not proud of any of this, but it can and does happen, even to people who KNOW it isn't right.

Now that that's off my chest, I do not believe that yelling or corporal punishment has ever, EVER improved a bad situation with Nuvy. The best that ever happened was that she was temporarily intimidated into obedience, but it was at the cost, of some modicum of her respect for me. I'm sure all you old friends of mine out there are smiling wryly. I would say to you just what you think I would say. ;-)

So, if your family and friends tell you you must discipline your child by corporal means to be effective, I would suggest that there is ample evidence to the contrary. Here is a very nice article from Tomorrow's Child regarding the Montessori approach to discipline. It is an empowering, child-driven philosophy that aims to nurture a self-disciplined child, in contrast with methods that aim to produce an "obedient" child.

The difference between self discipline and obedience is an important one, and it represents a fundamental difference between two ideas of "good" behavior. As you might have guessed, I hope that I am nurturing a self-disciplined child. I think that intimidation methods like corporal punishment, yelling, and even time-out in certain applications, tend to pretty effectively produce obedience, at least for a while. Unfortunately, the effect is only maintained as long as the child's main objective is to please the parent, and parents will find--sooner or later-- that the child's desire to please the parent is, well, intermittent at best. Once parent approval is no longer the child's primary concern, discipline strategies that rely on the child's desire to remain in good standing with the parent fall apart. I know I keep coming back to this (as in my post about praise), but I believe it. Montessori-style discipline, or "normalization" is about a child's learning to make good decisions whether or not adults are there to impose them. Sounds like a tall order? I suppose it is, but I'll try briefly to provide a few central pillars for discussion. Of course, please read all these articles I've linked to. These are just a few quickies:

1. Choose Rules Carefully: There are lots of "rules about rules" that you could read up on, but my rule litmus test is to ask myself, "Do I REALLY mean 'No.'?" I mean, am I willing to pick up my marbles and go home over this? Could I reasonably be persuaded otherwise? Is it just because I'm tired? If not, it's not a rule. I try to make as few rules as possible and make them real. Other things are open to negotiation, and I do think it's ok to negotiate with toddlers, and even to be persuaded by them, because it empowers them, and helps them to understand that talking can sometimes work (whereas whining and hitting do not) to get you what you want. There's lots more about that, but I said I'd be brief...

Corollary: mean "no" when you say it

2. Model the behavior you want: This one was a no-brainer for me, but the very devil to live up to. The argument goes like this: How do you expect to teach your child to be respectful and kind by hitting him or speaking to him in an angry/threatening tone? Do you anticipate the day when he yells or hits back? Again, you can achieve temporary obedience by intimidation, but there is a time coming when you will no longer be as intimidating as you are now. Just something to think about.

Modeling is also a way of keeping the rules clear. If standards of behavior are different for you and for your child, you can imagine the confusion, and the precipitant devaluing of the standard itself.

The fact that we are not perfect parents (are you?), and we slip up now and again in this regard gives us another modeling opportunity. We find we have the opportunity to model appropriate conciliatory behaviors. I have had several opportunities to model for my daughter a sincere apology when I have made a mistake. It's not that I like screwing up, but I think it's valuable to her to learn that errant behaviors can be adequately dealt with by apology, discussion and reconciliation. A child who is asked to forgive, and has an opportunity to offer forgiveness, also learns that she will be forgiven her mistakes, and so may learn to acknowledge them. I think most of us could use a little of that.

Caveat: Kids have a keen nose for insincerity. Remember when you were a kid and an adult tried to bait and switch you? Believe it.

Of course, self-discipline is a process and obedience is a behavior. I want my child to obey me, in the short term, but to obey her own better nature in the long term. The thing is, if she's to develop her own better nature into a strong will, I may have to sacrifice some part of the immediate obedience that would be convenient (not to mention aesthetically pleasing) to me. To people who have raised children, or have been raised themselves in a more authoritarian style, this will surely look like "spoiling" and you will be cautioned to apply more direct heat. I would encourage you to stand your ground.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe children are "spoilable", but I don't think it's respect that spoils them. I think it's lack of discipline on the part of the parent--learned by the child through modeling inconsistent behavioral cause and effect, a frequent by-product of authoritarian rule. Political analogy: ever notice how it's always a totalitarian government that gets overthrown. It's not overthrown because it's oppressive, but because it's subjects discover that it is weak.

But that deserves its own post.

Van-the-man in stage 4, Nuvy in underpants!

2008-10-04T17:42:00.004-04:00

I'll bet you thought you were rid of us, eh?

Nope.

Just thought I'd drop by my neglected blog to check on Van's progress in Stage 4 (I blogged about that when Nuvy was his age, and thought it would be fun to compare), and also to talk about something I've been asked about several times, and am finally able to speak about from real parenting experience: toilet training.

First, my Stage 4 man. Isn't he sweet?

He's now 10 months old, right in the middle of stage 4, and seems to be more or less where I'd expect him to be, but doing it all very differently from the way Nuvy did.

Motor development: As far as walking development, he's crawling efficiently on all fours and pulling up, but not yet cruising the furniture. I discovered with Nuvy that the "walking curriculum" is completely superfluous in my home environment, as my own lazy-susan coffee table, doorknobs, and staircase seem to fulfill all the functions perfectly. However, you can check out Montessori's walking curriculum here, and buy elements for your environment if you like them. A word in defense of orthodoxy, though, the walking curriculum is introduced in a very specific order, based on motor readiness, so if you're going to do it, please read up and do it right.

Of course, for me, babyproofing (um, baby-resistant-ing?) has been all the walking curriculum we have so far used. Walking is hard-wired and develops naturally for most children, so my walking curriculum is mostly defined by absence: an absence of apparatus to hold the child in a standing position. I don't have any exersaucers, jumpy doorway chairs, or other things that help babies who can't yet stand to do it before they're ready. I know. Them's fightin' words, but I say them only in the spirit of Montessori assistance to infancy. Please know you can let your child jump in the doorway with no lectures from me about his development. I'm so over that now.

Language development: Van is much "babblier" than Nuvy ever was. It seemed that all her noises were intended for communication with us, whereas Van's often seem to be just for his own entertainment. He does babble with about the same variety that she showed at this stage, just more generally. Check out the Stage 4 post from 2006 for specific expectations.

Cognitive development: Van is much more into toys than Nuvy was at this stage, so I'm able to see a lot more of the purposeful play that is discussed in the literature than I saw before with Nuvy. He does now pick up toys with the intention of playing with them, and he does love dumping things and removing things from containers in general. All the world is his drum these days, and he's invented a version of Simon Says, where we all take turns being "Simon", which he can maintain for about 15 minutes at a stretch.

Social development: As for mealtime, he is a champ with the weaning table! So far, Van sits happily at the table and eats until he's full, then fingerpaints with his food to show that he's done. I think I recall that we had a moment of this with Nuvy, before she mastered getting in and out of the little chair, so the jury's still out. He does eat in the high chair with the rest of the family when we're all eating--a mealtime adaptation that works well for us. I did get a lot of questions about implementing this with two children, but I think it may actually be easier with an older sibling. Nuvy likes to sit at the weaning table with Van (I just stick her booster chair under it, and she is able to sit there pretty comfortably), which seems to keep them both happy.

So, to Nuvy. I'm finally feeling qualified to write a toilet training post. Nuvy is 2 years and 9 months old now, and has been out of diapers completely for about a month. She does have rare accidents, and will wet the bed if we don't remind her to go at bedtime, but otherwise it's pretty painless.

I used to tell parents at our school that the easiest way to toilet train was "cold turkey" that is, no pull-ups. I still stand by that--for school-- but I did modify it a little for our home. We actually went to pull-ups long before we started training--immediately when she became able to take off her own clothes (for several reasons, I don't consider pull-ups to be an effective toilet training tool--even the feel-wet kind--but they are great when used in their natural capacity as a diaper). I'll share our training experience with you, in case you're interested.

Phase one: Naked Nuvy, was introduced as soon as she started announcing that elimination events were in progress. ("I'm making peepee/caca"). We first bought four portable baby potties (they are about 4 bucks at Ikea). The Ikea training toilet is HANDS DOWN the best toilet training product on the market, in my opinion. It costs next to nothing and is just one piece of plastic with no cracks or lift-out pieces to wash. You just run the whole thing under water to wash it. We placed a potty in each bathroom, one in the living room, an done in the kitchen. Then we took a deep breath and took off her pants and diaper.

I tried not to make a "thing" of it, just showed her to the toilet each time anything happened. With nothing on her bottom, the consequences of making peepee/caca were immediately obvious to her, which I think was a big help. It was summer and, admittedly, this is easier done outdoors, but we did our share of mopping.

So we let this go on for a couple of weeks without trying underwear, until she had achieved reliable success. We did it only at home, didn't even try to take her out of the house without a diaper.

Phase 2: Under-Wonder. Underwear proved to be a bigger hurdle for us than I had anticipated. I think it reminded her of her diaper, and caused some initial sensory confusion. However, it only took a couple of days for her to get the hang of it. At this point, I considered her "housebroken". Still didn't even try leaving the house without diapers.

Phase 3: Under and Out. Once we had good conditioning to underwear at home, I put one of the Ikea toilets in the back of our car, and started taking her out. I asked her about every half our if she needed the toilet, and if she said yes, I pulled over immediately, set her down on the toilet in the back of the car, and took care of business. So far, we have never had a traveling accident with this method.

So now she is fully a Big Girl. She is able to manage even a standard size toilet these days without trouble, and is able to detect "need" in plenty of time to, say, come in from outside to use the toilet, or to ascend a couple of levels of stairs to get to the bathroom. The whole process took about two months for complete training, and while I know there are many faster methods, I like that she did it all by herself. I encountered no resistance or frustration from her, I had only to show her the toilet and remind her to use it. At every phase, Nuvy was almost immediately successful, I think because she was ready for success. It all felt very natural and child-driven, and very "Montessori".

I hear boys are harder.

Silvana Montanaro's Three Crises of Infancy

2008-04-06T01:00:00.000-04:00

Only Three Crises? Would Somebody Please Tell the Kids?: Dr. Silvana Montanaro Hits the Highlights.

Did I say soon? I guess I meant "someday."

A reader asked me about Chapter 11 of Montanaro's book "Understanding the Human Being". It is the case with many Montessori riffs, and I suppose mine is no exception, that many aspects of Montessori philosophy come in and out of favor in the general literature, and can often fly in the face of the common wisdom du jour. Maria Montessori lived and worked in a moment in history, as do we all, and time does march on. Parenting and education trends wax and wane, pediatric wisdom fluctuates, and developmental academics come up with ever more sophisticated ways in which we are all damaging our kids to death.

So, Dr. Montanaro, before I begin to tease apart your three crises of infancy, I bow to you in your time (1955, to the publication of this book in 1991), but must nonetheless live in mine. Many of my ideas will surely seem wacky in the context of Dr. Montanaro's experience, and also to the folks who take the next MMI Infant-Toddler course they offer. As I said, time does march on.

A Crisis according to Dr. Montanaro

Montanaro defines "crisis" in a more neutral tone than we commonly associate with the word. Crises, in our common parlance, are associated with horrors, and generally seen to involve some experiential meltdown. To be sure, her three crises: birth, weaning, and opposition, come with plenty of inherent trauma, but crisis here means a transitional challenge of everyday epic proportion, rather than an extraordinary or malignant catastrophe. Dr. Montanaro's commentary on these crises is focused on helping the parent support the child through each crisis with respect.

The crisis of birth.

This one, certainly, is a crisis in the traditional sense (childbirth is definitely dramatic every time, isn't it?), as well as in the classical sense (the greek "judgment") of Dr. Montanaro.

Montanaro riffs a bit on the ways in which the infant is "tested", such as essentially coming off life support and into a totally foreign and newly variable environment. Her take-home message here is that the parent should be careful to recognize the competence of the child, recognize what must be a staggering degree of disorientation associated with birth, and to allow the child to do what he is capable of doing independently. I have often said a version of the same thing to the parents of infants, toddlers and bigger kids, too: "Your child is at least as smart as you are, only less experienced."

She discusses Montessori's "unveiling of the environment" in the context of allowing the baby as much opportunity for independent discovery as possible, while providing all the necessary support. Please see the Stage 1 post for more on that. She also invokes a little Freud, in defining birth as the beginning of the oral stage of development, with the mouth as the barrier between the self and the experience of environment.

I think the major benefit of discussing the crisis of birth, which seems pretty self-evident, is to set up some reference points for discussing the subsequent two: weaning and opposition.

The crisis of weaning.

Ok, as many of you know, here is where I get off the bus and walk for a little while. I am not entirely sure I'll reach the Crisis of Weaning before I reach the Crisis of Opposition, but Dr. Montanaro posits that one should press the issue at eight or nine months. She seems to anticipate the resistance of mothers like me, who decline to wean their children on time (I am--gasp!--tandem nursing.) by invoking the idea that the time has come to foster our child's independence by taking him off the breast. She asserts that nature has indicated his readiness to wean by making him receptive to other kinds of food, and so to prolong nursing is to retard the child's progressive independence. She has some fairly stern words for those who elect to continue nursing beyond this point. I have to say that I'm very much on the fence about it.

Yes, it's true that the "sensitive period for weaning" occurs at about the time a child begins to take an active interest in food, some people time that as early as five or six months. The nature of a sensitive period is that it is a developmental window that can be missed, if one is not attuned to the child's developmental needs. Montessorians have a sensitive period for everything and, by and large, I try to support them.

I have to concede that she might have a point about the missed sensitive period. With the introduction of food, the milk demand and supply did naturally diminish for us, so that I kept expecting Nuvy to just quit nursing one day, and there really was a time when she would go for days at a time during my second pregnancy, when the milk went to nothing. Oh, but once the baby was born, I had the goods once again, but now the dynamic was much, much different. Nursing became a negotiation. If Van can drink from the boobie, why can't she?

As we all know, there are so many nuances to the nursing part of a mother-child relationship that it can hardly be viewed as just feeding. The AAP now recommends a year, at least, but they also recommend a lot of tummy time, and I don't do that, either. I can't really judge the degree to which extended nursing has prolonged her emotional dependence on me. She seems not to have failed to exercise her independence by putting physical and behavioral distance between us intermittently--as she is expected to do at this age, but if I could turn back the clock, I would have tried harder to give her a "lovey", as now she relies on a peculiar combination of thumbsucking and Relentless Nipple Torture (RNT) to get to sleep. Mind you, only Mommy is subjected to this flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Daddy, both grandmothers, and the babysitter can all talk their way out of it.

Montanaro asserts that, at this point, a hug and a snuggle for the purpose of pure loving physical contact is what is needed, and that nursing keeps the child dependent. Possibly true. Nuvy has been pretty clingy since Van was born, so it's hard to tell if it's extended nursing that's to blame, or if it's baby-displacement trauma.

Montanaro is concerned that those of us who wean late do so out of fear that the weaned child will break off the relationship with the mother and go off independently into the environment. I don't really identify much with this fear, and I do definitely remember her going out and exploring her environment very actively by way of her mouth, and every other means she had, at about the time Dr. Montanaro recommends weaning to facilitate this exploration.

Maybe I protest too much. So I didn't wean her. I decided that self-weaning, it might be argued, falls under the "follow the child"/empower the child heading, rather than the parent-centered/child-centered heading. At this point, it's all child-driven.

The crisis of opposition.

Dr. Montanaro, in my (wishful? hopeful?) opinion, times this crisis a little late. 30-36 months is the time frame she gives, but for us it seems to have started earlier (please tell me it has, and that we are going to get through this soon). We were experiencing the described behaviors at about the 24 month mark, and now, at 27 months, we are fully engaged in the "terrible twos".

It doesn't really feel as if there is anything revolutionary about the suggestions or the philosophy in this segment. Dr. Montanaro offers the very same platitudes about offering limited choices and respecting the child's place in the family that you can read in Parenting magazine, babycenter.com, and pretty much any mainstream source for parenting support. Of course, it's entirely likely that this strategy proved so absolutely reliable that it has, since the time of writing, become the common wisdom.

I am definitely a big believer in offering choice and encouraging participation. However, you will probably find, as I have, that your child will find the sticking point and oppose you there, no matter what you do, or how much you mean to enfranchise her. Case in point, the choice-between-two strategy is short lived, once the child is aware that more than two options exist. It goes like this: "Nuvy, would you like an egg or some oatmeal for breakfast today?"

"I want pasta!"

"We have eggs or oatmeal. Which would you like?"

"PASTA!"

She is able to hold in her mind all the options for food that might appeal to her, and does not consen to be limited by my limiting her choices. We run into this with footwear often, too.

I will say that, contrary to my "firm and consistent" instinct, I do offer Nuvy opportunities to persuade me with a bargain. To bargain with two-year-olds might seem a dangerous game, but it does seem to make her more open to discussion when the tables are turned. We do not, however, bargain over rules. I think it's an important distinction. Bottom line, so far I haven't found any magic bullets here, and believe me, I'm looking.

The good news is that Nuvy's newfound self possession has made her feel both empowered and responsible. She begins to want to take care of things, talks to dolls, sincerely tries to comfort her crying baby brother, and has even become intermittently kind to me. So far, two is still more sweet than terrible.

Saving Grace: Our Family Blog

2008-02-13T05:21:00.002-05:00

Dear Readers,

My niece, Gracie, was recently diagnosed with Hurler Syndrome, a nasty genetic disorder, and is about to undergo drastic medical measures to save her life. If you'd like to meet Gracie and the rest of our family, please visit us at Saving Grace.

Oh, and I promise to finish this post about Silvana Montanaro and her crises of infancy soon!

Moving into Consciousness: Two to Three Years

2008-01-29T01:23:00.000-05:00

Birthday To You, But I Digress: The Experimental Toddler Goes Conscious

Nuvy turned 2 years old on New Year's day, to the tune of a billion hangovers. Given that Nuvy's birthday is January 1, we've started a "hair of the dog" party tradition with New Year's Day southern food, and the leftover midnight sauce reincarnated as Mimosa, Bellinis, and Irish Coffee.

My girl does love a party. She seems to share my taste for occasions. Birthday cake is one of my favorite foods, because it's sweet and festive, and a great excuse for an art project. We made the cardinal cake for her first birthday, and the cherry blossoms were this year's effort. Almost a month later, she still says "Birthday to you!" and taps the rim of your glass with hers whenever anything with bubbles is poured (seltzer will do), and when asked what she'd like to have for a snack, she'll often reply, "Birthday cake!" Last week, coming home from a trip to see the southerly grandparents, she pointed out the window of our plane at the sparkling city of Philadelphia and exclaimed, "Look, Mommy! There's Christmas!" All these brand-new associations are coming together right on cue, as the pre-conscious infant starts to put things together, to become the conscious child.

How's that for a segue?

Neurological and Physical Development

Between two and three years of age, a child's brain is two to three times its birth size. Sensorimotor integration--the coordination of sensory information and motor response--is rapid and refined. The child is drawn to activitys of maximum physical effort and will try to carry or pull the heaviest object available.

Proprioception (awareness of the whereabouts of her movable parts) and kinesthesia (awareness of the direction, speed, and force of her movements) are highly developed and the two-year-old is eager to explore them. She loves to tumble, spin and dance. She practices balancing and hopping on one foot. With all this awareness and control comes control of the muscles of elimination, and thus readiness for toilet training. What also comes is a sense of empowerment. More on that in a minute.

Awareness of directions of movement makes pushing, pulling and twisting motions very interesting to the TYO, and you will find her using her wrists to open and close jars, turn water faucets on and off (ad nauseam), and open and close doors (ad infinitum!).

Cognitive Development

Here we notice a rapid refinement of verbal skills, a continued and deepening interest in the naming of everything, and much more sophisticated sentence structure, and all at once, too. We call this sudden burst of linguistic complexity the "explosion into language". It occurs when the passive vocabulary and communicative experience converge in the child's intellect, so that language just falls into place. Of course, the prior experience with lots of passive language is key--to talk, talk, talk to that preverbal child!

At this stage, the child begins to refine her ability to place objects in categories. She can differentiate categories and subdivisions of a category. For instance, she might recognize dogs, cats, and flowers as three different categories, but also be able to divide the same set of objects into two categories, animals and plants. At our house this refinement is evident in the trusty Audubon birds (can I go on enough about those?). Until recently, they were all just "bird, bird, bird". Now, suddenly they're "cardinal, tufted titmouse, and pileated woodpecker". Go figure.

One-to-one correspondence is well established now, and table setting is a great activity to support this understanding. If your table's too high, as ours is, you might do what we do and lay out a tea party for Mommy, Nuvy, Peter Cottontail, and the Squid.

She can understand increasingly complex verbal instructions, like "Please bring a little diaper for Van and a big one for yourself, too." She also understands that she has the power to refuse. She weighs consequences and begins to learn to negotiate her position (and she thinks it's funny when I get annoyed with her. Just the response I was looking for--and HEY! No snarky comments from past and present cohabitors in the peanut gallery. I am well aware that my anger really is funny, jackass.)

Emotional and Social Development

A two-to-three year old shows a keen interest in family affairs. She imitates parents' activities, enjoys chores and wants to help. She is able to content herself with playing alone, but will usually choose to play where she has an audience.

With other children, parallel play gives way to interactive play as verbal communication improves, and children are increasingly capable of cooperating in play.

Emotionally, she begins to recognize "shades" of emotion. she knows happy and happier, sad and sadder, angry and angrier, and is able to modulate a response that feels appropriate to her perception. It does not, of course, follow that her modulated response feels appropriate to my perception! Her verbal skills provider her with a range of expressions to match her more subtle emotions and desires. She will make fantastic experimental use of these expressive and emotive nuances.

The Supportive Environment

An appropriate environment contains numerous practical lifeactivites. PRactice in dressing is provided through dress-up costumes with everyday closures, and putting on and taking off shoes independently. Child-size versions of household implements are delightful for children at this age, because they allow imitation of adult activities while circumventing the frustration the child may encounter when trying to use a too-big tool.

Table setting, water pouring, and hand/furniture washing are delightful activities, and you might find your child enjoying them whether or not you put them out. (Ever had her pour her milk over her dinner? You know, just for fun?) Early language materials may be incorporated, including picture cares and, later, three part cards.

Sensorial materials can be more sophisticated, incorporating shades between sensory extremes, and more subtle differences in sorting and matching. Silverware sorting is a great at-home sensorial activity for two-to three year olds.

From here, we move into the realm of the Primary classroom, to which children are usually admitted at two-and-a-half or (more usually, but less appropriately in my opinion) three years of age. This means that I'm shopping for Montessori schools in the Philadelphia area. Any local reviews are appreciated. :-)

Subject 2/Stage 2: One to Four Months

2008-01-28T02:01:00.000-05:00

Wailing Through Stage 2: Everybody Is!

subject two is not subject one. subject two is not subject one. subject two is not subject one. subject two is not subject one.

See, things are different this time. As I suspected, The original Experimental Infant was, well, the easy one.

What's up with that? How many times have I heard this story. It's the one that goes "If I'd had my second child first, I might only have had one." Has anyone out there reading ever said this? Are second babies really, categorically pains in the ass? Or is there something more sensible at work here, like my being too busy to be as tuned in to him as I was to my first, only infant. I mean, I dimly remember certain evening bouts of crying with Nuvy, but nothing, NOTHING like what goes on with Van. From about week 3 to 9 weeks or so, he's been pretty much crying every minute he's been awake. Well, ok. Many, many waking moments are devoted to crying. Some others are devoted to looking astonishingly cute (let it be said that, after Nuvy, I thought I was no longer astonishable by cuteness. Was I ever wrong.). The moment pictured above was devoted to wavering on the edge of sleep. We have several of those a day, too. But anyway, so he cries a lot. In the meantime, lets discuss Stage 2--since I didn't the first time around. For those who are counting, Stage 2 is the period between one month and four months of age.

Practice makes...myelinated pathways make...muscle memory!
So, in addition to various levels of fussiness, Stage 2 is all about practice. Van spent his first four weeks mastering his basic body functions, and now, in Stage 2, he's beginning to experiment with motor control, and to make his first observations of the world that exists outside him. What he learns will begin to suppress his infantile reflexes during this stage, and they will continue to disappear in a pretty predictable pattern throughout his infancy. Neat, eh?

The chief result of Van's experiments will be a kind of preliminary organization of the brain through myelination in the cerebral cortex--that is, the thinking part of his brain. Myelin is an insulating material that brain cells put down around electrical connections that get repeated often (successful experiments and purposeful activity), and not so much around connections that are only made once, or just a few times (random activity or failed experiments). The point is to keep the signals flowing in useful directions, and not to have neurons firing randomly all over the place, looking for something good to do. This has already happened, to some extent, in the deeper, more basic levels of the brain, but now begins in earnest in response to the baby's repetitive experiments. Patterns of movement (schemata) evolve as the baby devises ways to accomplish the things he wants to do.

Myelination is a recurring theme in discussions of brain development. It's an important manifestation of learning and memory. "Muscle memory" is what Van is beginning to develop at this stage, through repetitive practice. Right now, he's learning to smile, laugh, and reach for things. Later, he'll learn to walk, run, make the sounds of his native language (in the Philadelphia accent he'll grow up with, alas, and not my own charming southern drawl.) and maybe play the piano, or play golf. Practice affects the brain this way throughout life.

Developing just after the parts of the brain that control vital functions and reflexes are the parts that control the senses. At birth, Van had all the equipment he needed to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, but he had to wait for the areas of his brain that interpret sensory signals to develop to make sense of the signals it receives.

Let's look at some of the things Van's been practicing:

Resisting gravity: at between one and four months, babies discover that, with effort, they can lift their little heads and achieve a different view of things.

Swipe and grasp: the palmar reflex (the one that makes your newborn grab hold of your finger and not let go) is strong at birth, but a one-to-four month old baby learns that by controlling the opening and closing motion of the hand voluntarily, he can manipulate his environment. Right now, for Van, this involves looking at his hands a lot. I imagine that if he could talk, he might say, "Look at this! Don't tell anyone, but I think I can control it with my mind!"

Holding objects and bringing objects to the mouth: We're not there yet, but these are variations on the hand-mind coordination theme.

Cognitive, Emotional and Social development: A whole lot of goo-goo going on.

It starts with the hand-gazing, and then looking at other things in the environment that move, deciding which ones he can control, and which ones move independently of him. Kind of like a life-size game of Myst, isn't it? This looks to an observer like staring, gazing, or tracking objects with the eyes. If an object disappears from the baby's field of vision, he'll fix his eyes on the spot where he last saw it.

Gurgling and cooing, raspberries, and other vocalizations mark his earliest attempts at verbal communication. The Montessori folks tell us to talk to the baby in a normal, conversational tone, and to do it all the time.

Mercifully for those of us with crybabies, self-soothing behaviors begin to emerge during this stage. We're still waiting for Van to get hold of his thumb. So far, he's sucking his fist. Right direction, but not quite satisfying for him.

The supportive environment: baby zen.
The baby's curiosity is evident, and needs support without overstimulation with too many choices. A few simple grasping objects placed at the edges of the baby's reach are developmentally appropriate. I use a cotton bandanna, a little rattle, and a toy bird (he digs the cardinal). All this practicing requires space and time for self-induced motor activity. In other words, floor time. He has to get out of that carrier and kick and stretch it all out.

Montessori infant gurus warn that we'll be tempted to "entertain" the baby with a lot of toys, baby talk and other kinds of performance, and they urge us to resist this as far as we can. Give the baby time to really explore simple objects. Let him hear and participate (as far as he is able) in normal conversational speech, and take time to make a safe space for him where he needn't be restrained by a carrier or other apparatus. We're waiting and watching, as he tries to communicate with us.

The Praise and Punishment Game Part 1: Praise

2008-01-04T01:08:00.000-05:00

The Montessori Dictates Against Praise and Rewards vs. Getting the Little Buggers to Do What You Say.

Yes, believers, it's true that my gurus are opposed to praise and rewards, though the jury is still out on what constitutes punishment. However, their only real beef is with the praise part, because life provides its own rewards and punishments. Here, let me explain as best I can. Please pipe up in the comments if I miss anything, all you Montessorians out there. Thanks, NOLA mom, for asking one of my favorite questions. Now I know how Judith Martin felt the time a Miss Manners reader asked her to explain how to send secret messages with calling cards.

A big part of the Montessori philosophy is that, if you work to please yourself, success is its own reward. This is the core belief behind all the self-correcting activities, aids to independence, freedom to choose your own work, and community-building care-of-environment (by "environment" we mean dusting and polishing as much as we mean composting) activities. According to the gurus, praise from adults works against independence. It sounds like a tough quandary, but actually, it just takes a few small changes of habit--often only habits of speech--to turn the focus of success away from the adult and back to the child.

A little child is working to perfect herself--that is to be a successful member of her society--and so naturally seeks approval from adults, whom she perceives (on some level) as having accomplished this goal. Simply put, the child is hard-wired to try to be like the adults she sees around her. There are several ways in which adults can indicate acceptance and approval of the child's efforts. One way is applause and verbal praise, and another is respectful acceptance and a normal, courteous reply.

It's easy to see why adults want to applaud and praise children. After all, we are already (for the most part) accepted as worthwhile members of our society. To feel that our efforts have been recognized, adults look for accolades. Accolades help us believe that what we have done is a little bit better than expected, or than what everyone else did. It makes us feel special. As we have all experienced, this is a double-edged blade, no?

Praise is certainly an expeditious way of getting a person to do what you ask/want them to do. However, some inherent pitfalls of praise-driven obedience are: what happens when no one is there to praise the child? Will she still behave? Will the child be able to maintain good habits when those habits don't feel special? What happens when the child becomes an adolescent and is no longer willing to work for the praise of parents and teachers, but in an effort to carve out her own identity, is pointedly indifferent to such praise? The list goes on.

The (arguable) premise is that a little child does not need to be made to feel special, but to feel welcome and appreciated. Children, of course, enjoy applause and praise, and will work very hard for even the simplest reward. Ask any elementary school teacherwhat a child won't do for a sticker by his name. Children, just like the rest of us, learn through our praise/reward system that "special" is king. They develop an appetite for praise and applause, and can begin to feel that efforts that are not applauded are not worth making. Ever feel like that? Right. We could, and many Montessori types have, follow this thread to the root of a litany of common social pathologies and self-esteem issues.

The fact is, everyone can do special things, but much of life is not particularly laudable. Most of what we do is not special, but habitual. Montessorians strive to lend integrity to a child's habits and to make him feel successful even when he is not feeling particularly special. What we hope is that this helps the child maintain his personal integrity even when nobody is looking.

Everyone wants to feel successful, but perhaps that feeling can be had without anyone else's approval. By shifting the "reward" back onto the child, we have a way around the applause cycle, and can allow the child to experience her own success, instead of developing a need for adult-driven incentives to succeed. One can achieve this without a lot of stilted "how does that make you feel" language. Saying "thank you" instead of "good job" is a subtle language change, but it effectively shifts focus away from the act itself, and the adult's judgment of it, and back to the value of the child herself. After all, it's not the work, but the child that needs appreciating. You could also try "You must be so proud!" instead of "I'm so proud of you!" You can do this little trick with any number of praise-y phrases.

What's a little harder (at least in my family) is to back away from "Hooray for You!" and thunderous applause whenever the child does something cute or clever. A great performance ought to be applauded, it's true, and I encourage outrageous whistling and applause following living-room concerts, but life doesn't have to be a performance to be good. Sharing a child's satisfaction might mean meeting his success with a hug, a smile, and a "Look at that! You did it! Aren't you happy about that?" They light up just as much for that one as for a big round of "YAY!" I swear.

Subject Two: The Young Dude

2007-12-10T14:12:00.001-05:00

Look at him! Isn't he sweet? Subject two, "Van" to his friends.

This is Van's birth story. It' couldn't be more different from Nuvy's if it tried (see the Obligatory Montessori Birth Story at the very beginning of this blog)

Van, like his sister, gave us a completely uneventful pregnancy, except that it was a little longer than usual (10 days late the first, 9 days the second). Unlike his sister, he then decided to scare the bejeesus out of everyone on his way out.

We are 0 for 2 for birth center births. We were transferred from the birth center to the hospital with Nuvy, after a very long and dysfunctional labor, but decided to try again for the home-y, jacuzzi-equipped, birth center birth of my dreams with baby #2. I had all my prenatal care with the wonderful, WONDERFUL midwives at The Birth Center in Bryn Mawr, PA. Without exception, they rock. Julia, one of my rockin' midwives, delivered Van at Bryn Mawr Hospital, but that's getting ahead of myself.

At 7 days past due, Van got an A+ on his "non-stress test", which is a physiological assessment based on fetal heart rate and movement to determine whether or not the uterine apartment is still up to code. No problem, so no eviction.

Day 9 started busy. Nuvy was scheduled to spend the afernoon with her Baba--my mother-in-law--who was and is my local lifeline when this mommy thing gets hairy (as it does when you're well past due with a busy toddler under foot) so our usual routine was a little accelerated to get ready for the special outing. It was only after Nuvy left that I noticed a weird silence in me belly, and it hit me that I hadn't felt a single squirm or kick all day. I immediately gorged myself on high-octane Indian restaurant leftovers and lay down on my left side (I'm an avid reader of alarmist prenatal literature, so I knew just what to do).

I waited almost two hours.

Nothing. I called.

As I drove myself to the birth center, my mental tire swing oscillated between feeling like an overwrought jackass for asking to make an unsceduled and probably unnecessary prenatal visit in a very busy practice, and wondering what I would say to all the people who kept asking if I'd had "that baby yet", when it turned out that there wasn't going to be any baby after all.

Unable to contain myself, I called my poor husband to share my terror, and told him through my sobs that I was terrified, and that there was nothing he could do. Nice, huh?

When I got to the birth center, it appeared that there was a third possibility I hadn't thought of. They put me in a chair, strapped me to a monitor, and after a couple of minutes of less-than-70 bpm fetal heart rate, the nurse calmly handed me a pillow and told me to get down on my elbows and knees, and someone would get my husband on the phone and get me a car to the hospital.

The birth center office manager drove me to Bryn Mawr hospital, about a 500 foot drive, where I was taken to labor and delivery, gowned, strapped, and IV'd, and it was determined that the baby was happy (heart rate wise) only if I lay on my left side. I still hadn't felt any movement at all, but I took the bouncing green line on the monitor at face value--since that was the best news I'd had all day.

At this point I was not in labor, but was having the kind of piddly little contractions a person (at least this person) tends to have for several weeks before any baby gets around to being born. The midwives and labor nurses discussed various possibilities regarding induction, caesarean, and such, and a doctor whose face and name I still can't remember--it was the first and last time I ever saw the guy--came in and shook my hand and assured me that I would not leave the hospital without a baby. I called my mother, my doula and my husband. The nurse set me up with a potty chair, and told me not to go anywhere. Everyone then promptly left, and I lay there, on my left side, recalling my first (three day) labor and wondering how long my left hip and shoulder were going to hold out.

Incredibly, I started having real, live, serious contractions. Right then. Julia says I willed myself into labor, but I still say it was Van who said, "get me the hell out of here!", and my body complied. My doula called back to say she was in traffic and would be there when she could, my husband called to ask me what he should take to his mother's for Nuvy. I think I said the word "pyjamas" and that this was going to have to be my last phone call, because I didn't think I could talk anymore. He asked some more questions I only half heard. I hung up the phone, since I couldn't think or speak anymore. I think maybe half an hour had gone by since the first real contraction. I labored alone, on my left side, thinking that this was not AT ALL what I had in mind, for what didn't seem like nearly time enough to get the job done.

After a little more than two hours of labor, Van was born. Kent was there for about twenty minutes at the end. Wendy, my doula, was there for the last two of the four pushes it took to get him out. And now, we learned what all the silence had been about:

the knot.

Yes, there was actually a knot in his umbilical cord. See how dark it is above the knot, and how pale below? EEK! Several of the childbirth professionals present had never seen one before. The midwife said she'd seen one or two--ever. But for all that apparent lack of blood flow (which must have tightened up at the VERY end, or ... I can't even think of it), he seemed the picture of health.

To make a too-long story short, he is the picture of health, but there were some complications. In the end, after a five day stay in the NICU and a couple of brain imaging scans, he was pronounced normal-looking and sent home with the same lifetime guarantee everybody else gets.

None.

The Stage 6 Montessori Environment

2007-12-07T15:49:00.000-05:00

Jack-O-Lantern Days for the Stage 6 Pumpkin

As those who have almost-two toddlers can attest, the Stage 6 emergent big-kid has a sometimes-maddening taste for making changes. She can make a big plate into lots of little plate bits, or a tastefully fresh-painted wall in a flat (and highly un-scrubbable) shade of barely-there slate grey into a Timothy Leary nightmare in crayon. What follows is the Stage 6 developmental snapshot and environmental supports according to my own Montessori gurus.

As always, I look forward to hearing the opinions of differing gurus, or the disciples of differing gurus, as it lightens the tedium of all these rules. At the time of writing, I have been recently delivered of Subject Two, my second child (three weeks ago) which is a story in itself--but more on that later. on to the Experimental Toddler's raucous romp through Stage 6.

Stage 6 Neurological and Physical Development

At eighteen to twenty-four months, the brain is twice its size at birth. The specialized functional areas of the cerebral cortex are established, and cross-patterning and hand/foot/eye dominance are usually expressed. The Stage 6 child is now capable of carrying out experiments entirely in his head. He is able to imagine an activity and decide its likely outcome without actually carrying it out. As you can imagine, this increases his processing speed tremendously.

He has twenty teeth. The bones are hardening and the fontanelles (soft places on the head) close. Just in time, too, to protect him in his now well-developed mobility. This child can walk steadily, run, hop on one foot, and climb stairs with alternating feet.

Hand-eye coordination is quite good now, and the child can begin to regulate the force of his movements. He can begin to manipulate small or fragile objects, including turning the pages of a book or using a spoon.

He can eat independently, and should practice that independence. He is aware of his body functions, though control of the elimination-regulating muscles may not be fully developed. In some cases, he may begin to express interest in toileting.

Cognitive Development

An eighteen to twenty-four month old child is capable of deductive reasoning. She can examine strategies intellectually, without the necessity of trying each one. Experience and memory—from all her practice with trial and error in the past six months—can be called upon to help with decision making.

She has a strong sense of object permanence, and looks for objects that have been put away, even if some time has passed since she last saw or used the object. She is capable of thinking in symbolic terms, equating a representation of an object with the object itself in processing strategies.

Relating to the developing capacity for symbolic imagination is the development of ludic play—imagining herself in another social role. For example, she may pretend to cook, care for dolls as if they were babies, write letters, use a computer keyboard, or any other “real” aspect of life that she sees as part of an adult role.

Her ability to remember things, symbols, people and conversations is expanding. She will remember the things you tell her now, and hold you accountable for them later.

Emotional and Social Development

A child of eighteen to twenty-four months has a well established sense of self, and an investment in protect that self. He begins to feel fear. He may be afraid of disappearing, of the dark, of loud noises. Related to self-preservation is a strong separation anxiety with regard to significant adults. He remembers dreams and talks about them.

He is beginning to be aware of how he is perceived by others. Emotionally, he feels trust and mistrust, anger, and embarrassment. He understands rules, but will test their rigidity. His play contains elements of abstraction of roles. In play he is not “Daddy” but “the daddy”. He can wait his turn at play.

At this time there is an explosion in language. His expressions change from gestures and nouns to sentences. He learns “I do, I want, I will”. He continues to show interest in the names of things, and begins to make up his own names.

Stage 6 Environmental Supports

Puppets, Dolls and Pets: A toddler approaching two years of age begins to be aware of her role in the family, and to compare it to the roles of other members. She imagines herself in different roles, especially nurturing or caretaking roles. The environment should support these sensitivities by providing opportunities to explore role playing. Puppets and dolls help to create imaginary scenarios and the child can gain experience in nurturing and gentleness from helping to care for a pet. (A baby brother is sort of like the ultimate pet. More on that later.)

Child-size Household Tools: child-size versions of practical tools encourage ludic play. We are talking about kitchen sets, little mops and brooms (Michael Olaf has a great miniature carpet sweeper that is actually useful, in a toddler kind of way), and the old dishwashing station. Nuvy's fancy-schmancy dishwashing station is on her list for Santa, at which time she'll be a week shy of two years old. If you're brave enough to hand this over to an eighteen-month-old (and I know some who are!!) please let me know how that works out for you. We have enough water hazards around with handwashing and sponge-transferring! You can get the officially-sanctioned one from www.michaelolaf.com or www.lordequip.com, or you could have your carpenter (or handy self/husband) copy it and buy your own dish tubs at Target for significantly less.

Transferring Activities: Fine motor control is sufficiently developed that the child can benefit from transferring activities such as pouring water, and spooning sand or beans (watch those beans-in-the-nose, and stay away from Red-Hots!). You can provide these in a structured way, or you could sit back and watch as your child develops her own transferring activities. Of particular interest to Nuvy have been such activities as transferring cheerios from the bowl to her placemat, transferring pieces of pasta or small bites of sandwiches from her plate to her glass full of milk, and transferring her water or milk from her glass to mine, and back to hers again, or from her glass onto the table or floor, if no second vessel is available.

In setting up formal transferring activities, the orthodox way is to present the activity with the full vessel on the left, and the empty one on the right. This way the child moves matter left to right, reinforcing the left-to-right orientation of written material.

Table Setting: One-to-one correspondence continues to be of interest in Stage 6, and the child can handle more involved tasks in this area, such as setting a table for four, or placing many objects in compartments.

Squishy, Goopy, Messy Activities: The Stage 6 child continues to be fascinated by transformation, so that crushing, dough rolling and artistic activities such as water painting or fingerpainting hold his attention.

Manipulatives: His ability to mentally experiment allows the development of spatial reasoning. Manipulatives and simple puzzles support this development. This is a wonderful time to introduce board books and picture books both to read to him and for him to enjoy on his own by flipping pages and naming the objects in the pictures.

Handwashing For Toddlers

2007-06-11T15:05:00.000-04:00

Waterplay On A Mission: Handwashing for Toddlers.

As all you Montessori kids know, washing things is a big part of the Montessori life. Practical life includes "Care of Self" which is basically grooming, the central activity of which is handwashing; "Care of the Environment" which, while sometimes ecology-oriented, usually means washing things and tidying up after yourself; and "Grace and Courtesy" which involves the development of other-regarding habits, otherwise known as good manners, only with philosophy attached. Other-regarding-ness comes back around to hygeine and tidiness, and so there you are at handwashing again. See?

Hence we introduce handwashing as an activity (not just a means to an end) early on. Young infants get a quick wipe from an adult before and after meals and after diapering, but the toddler activity is a big step. When first introduced, handwashing is an annoyingly attractive activity, by which I mean that it's hard to get the child to do anything else besides splash in the water and make a sodden mess of everything nearby.

For this reason, I have seen it omitted from many infant communities (Come on, you know who you are!), and underutilized in many primary communities. Just for fun, Montessori parents, sneak a peek at your child's classroom handwashing station. Check it for dust. If you find it's not being used much, it's because while it's a really great practical life activity, many teachers consider it a colossal pain in the ass. It was always a challenge for me to encourage teachers to use it.

To set up toddler handwashing at home, I give the materials list and "simplified" handwashing procedure below.

Parents of older kids: If you have a child in a Primary Montessori class (ages 3-6), I recommend checking with your primary teacher to get her exact handwashing procedure before setting it up at home. Lessons vary in detail from place to place, and the primary handwashing ("involved" handwashing) has a very specific choreography. If your Montessori teacher is using it, she will appreciate your getting it right.

Materials for handwashing: You can order handwashing stations all set up and coordinated from Michael Olaf or other Montessori sites, but I consider this a silly expense for a home setup. I feel a little differently about dishwashing, but we'll get to that.

1. a low table or washstand. I am using my abandoned weaning table (see "Weenie Whiny, Whoa!)

2. a wide, shallow bowl. Mine is enameled, but you could use plastic or ceramic, depending on your tolerance for replacing broken pottery.

3. a small pitcher, manageable by the child, and with a capacity that will give you an inch or two of water in the bottom of your bowl with only one pour. Same considerations about materials as the bowl.

4. a small piece of soap. I like Burt's Bees baby shampoo bar, because it's solid, non-toxic and doesn't sting if it gets in the eyes. You could also use those little flower-shaped guest soaps, or whatever. just make sure the piece is small, so your child can manage it easily. I do not recommend liquid soap for this activity. I'm sure I don't need to explain.

5. a hand towel on a bar, or two baskets and a couple of hand towels. I find the towel bar more convenient for just our family. I have the station set up next to the dishwasher, which has a little towel bar that is at a good height. If you don't have anything readily available, you could install a bar at your child's height, or use the two-basket method. The first basket is for clean towels, the second is for used ones.

6. A little sponge. Probably half of a kitchen sponge will be adequate. A whole sponge is too big, but you will need enough sponge to sop up some water.

7. A bucket with a handle. This is a running theme in Montessori water activities. It is the "slop" bucket. Children learn early in Montessori school that clean water comes from pitchers, and dirty water is carried in buckets. Yes, it is a job to keep a toddler out of the slop bucket. Just empty it every time they use it.

Montessori teachers will carefully color-coordinate all the elements of the handwashing station, and other stations in their classrooms. In addition to eye-pleasing, this is so that it is easy for a child (or teaching assistant) who is tidying up an activity station to see what goes with what. My handwashing station is made up of cute little things I have on hand, and is not particularly matchy.

I admit that for my own toddler (Nuvy is 17 months old), who has just been introduced to handwashing, I keep the station "dry", that is, with the pitcher empty, and I don't have a water source within her reach. She brings me the pitcher if she wants to wash her hands (saying "hands? hands?"), and I fill it for her and supervise the activity closely. Orthodoxy suggests having a water source (like a drink cooler) within the child's reach, but I am just not ready for that kind of insanity yet. Maybe when we get to dishwashing.

You set it up like this:

Starting at the left, place the pitcher, then bowl, then soap, then sponge on the table. Hang the towel above the table, and slightly to the right. Place the bucket on the floor to the right of the table. (If you are using baskets of towels, place them under the table, basket for clean ones on the left, for used ones on the right). This way, the whole activity moves from left to right (an early preparation for reading, I'm told).

Here's the "simplified handwashing" procedure:

Invite the child to wash her hands. Then demonstrate how it is done.

1. Remove the pitcher from the left side of the bowl. Fill it with water.

2. Pour the water into the bowl. Place the pitcher to the right of the bowl. (If there is room on your table, great. If not, I have seen many people just replace the pitcher in its original place. This kind of thing is a typical point of hot debate among the Montessori gurus I know. Personally, I like to move the pitcher to the right. The reason is below.)

3. Dip your hands in the water, deliberately, and only once. Take the soap. Give it three strokes across your hand (count them aloud) and put it back in its place.

4. Rub your hands together to make a lather however you want (Again, Primary handwashing will choreograph the lathering, but for toddlers, we try to respect their limited patience.)

5. Dip your hands in the water again to rinse. Dip them three times. You can count them aloud, or you can flip your hands over for the second dip ("front, back, front").

6. Take them out, fingers pointing down (so that the water drips away from your sleeves). Dry them on the towel. If you are using towel baskets, put the used towel in the right-side basket.

7. Pour the used water into the bucket, then replace the bowl where it was.

8. Use the sponge to wipe off the table, bowl, and pitcher. After you wipe the pitcher, replace it on the left side of the bowl. (So, placing it at the right side is a visual reminder to clean up the handwashing station. Right?). Replace the sponge, and you're done.

The Words: Montessori teachers usually have words to go with each lesson, but I am not giving you any. You know how to talk to your kid. I would only suggest that fewer words are better than more, because they'll stick out better, and the child will learn them easily. Please do use complete sentences, though. For example:

No: "Wet." "Rub." "Dry." "Wipe"

Yes: "I wet my hands." " Here is the soap." "Now I will rinse." "Now I clean up."

No: "Ok, Sweetie, let's wash our hands now. Are you ready? Ok. Now put your hands in the water like this. Goood! Ok, ok, ok. Now here, here, take the soap--- right! No, like this. Now rubrubrubrubrub, and rinse, and rinse and rinse. Great! Now it's time to dry..."

So, I have got to be kidding, right?

No, I am not kidding. Older toddlers can do this pretty easily after a few tries. Little ones, like mine, should not do this activity over, say, hardwood floors, but perhaps over a shower curtain on the floor. Actually, a big towel under the whole thing will help with the watery mess that an 18 month-old will not have the patience to clean up.

If the child takes off in the middle of the activity, it's ok. Just let it go and clean it up, then do it again another time. I really don't suggest that you try this at a time when your child actually NEEDS to wash her hands, for this reason. If you try to keep her there longer than she wants to be there, you kill the joy of the activity. Getting all the way through takes a while.

If the child just wants to pour water between the bucket and the bowl, I would recommend cleaning up the handwashing and putting out another activity for pouring water between two vessels. I have two bowls and a towel in my kitchen for just that purpose. It happens to me every time.

Good luck and have fun!

Field Notes from Stage 5

2007-05-23T22:41:00.001-04:00

Field Notes From Stage 5: The Rubber-Road Interface at Age 16 Months

This is a post-fragment, but it's come to my attention that my posts are getting pretty sparse, so pardon the abrupt ending, there's more to come.

So, if you had the stomach, you've read the Stage 5 "expected outcomes". If not, you could read them now, by just scrolling down one post (and pinning your eyelids up). All the definitions are there if you need them. Today's post is about our actual experience as compared with the aforementioned expectations. For example, at left we have the Experimental Toddler in her garden, making cross-patterned mincemeat of an innocent stick.

At 16 months, we're squarely in the middle of Stage 5, so it stands to reason that some of the expected behaviors will be evident now, and some not just yet. Here's what we've seen so far:

Hand dominance: She appears to be weakly right-handed. She tends to pick up tools (like a spoon or a crayon) with the right hand, though she will switch if it's convenient. When feeding herself, for example, she reaches for the spoon with the right hand, but will just hold it in her right while shoveling oatmeal into her mouth with the left hand. She will grab a blueberry or blackberry with either hand.

Heterolateral movement: She walks pretty evenly, climbs stairs with both feet sometimes, but doesn't yet swing her arms while walking. She either clasps them behind her back (so like the little pacing dictator), pushes them out behind like a superman cape, or tucks them in at the elbows when walking. I think this is part of why she doesn't corner well at high speeds yet. In general, her running is sort of awkward, as are most of her attempts at heterolateral arm movements. The grannies have both noticed a little inward sickle in the left foot (and raised the specter of orthopedic shoes! I almost threw up. I LOVE shoes!) Yeah, even I can see the pigeon toe. We're going to the doctor in a couple of weeks and we'll ask about it.

Cross-patterning: We are definitely seeing her reach across the midline with ease. She opens and closes doors, reaches across her body for things, and works objects with both hands simultaneously with ease. She can shake hands, and can easily switch the hand she is holding mine with when turning around.

Cycles of activity: Her bedtime and waking time are pretty well set, including her early morning transfer to our bed (promptly between 4 and 5am) and while she is still a little flexible about the actual hour of the clock, she does expect to have sleep-eat-play cycles in a predictable order. Breakfast on waking, then play, then nap, then lunch, then play, then snack, then more play, then dinner, then bath, then bed. Deviations are tolerated as long as we are not at home, but the order must be rigidly followed at the house, or mayhem.

Undressing: She takes off socks and shoes readily, a cardigan sweater pretty easily, and raises her arms or legs to help with a shirt or pants. She does not really undress herself head to toe, as I hear some other kids do. She does run from diapers, though.

Walking and carrying things: Yes, this is a favorite activity. She will carry the biggest (a kitchen stool) or heaviest (an old doorknocker in the shape of a dog) thing she can find. It is a source of great pride for her.

Opening and closing things: Yes, yes, yes! What a colossal pain in the ass to have one's purse and wallet opened and unpacked all over the floor four or five times a day. Trash can lids, toothpaste caps, whatever she can get open, it is open, and if there is anything inside, it will be outside. She likes to replace the lids, but can't really manage screw caps or snap-tops, so hardly anything is really ever closed again.

Resisting new barriers: We have experienced this in a rather textbook way. I pictured her howling at the gates in the new house, which she has not. She accepts them as part of the whole new-house package. The predictable problem we have now is with her outdoor environment, which does not yet have all the physical barriers it should have. She is MOST resistant to being told not to go down the sidewalk and into the street, which is clearly wide open to her. I can't really gate the sidewalk, so we'll just have to work it through. I mean, she seems to get it, she's just not really willingly compliant. Is that news to anybody?

Jumping on both feet: Nuvy does not jump. The neighbors have a little exercise trampoline, and their children love to put her on it, but she just kind of bends her knees a little, to feel the bounce. The feet do not leave the ground at all. I will sometimes catch them "bouncing" her up and down by lifting her under the arms, which is not something I would do, but it's pretty funny to watch. She now bends her knees repeatedly on the bed or trampoline and says "Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!" Maybe she's taking a clue from the immortal words of Tom Cruise, If you can't say it, you can't do it.

Catching and throwing: She loves to play ball, and will devise a ball out of anything (used packing tape is a recent favorite). She is better at throwing than catching, as might be anticipated, but is very interested in both.

Leaning forward on tiptoe: We are definitely seeing this, and she has a very cute little "tippy-toe dance" that she does when she's showing off, but which is different from the sort of Devo-Jerk kind of dance she does to music.

Digging and building: I see more digging than building, but not too much of either. She is not crazy about getting dirt on her hands.

Speech: She's pretty verbal, and uses many words appropriately. I hear that early talking runs in the family. She says "bless you" when someone sneezes, "thanks" when she's giving you something (though, oddly not when she receives something), and "Oh, shit!" when she spills a whole glass of milk in her lap (I don't know where she got that...). She uses the milder "oopsie" or "uh-oh" for water spills and other accidents, as well as for deliberate acts of entropy. She can name all her immediate relatives and most anything she eats or wears, and repeats everything she hears. Everything.

Stage 5 Continued

2007-05-14T11:13:00.000-04:00

Now Where Were We? Oh Right. Stage 5

Back in January, at the beginning of our adventures in Stage 5, Nuvy was just starting to walk, just starting to say a word or two, and generally behaving as expected for this stage. Then, somebody turned our snow globe upside down (previous post if you're interested in the details...), but now we are beginning to see more clearly again, and are ready to continue describing Stage 5. As ever, if human development bores you silly, just skip to the environmental supports. That's where the "stuff" is.

Note from the mailbag:
I have had a couple of emails asking for books with all this "stages" information in them. If anyone knows of a single source, please post it. I am writing exclusively from class notes and projects, and have not done too much research into the background sources, but it seems that there are lots of different ways to slice this melon, and I'll bet each one has its own library.

I have also had several messages about differences between my panel of gurus and other panels who run other Montessori toddler training programs, and you bet! There are as many disparate ideas on (tummy time, mobiles, mirrors, crying, whatever...) as there are folks who hang out a Montessori training shingle and tell us all THE MONTESSORI LAW. These bother me less and amuse me more, the longer I keep up this project. Anyway, where's the fun in agreeing all the time?

Stage 5 Summary

Stage 5 is defined by my guru panel as the period between 12 and 18 months. Roughly one shoe size, right? The following is a summary of what we expect from the Experimental Toddler at this stage, after that a few environmental additions we've made. Next post, we'll talk a little about what we have actually observed from our E.T. so far.

Neurological and Physical Development
Significant specialization occurs in all areas the brain at Stage 5, and of particular interest is the specialization of the hemispheres (the old "left-brain/right-brain" thing all those Signals t-shirts are always chirping about). This specialization and coordination between hemispheres precipitates:

evidence of hand-dominance ("lefty" or "righty")
heterolateral movement--meaning alternating movement evenly on both sides of the body, such as stair-climbing with both legs, swinging arms while walking, and other left/right/left/right activities.
cross-patterning--or the ability to reach across the center of the body to do something, like shaking hands, opening doors, or grabbing a spoon from the left side of your plate, using your right hand. Follow?

Cycles of activity are getting established, and with this come the old sleeping and eating routines. You might get some speech at this stage, but many times it comes a little later.

New Physical Skills

undressing--a variably convenient skill for parents.
walking steadily and carrying objects while walking
opening and closing things (doors, jars, boxes...)
resisting any new barriers--such as newly placed baby gates. Stage 5 children abhor any kind of physical restraint, so if it's not too late for you, go ahead and get those baby gates up long before you think you'll need them. A barrier placed before Stage 5 is likely to be viewed as a natural part of the environment (at least for a little while) while one placed during Stage 5 will probably become an object of resistance.
jumping on both feet
catching and throwing things
leaning forward on tiptoe
digging and building

She is really beginning to use her hands as tools, rather than just for locomotion or gazing, and finds that they are pretty useful for things like feeding herself (food and other things).

Cognitive Development

An interesting cognitive milestone is reached at about this time--the Stage 5 child begins to learn from trial and error, and to alter her strategy to accomplish a goal. If she has a goal, and her current strategy for reaching it isn't working, she'll try it another way. Just a few months ago, she would keep trying the same thing over and over until she either succeeded or abandoned the goal altogether.

She can also go back to an interrupted task--another development that is variably useful for parents--at her next opportunity. Just a little while ago, she would have forgotten all about the interrupted activity and gone on to something else.

Repetition continues to be important, but the sequences become more and more comples, so you see building and stacking. She is gratified by creating tall things or lifting heavy things. She can identify familiar objects and people in a picture, and can categorize based on a simple common feature (e.g. same color, different color).

Emotional and Social Development

The Stage 5 child's interpersonal skills acquire remerkable subtlety. She starts to consciously regulate her emotions, and realizes the influence her behavior has on others--particularly her parents. She can curb her anger if there's positive incentive to do so, tests limits, and enjoys applause. She loves an audience and tries on various roles to see how they feel.

She has a strong sense of self and ownership. She can take turns to some degree, but is a long way yet from sharing. She begins to take an interest in other children, often preferring them to adults.

Speech is emerging, and she will name things and remember their names. She experiments vocally with animal sounds and rhythms. she enjoys rhyming as a linguistic point of interest.

Environmental Supports

Space!: The Stage 5 child is walking now, and so needs plenty of room to explore, both inside and out. If you don't have a big yard, go to parks--with and without play equipment. Free movement outside without play equipment is as valuable as climbing and playing on structures. Just make sure there's plenty of outdoor time that's not stroller time. Inside, move those barriers out a bit if you can, take all the breakables off the second (or third) shelf, and let her roam as much as possible.

Language: Naming, naming naming. Collections of things to name are great for this stage. The classic ones are farm animals, fruits and vegetables and the like, but you will find all kinds of things out there. Tools, articles of clothing (doll clothes are good), whatever you can think of.

Sensorial: Opposites are big in this stage. High contrast elements in a variety of sensory experiences should be introduced for matching and comparison. Big and small, hot and cold (not too hot, right?), smooth and rough, hard and soft, loud and quiet, whatever you can think of. A lot of these don't require any new "equipment". You can do loud and quiet with nothing, and just about everything else can be improvised.

Math: 1:1 correspondence appears to be the key concept. Find something with several compartments and put one thing in each compartment (I love those little sock drawer organizers for this. You could even use the socks.). This is where math really begins. After all, without 1:1 correspondence, counting is just language--remembering a sequence of sounds, right? Another great activity for this is doling things out to the family (one blueberry for you, one for Daddy, and one for Mommy), or table setting, if you think your child is up to it.

Care of self/environment (Practical life): With the newfound ability to take off clothes comes an opportune time to introduce cubbies, laundry hampers, hooks, baskets, any easy organizational tool. You might already have introduced tooth brushing and hair brushing. I have decided to convert my abandoned weaning table (see "Weany, Whiny, Whoa!") into a handwashing station.

Grace and Courtesy: When you start to get language that means "give me", you can start expecting "please" and "thank you". Well, expect might be too strong a word, but you can ACT as if you expect it...

The little imitator will do whatever you do, so it's a good time to point out things like covering your face when you cough or sneeze, washing your hands before and after eating. You might also start hearing some sailor-language, if you're apt to use it.

Ok, this post is plenty long, so I'll give you the rundown on my the experimental toddler's actual observed behavior in the next post.

The Stage 5 Montessori Environment

2007-01-04T18:07:00.000-05:00

13 Months Of Looking At A Chicken:

The Stage 5 Montessori Environment

On January 1st, Nuvy turned one, took her first unsteady little steps, and became what we now know as The Experimental Toddler. It's the middle of February, and I think I'm ready to talk about it.

12 months marks a new phase of development that the gurus call "Stage 5", and that was a month and a half ago. Look at her now! She walks like a champ, even runs a little, climbs EVERYTHING, and generally behaves like a busy toddler.

Stage 5: Stage 5 is the period between 12 months and 18 months, according to this model, so we're sticking with that. If you missed the previous 4 stages, you can summaries of them in the "Stage 3" and "Stage 4" posts. The general trend in Stage 5 is to introduce a fairly wide assortment of new materials to coincide with significant specialization in all areas of the brain.

HEY WAIT A MINUTE!

This post has been sitting around in the "edit" column for two months now, and still nothing. The Experimental Toddler continues to toddle with ever-greater efficiency, speaks fluent baby and knows a few words in English. However, we are moving. The Montessori Laboratory is currently packed in a PODS container in a Philadelphia driveway, waiting to go in the new house.

Further, the Montessori experiment is about to go into overdrive as Subject Two (a second Experimental Infant) is expected this fall. To all of you who asked how this could possibly be done with more than one child, my previous answer was something like "Actually, I have no idea." I will now amend that to "I can't wait to find out, and I'll keep you posted!"

So, for everyone who wrote asking if the Mommybahn had closed for good, it has not. And I'll tell you all about the Stage 5 environment, as soon as I get my notes out of whatever box they're in.

And the winner is...

2006-12-27T10:46:00.000-05:00

The Montessori Christmas Sweepstakes

Maria Montessori's life's work was to understand and promote the development of the whole child. She emphasized spiritual growth, grace and courtesy, independence, and the mind-body connection as pillars of the formation of the self. Her philosophy has lately come to be "method", and as such, occasionally comes nose to nose with the philosophy itself. As you all know, I'm here with the Experimental Infant (fast becoming the Experimental Toddler)trying to sort it all out.

And so, I return to the whole child and her first Christmas. (Some of you remember that this was to be her second Christmas--had she deigned to be born when due...) This Christmas, Montessori had some big wins, some big losses, some laughs and some spins in her grave. To relate just a few:

The Big Loser: The Weaning Table.

Christmas (and Hannukkah, and Kwanzaa, and Eid, and Diwali and your birthday, and every other celebration I can think of) is largely expressed as dinner, and the weaning table simply misses out. It's independent, true, but it excludes her. She's a "kid's table" of one, and she seems as aware of it as I am. She just has to participate in the celebration, the passing of food, the conversation, everything. I think that her sitting at the table, eye to eye with all the important people in her life, is an invaluable social experience, and Montessori is as much about social integration of the child as it is about independence. At dinnertime, independence loses to grace-and-courtesy by a nose.

The Big Winner: Getting Outside with The Grandpa Set

Nuvy spent Christmas in Lake City, FL (we were not damaged by tornadoes, but several others were) where the highlight of her trip was pushing a plastic mower up and down the driveway until she was out of breath, dragging her bare toes on the pavement until they bled, then putting on shoes and heading out for more. No, the mower is not strictly traditional (the Radio Flyer Walker Wagon is the traditional choice--but was not available at our local Wal-Mart store) but it doesn't have bells and buzzers, and it is perfectly functional as a push toy. She's just that close to walking, and she literally came in with her tongue hanging out. There wasn't anything under the Christmas tree better than that time outside with Daddy and Gramps and the beautiful day.

For Christmas in Philadelphia, it was a walk in the sling with Opa, over a muddy path in Fairmount Park by the Wissahickon. It's a riverside walk we take often, as it's close to home. Here again, independence loses--this time to enrichment. Sure, she might have pushed her wagon through the mud without much damage to either of them, but she would never have made it down to the rapids, or have seen the little trickle coming out of a wall, or have looked over the stone bridge. These are all of debatable developmental value compared to her independent effort in getting around in nature, and there's a big part of me that wishes I'd let her push the wagon, but the community joy was the best part.

The Big Cringe: Another Round of Applause.

Now, I am a tremendous advocate of modeling social graces, and I want my daughter to feel loved and appreciated, but I often feel a sort of crushing guilt when I see her delightedly working the crowd.

Nuvy is an only child, and the only grandchild (until July, right, Auntie Shoogs?) of all four of her grandparents, which means that her every move is watched and recorded (yes, blogged) and cooed about and applauded. The Montessori gurus have a big bone to pick with excessively praising children, and I am right there with them. I try really, really hard to quietly beam with pride when she does something amazing, or just to share her joy in her accomplishment with a "Wasn't that great?" but it is so, so hard at family gatherings. I feel like the world's biggest stick-in-the-mud when everyone's applauding her and she's lit up like the Christmas tree. It's hard to walk the line between sharing her joy and egging her on, or trying to get her to "do it again for Uncle Mack" or whoever missed it the first time, and I can begin to see the people-pleaser in her. It's hard to resist enticing her to perform when it's so much fun for all of us, but I still get a little queasy when I remember that this is my first, best chance to let her do it just for herself.

I'll bet you want to know what was under the Montessori Baby's Christmas tree, right?

Of course you do, and it was probably a lot like Christmas morning for lots of other little American boys and girls. After all, it's not about the stuff. However, honorable mentions follow:

Best restraint in purchasing: The "baby doll that doesn't do anything". It doesn't cry, wet, sing, or play music. Its eyes do close when you lay it down. Nuvy loves it.

Best excuse for a non-Montessori toy: The battery-operated cell phone and keys. I have to paraphrase, because I can't remember the exact quote, but it goes something like this:

A: The real keys and cell phone are some of her favorite toys. B: They are not the best toys because they are (choking hazards, fragile, electronic, dirty, will-put-your-eye-out...) but she totally loves them. C: Real keys and cell phones make noises and have batteries inside. Ergo: A toy phone that beeps when you press the buttons (never mind the animal sounds) and a set of toy keys that has buttons that make car-unlocking sounds, engine starting sounds, etc. is completely within bounds as a realistic toy.

I could argue, but I won't, since it's pretty close to my audubon birds argument. Nuvy, of course, loves them.

Best toy I hid under the sofa: Leapfrog Lily. It speaks english and spanish and teaches numbers and colors in both languages. It sings a pathologically catchy song. Nuvy loves it. Please don't tell her where I hid it.

Best gift overall: I know, this one gets the corny award. She'll never remember anything anyone gave her, but I'll bet next year she'll be looking forward to Christmas. Like most of us, she won't really be able to put her finger on why, but it'll be because somewhere deep inside her is planted a memory of love and laughing and general festivity. What could be better than that?

Weanie, Whiny, Whoa!

2006-11-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

Weanie, Whiny, Whoa: The Weaning Table Bites Back!

So, when I started this, there were dichotomous responses to my decision that Nuvy would have a weaning table instead of a high chair at home.

Column "A" included those who asked probing questions, such as "How is that going to affect your family mealtimes?" or, "How are you going to keep her sitting at the table?" or perhaps, "Isn't that going to be kind of hard?" To these, I responded confidently that I saw these kids in an infant program using the weaning table and they were all quite successful and I was sure we would be quite successful, too.

Column "B" included those who looked, blinked slowly, smiled knowingly, and said something like, "Oh, how interesting. Let me know how that works out for you." To these I say I'd like to order a good single malt, neat, to wash down my crow.

Yes, neighbors, we have had some challenges with the weaning table. Nuvy does come to the table when I put food on it, but she WILL NOT stay seated there. A typical meal goes like this:

-I say, "Lunch is ready! Come to the table, Nuvy!"

-Nuvy comes barrelling across the room saying "MMM! MMM!" and slapping her little hands along the floor the whole way.

-Nuvy sits down and digs in.

-Nuvy has one bite of whatever she's having--two if she's very hungry--then gets up from the table and takes off.

-She looks behind her. I'm still sitting at the table.

-She comes back. "MMM! MMM!"

-She stands up beside the table and takes a few carrots off her plate.

-I say, "We sit down to eat, Nuvy." and guide her over to her chair to sit, but if she sits on the floor next to the table, I pull the table in front of her and consider this good enough.

-She takes another bite, maybe two, then throws the plate onto the floor and takes off.

-I clean up the table and race her to reach the pieces on the floor. End of meal.

I am grateful to both my mother and my mother-in-law for never, EVER suggesting to me that I just get a high chair like other people do. They have both been respectfully, supportively silent on the matter.

So, I bought a high chair. It's a lovely high chair. Now we can all sit together at the table, and Nuvy can enjoy family meals like the rest of us. And I can put her in the chair, and I can take her out. She's fine with this in restaurants. In fact, she seems to love sitting at the table with everyone. She does not squirm or cry to get out. She seems quite happy, and I take her out immediately if she isn't.

But it still bothers me.

So, as luck would have it, IMMEDIATELY after I bought the lovely high chair that grows into a teenager's desk chair looks great with the dining room furniture, here is what Nuvy did.

Dinner time came around, I went to the kitchen to prepare her food. She crawled over to the table, sat down in the little chair, put both her hands on the table and said "YUM! YUM! YUM!". Then proceeded to eat an entire plate of spinach with raisins, green peas, sweet potato, about 15 cheerios, and half a pint of blueberries. Then she drank a glass of water, pushed the chair back from the table, and crawled off to the living room to play.

What do you think of that?

The Unprepared Environment

2006-09-15T18:20:00.000-04:00

The Unprepared Environment: Montessori and Your In-Laws

FULL DISCLOSURE: My own in-laws are completely supportive of my Montessori tendencies and habits and would never, ever laugh at or scorn me in any way. Neither would they behave toward my child in any way contrary to my wishes, which I have painstakingly laid out. I uphold them as the very pinnacle of in-law existence, exempt them from any and all oblique or direct criticism, and sincerely hope that you should be so lucky.--A

When you tour a Montessori school, it all looks so easy. All the kids are perfectly normalized in their perfectly prepared environment at their most perfectly photogenic hour of the day--sometime between 9:00am and 11:00am. Over and over, parents like you and me (well, let me not speak for you...) say the same thing.

"My kid is not going to act like that."

And of course, the clever Montessorian who is leading your tour is ready with a reassuring, truthful response. Mine was always, "Almost all children do behave this way here, because the environment is carefully and minutely prepared to encourage them in this kind of work."

This often precipitates a discussion about the very real and intractable differences between the Montessori-school "prepared environment" and the rest of your often un-prepared, un-didactically-controlled life. There are just so damned many other people in your life, right? And doesn't each one come with her own confounded ideas?

One of the things that invariably intrudes upon a parenting strategy is the degree of license grandparents take with it as their god-given right to spoil. Call it a generation gap, call it amnesia, call it indulgence or call it grandparenthood--it's all in good fun. You can compound it with interest if you make them paternal grandparents because of the Daddy Factor (see post "The Daddy Factor"). The fact is, all these rules about "aids-to-independence" can be a tough sell for the grands, but it's not an impossible sell!

Can you feel me prepping you for Thanksgiving and everything else until January? Good.

Here are a few plays from my book, in case you're interested, to keep your family time in line with your Montessori home environment--especially when you are in someone else's home.

1. Go outside!
Take your child outside. If your in-laws are outdoorsy, they'll enjoy and enhance this experience for the baby, and if they aren't, they're likely to follow your lead (or at worst, be absent, which is OK in a pinch, right?). Taking a fussy child outside is, above all, calming to the child. Incidentally, it diminishes the temptation to do all kinds of invasive, distracting things to try to make the child stop fussing. Birdsong instead of knee-bouncing! Who can argue with that? Oh, and bundle up for the weather! It's good for you!

By the way, you don't need to live in a park to enjoy the outdoors. Why just today, due to an unplanned automotive event, Nuvy and I had a lovely nature walk around the perimeter of an Exxon station near the DC beltway, with rush-hour traffic going by. (The gas-station-people had planted marigolds, morning glories, and petunias, and had a delightful population of crickets and sparrows.)

2. Let them see you enjoying it.
Oh, you know it sells itself. Do it just like that tour guide did. Point out your child's independent activities in front of your in-laws. Engage them in following and observing the child by saying "Watch her _______!" and "Look! She can _____". Use hushed tones to heighten the effect. Really do it, and with feeling. They will all be charmed, and many of them will get right into it.

3. Hang out in a room where there's no TV--or don't be the one to turn it on.
I'm sure I don't have to map out for you how this is exponentially easier than asking your father-in-law to turn off The O'Reilly Factor.

4. Try not to be a toy-snob.
Let me be the first to tell you that Montessori-toy-snobbery will get you some measure of civil disobedience from the rest of your family. Trust me when I further tell you it is SO not worth it. Yes you can get Montessori-appropriate toys at Wal-Mart, you just have to be careful, as you would anywhere else. Plastic toys can be aids to independence, like the old-fashioned wooden ones, and for every Tickle-Me-Curious-George, or whatever, there is a plastic rainbow stacker, a xylophone piano, a bouncy ball, a baby-doll that doesn't do anything, a board book, or a string of plastic teething beads that will satisfy the gift-giving urge without compromising your principles.

5. So, what do I do with the singing-dancing-vibrating toy my mother-in-law couldn't resist?
It's so easy you'll laugh. Give it to your child, but don't turn it on or demonstrate it--or let anyone else do so. Tell your mother-in-law that you want the child to discover all the features of the toy on her own. With no direction, your child will play with the toy in a natural, constructive way--perhaps figuring out how to get a rise out of it--or not. Let this happen and let no one interfere. This is much more peaceful than refusal, and we're all about peaceful living.

6. I'm doing the weaning table/floor bed routine. What do I tell the grandparents who want to buy a high chair and a crib for their house?
Of course they do! They're as excited about your baby as you are, right? A corollary issue would concern the high chair and crib they already have for all their other grandchildren, but Nuvy is the first grandchild, so that's where we were. Improvising with readily available stuff is easier for everyone, and you'll get less eye-rolling. I discovered that a Bumbo seat (the thing you get at Target-- and not until your child can get out of it on her own) combined with one of those collapsible bed trays, the one with the white formica top you got as a bridal shower gift, (also available at www.target.com in case no one gave you one) makes a fine weaning table. Throw a bath towel under it and let 'er rip!

Also, if throwing the crib mattress on the floor makes your in-laws squeamish, or if you sleep in hotels often, One Step Ahead (www.onestepahead.com) has an inflatable sleepover bed designed for older children that looks like a little blue raft. I find that it makes a great traveling floor bed. I got it when Nuvy outgrew those little newborn travel bed/boxes. (to state the obvious: One Step Ahead does not advertise its inflatable bed for this use, and I am not an infant-safety authority. Use common sense. If it doesn't feel safe to you--don't do it.)

The Stage 4 Montessori Environment

2006-08-23T18:08:00.000-04:00

How Did We Already Get Here?: The Stage 4 Montessori Environment

So I can't believe I'm saying this, but at eight months (September) we move into the Stage 4 environment. For those of you who are just joining us, there is a brief recap of the previous stages in my post on the Stage 3 environment. For all the rest of us, time does march on, doesn't it? Apologies in advance if this is way more information than you want or need. If you just want to hear about the stuff (but it's not about the stuff!) I'm adding to her playroom, skip to "environmental supports".

The Stage 4 Montessori environment is appropriate for babies between eight and 12 months. So, who are these babies, anyway? I will consult my Montessori papers:

Stage 4 Neurological Development:
The Stage 4 baby is having a tremendous growth spurt in the cerebellum--which is the back part of the brain that controls muscle coordination, sirection, sense of gravity, and coordination of muscle movement. In essence, the part of the brain that controls the body is starting to "catch up" with the part that sets goals and plans movement. This means she can execute her plans with greater sophistication--and all of a sudden, it seems.

As a result of her rapidly improving sense of gravity and a finer grasp of balance, the Stage 4 child will pivot, squat and stoop on her feet, pull up and cruise along walls and furniture, and maybe even begin walking during this stage.

The Stage 4 child plays with a purpose. She pulls and drags toys, is interested in dumping, throwing, and dropping objects for effect, and picks things up with the intent to play with them. She can put one object inside another (nesting) or on top of another (stacking). If given a bottle, she can find the business end of it all by herself.

Stage 4 Cognitive Development:
The Stage 4 baby develops the ability to make and execute plans with smooth, coordinated actions during this stage. Her experiments are dramatically more purposeful and better organized now.

Since most of the dramatic growth is in the motor centers, you may notice that the nature of your baby's independent activities will remain largely the same for a few months, but they will be executed with rapidly increasing fluidity. The ability to cruise or take a few steps will dramatically increase her range of movement and physical strength. The hands are increasingly free to explore, as she needs them less and less for locomotion and balance.

She begins to respond to her own name, and can follow simple commands, but the nature of a command is still fuzzy for her, so don't be surprised if the baby's own will easily wins out over your command. It's not defiance (yet!), just an incomplete understanding of the relationship between her own desires and your commands.

Stage 4 Emotional and Social Development:
The Stage 4 baby's emotions are quite sophisticated now. She's no longer just happy or unhappy, frightened or delighted, but shades of emotion are evident. You will see shyness and anger, and an attachment to routine emerging. At this stage, she can follow a pattern or sequence of events, anticipate what should come next, and get extremely pissed off if her anticipations prove unreliable.

She's developing social references. She's comfortable with people she knows, and uncomfortable with strangers. Her interactive play is more advanced and her comprehension better. If you leave her, she can anticipate your return.

The sounds she makes will start to have meaning. Her imitations of speech are more refined and she vocalizes a lot more. Her gestures are getting more subtle in meaning--many people introduce sign language during this stage--and her passive vocabulary is growing like crazy. Be sure to call everything by it's name. The Stage 4 baby will pick up on this long before she can talk back.

Stage 4 Environmental Supports:
This is the part you've been waiting for.

The walking curriculum: For her eight months birthday, Nuvy gets a ballet barre, mounted 18" off the floor of her playroom for cruising (I found it at www.thebarrecompany.com). I did not buy, but I do like, the balance boards and some of the other walking materials from Lord Company (www.lordequip.com). Of course, a lot of the walking materials are only necessary if your house is completely devoid of low tables and windowsills to pull up on, or if you are trying to fill a huge playroom. Neither of these is the case for me.

Really, now, the weaning table: I am really, really ready now to start her at the weaning table. She is sitting up much better now than two days ago when I wrote about the Bumbo chair (use it for feeding, and forget the lap thing. Really, it's better.) AND she is seriously into playing with her food now, so I think she needs her own table, and I might just give her a plate too, and let her go at it. A friend of mine hooked me up with www.kidonyc.com for some seriously beautiful tableware for children--and a completely different Montessori perspective--one much less restrictive than mine.

Baskets: Nuvy is really into dumping things out of containers, so I have put her toys in little baskets that are within her reach. Montessori folks call this a "treasure basket" and fill it with beautiful things for the child to admire. I have one for little scarves for her to pull out, and one for rattles and other toy-size objects. I also put all the board books on the lowest shelf so she can pull them down.

Nesting blocks: I think I will introduce these early, like the vinyl stacking blocks, and see what she does with them. www.rosiehippo.com has cute rainbow wooden stackers, but lots of companies make them. Rosie Hippo recommends them for age 2+, so follow me at your own risk. This site is a great resource for all kinds of wooden toys. Check them out.

We'll keep you posted!

Seven Months Review

2006-07-16T20:39:00.000-04:00

How's That Working Out For You?: The Seven-Months Review.

Summer camp's over and the Montessori Baby is back! If you can believe it, we've been doing this now for seven--almost eight months.

In that time, as you can imagine, we've made a few minor adjustments to the academic rigor of the Montessori Baby Experiment. Let's review:

What Nuvy's up to now: Nuvy is doing all the things seven and eight-month-old babies are doing everywhere. She sits up, crawls, pulls up on furniture (if she's motivated to see over it), dumps things onto the floor, eats a variety of foods, vocalizes a lot, saying "mamamama", "dadadadada", and "bababababa", none of which seem to have any specific meaning attached to them, and says "aynaynaynaynay" when she's annoyed, tired, or otherwise unhappy. Just now, she's taught us how to play peek-a-boo.

Principles we're still sticking to: No bouncers, swings, exersaucers or other strap-in contraptions, no buzzers and light-up toys, no TV (unless I catch her watching "Deadwood" with Daddy--then watch out!), no crib, and no high chair. She doesn't have any bottles or sippy-cups. She drinks water from a regular glass with no lid, and gets her milk from the breast. The sippy-cup restriction is Montessori, the bottle thing is just me, as I never get around to pumping, and I'd rather not give her formula.

All her play is still Nuvy-initiated, except for walks and other outings. She's a real people-person, I suspect because of spending lots of time in the sling, at grown-up eye level. I still don't demonstrate for her how to use any toy. I let her try to self-feed, and I still put her in her bed awake. She sleeps in her floor bed, usually from about 9:00pm to about 5:30am, at which time I usually put her in bed with us.

We don't use baby-talk with her (much--but everyone else does), and we haven't tried to sign. Anybody have any experience with that? The Montessori people were a little conflicted about it, as they weren't sure how it would affect oral language development. I'd appreciate any wisdom any of you have on baby sign language.

Things I've found it useful to modify: These are things that still feel Montessori to me, but are a little tweaked because they just weren't working for us.

The Floor Bed: She rolled out of the floor bed every night for the first week I put her in it. To keep her in bed without confining her with a crib, I rolled up blankets under the sheet and made little bolsters all around the floor bed. It seems to keep her in the bed, unless she means to get out and actively climbs over them--which she does infrequently. She usually just makes a little noise early in the morning, and I come and get her.

The Noisy-Toys Rule: I am giving her rattles with invisible beads, Lamaze butterflies with crinkly plastic inside, and the Audubon Society birds. I did this because she became very interested in rattles, and I wanted her to experience some sounds and textures other than wood-against-wood. The birds got in by being reasonably authentic representations of actual local birds, and by making the actual accompanying birdsong when you squeeze them. And anyway, they're really cool. You should get some. Follow the link below. www.choiceaccessories.com

Things I Have Totally Bagged: There are a few Montessori recommendations that I have completely given up on. If you manage to make these work, please let me know how you did it so I can try it out on my next child.

Lap Feeding: Oh, how I have come to hate lap feeding. Nuvy sits up now, but unsteadily, so she still can't really use the weaning chair yet. Lap feeding became a hurricane of food, a writhing, whining baby, and a glass of scotch for me when it was all over. I caved and used what I must now endorse as a really great baby product--the Bumbo seat. Props to Aunt Hyster for that. The bumbo seat sits on the floor, and I sit on the floor in front of it. It supports Nuvy very securely while she eats, and allows me to interact with her without having to restrain her with my arms. The idea behind lap feeding is that there is bodily contact (the only kind of restraint theoretically allowed) and the physical closeness allows the parent to be well-attuned to the baby's body language, ending the feeding session immediately when the child loses interest. Problem: Nuvy lost interest in being held on my lap WAY before she lost interest in her food, which amounted to tremendous frustration for both of us. The Bumbo seat (available at www.target.com, among other places), while somewhat confining, represents a pretty good compromise. It is situated on the floor, where the weaning table and chair will go, but is pretty hard for her to worm her way out of--though let me say not impossible. Now, Nuvy's dinner is much more pleasant, AND she uses her cloth napkin for peekaboo--which is beyond entertaining!

The Six-Months "Sensitive Period for Weaning": Sorry, folks. The attachment parent in me is just not ready to give up nursing. The American Association for Pediatrics is backing me up, and giving me a year. Here's why. 1) Breastmilk is better for Nuvy than formula. 2) I hate, HATE pumping. It makes me feel even sorrier for dairy cows than I already did. 3) She has begun to cut herself back now that she's eating solids, so I don't feel any real need to rush her. 4) We both still love it. So there.

However, I am trying to give her the opportunity to wean herself, and she seems to be doing it to a certain degree. She no longer needs to nurse for comfort if she's hurt or scared. Hugging and rocking while she sucks her thumb is enough. She takes less and less milk at mealtimes, and I've begun nursing her after she eats, rather than before. I never got into the habit of nursing her to sleep, but I do wake her up that way. When she gets up at 5:30am, she's like a sleepy little baby bird, chasing my breast with her mouth. That one's going to be tough to let go.

Heigh-Ho!

2006-07-04T05:06:00.000-04:00

Heigh-Ho!: The Montessori Baby Goes to Work

Ever thought of taking your baby to work? Ever thought of doing it every day? The Montessori Baby is here to de-mystify the world of the working infant. Right after we finish sweeping away the cobwebs from our blog.

After three months of maternity leave (on April 3 of this year), I went back to work as the director of a small Montessori preschool. Before the baby, I loved my full-time job, the children, the parents, the environment. It was a beautiful thing. It had been my plan from the start to return to work with the baby in tow, but as my maternity leave ran short, I began to understand (and share) my employers' apprehensions. It was decided that part-time was best.

So, Nuvy and I went back to work part time in our Montessori school. Does going to work with your baby sound like a dream come true? It is! Sound like your worst nightmare? Yep, that too.

Are you crazy?
I don't think so. The Montessori environment is meant to mimic a family dynamic by integrating children of different ages in the same class. This allows a kind of social development seldom found in single-age-group environments. Older children seek new challenges, but they also enjoy nurturing and caring for the younger ones. Their perspective tends to make them precociously empathetic. Nuvy has been wonderful for our community in that way. Even the youngest children had someone to care for, and I found their intuitive gentleness remarkable.

Don't you worry that she'll get sick?
No again. She has been a very robust baby, and I made a few common sense rules, mostly those I heard from teachers with children and other parents. Wash your hands before touching the baby, and don't touch her face or hands. The second was harder to enforce, as holding her hands is irresistable. In the time between April 3rd and June 15th, which was the last day of school, she had one cold. If she had an older brother or sister in school, the exposure to school germs would be about the same.

But can you get anything done?
Depends what you need to do. I was able to operate pretty well with my three-to-five-month-old baby in the sling. She could ride with me to bring the children in from their cars and take them out again, to make snack or coffee, and to supervise the playground or lunch time. If I needed to be in the classroom, she was the star attraction. In mobile, child-oriented parts of the job, she was fine.

There were times, however, when I needed to hand her off. Any kind of computer work, meetings or long phone calls, more office/adult-oriented tasks were harder, and everything got done a little more slowly. Time out for feeding and changing added up, and long jobs had to be saved for nap times or taken home. I delegated shopping and other in-and-out errands to other people, and I was lucky to have very supportive colleagues, children and parents in my school, who welcomed us both back in as loving and uplifting a way as I could have imagined. Colleagues frequently stepped up to have baby visits in their classrooms or to take her out to the playground with the rest of the children.

Will you keep doing it?
For the summer, yes. A wonderful partner and I are operating a summer program at the school, and I have an on-site babysitter. It's an absolute dream.

In the fall, no, but it could be done. My school is not equipped for infant care, and both liability and productivity issues loom large (less so for summer, as the program is small and I am self-employed). If I ruled the world, I would make on-site infant care the norm for Montessori teaching staff.

Picture this: a nursery area, just for the infant children of teachers, with a small staff and limited access to the primary Montessori classroom, plus separate space for naps and the ups and downs of baby life. Imagine the relief for young mothers who teach. Imagine the enrichment of life for the infants and the preschool children. Imagine being able to go to work AND be with your child.

But you don't rule the world, so what now?
It's true. I don't (yet) rule the world. After summer, I'll join the ranks of SAHM's with pride and delight. We'll be on the playgroup circuit and among the park-walkers and weekly bloggers again, and we'll continue our Montessori baby adventures until it's time for school.

Montessori Shopping Links

2006-05-23T17:54:00.000-04:00

Look! Montessori Shopping Links!

I have received lots and lots of questions about where to get obscure Montessori furnishings and materials. For everyone who has ever asked "where did you get your weaning table and chair?" To everyone who can't quite visualize a floor bed, and to everyone who has a hard time finding simple, affordable, quality things for little people, check it out. To your right, you'll see some new links to Montessori stuff. So there you go. Shop away, but...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!

1. Read "The Joyful Child" at www.michaelolaf.net. The Montessori home environment is a state of mind, and the things are just things--tools to help you. Even if you never buy a single piece of Montessori furniture or equipment, there's a lot you can learn from reading.

2. Really look at what you already have first--especially in the activities department. A lot of this stuff is easy to make at home. It's about order and an absence of extraneous stuff. You can make a cluttered confusing environment that is chock-full of Montessori equipment and you will still not have a Montessori environment. I fight this battle every day. Ask my packrat husband.

3. Remember that your baby will still be a baby, even if you fill your house with dishwashing stations and watering cans. It's all about respecting your child for the person she is. Did I mention that it's really not about the stuff?

One more caveat:

There is no one Montessori bible upon which everyone agrees. You will find things in these catalogs that I have excluded from my environment, and you will not find everything I am using at any one site. Some of the best things I have in Nuvy's environment are improvised. It's not about the stuff.

Mares eat oats and does eat oats

2006-05-08T19:00:00.000-04:00

Mares Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats and the Little Lamb Eats Oatmeal: The Montessori Baby Eats Up!

So it's finally happened. One day, I was happily nursing, and the next day, I was covered in oatmeal. One of the teachers at our Montessori school had banana oatmeal for lunch and Nuvy gave her that lip-smacking look, and there was no denying it. So I got some baby oatmeal on my way home, and that's where we started.

As you all know, the Montessori baby cannot be strapped into any contraption except her car seat. She can't sit up on her own yet, so we can't use the weaning table, and that means lap feeding. I was sure Kent would suggest that we break out some sort of baby seat for feeding, but I was surprised to find that I didn't even have to show him how to do it. He just sat right down with her on his lap, held the food in the left hand and the spoon in the right, and chirped "I've always seen people feed their babies this way, and now I finally get to do it!"

I could not have been more proud as I watched them shovel away.

The Montessori lap feeding rules are these:

1. No propping up in a seat. The child is held on your knees and is supported by the non-spoon arm. There should really be a corollary rule that you must cover yourself, the baby, and all the surrounding upholstery with a dropcloth before beginning.

2. The food must be served in a colorless glass or plastic container. The container is transparent so that the child can see where the food is. A four-and-a-half-month-old is still working on object permanence, and so could not comprehend that the food exists in a place where she can't see it, so it's important that the child see the spoon going into the food and coming out with some food on it, into her mouth. The container is colorless so as not to give an unrealistic appearance to the food.

3. The spoon is offered, and the baby chooses to eat or not. That means no airplane games to get the baby's mouth open, and no slipping the spoon in while she's crying, even if I think it will make her quiet. We just hold the spoon up and wait for her to take it. So far, she always grabs it with both hands and pulls it into her mouth. Oh, it's messy, but so cute! If she gets distracted, I just wait there and hold the spoon. Eventually, she either comes around to eating again, or she's just not interested, and I stop feeding her. So far, I'm happy with the results.

4. Water is offered in a clear, colorless glass. The reason it is clear and colorless is the same as above for food. The reason it is water and not some other drink is obvious. You are both going to be wearing the better part of it. I have to say that I was a little skeptical about this at first, but I figured, "Hey, it's just water after all." Well, Nuvy totally digs the water glass. She has more or less success getting water into her mouth depending on the type of glass. The best kind I've found is the one the Montessori people all recommend, one of those little flared glass votive candle holders. It is the perfect size, and the little lip really helps her guide the water in. She seems so proud of herself!

Here she is with her glass of water. I held it up in front of her so she could get a good look at it. She naturally puts everything she can find in her mouth right now anyway, so she just grabbed it with both hands and brought it to her lips. I was amazed to see that, after a couple of tries, she was gulping water from the glass, pretty much as anyone else would.

5. No mixing food. Each type of food is served in its own little clear glass container. If she has just oatmeal, she just needs one little glass bowl. If she has oatmeal and peas, she needs two. Add carrots? Add a third dish. Later, when she sits at the weaning table, and can have all her food laid out before her, this will be unnecessary. But for now, it is thought to help her understand the whole concept of eating different things. Like many other experts, the Montessori folks suggest feeding just one thing per container (just peas, not peas mixed with applesauce) so we can both learn about her food preferences. So far, she likes everything, including sucking on corn cobs and apple cores.

What she's eating.
Probably because I have never had any real food allergy, I have been sort of haphazard about introducing things to her. We started out in a very organized way, with oatmeal, then oatmeal and peas, etc. And then I just started letting her try things. I haven't given her any big no-nos like peanut butter or honey, but she has had a taste of raspberry yogurt, a sip of strawberry juice, a drop of red wine from my finger, and a taste of vanilla ice cream, in addition the baby standby foods. Yeah, I know. She's too young for dairy and way underage for alcohol. I'll try to be better. So far, she has not had any reaction to anything, but I have to admit feeling a little guilty about being so carefree in feeding her things.

I just enjoy her interest so much. I was really sort of dreading having to give her food, but my friend Brianne was right. It's actually kind of fun.

The Stage 3 Montessori Environment

2006-04-23T13:46:00.000-04:00

Overhaulin'!: The Stage 3 Montessori Environment

As Nuvy, the experimental Montessori baby, approaches four months of age, she's moving into stage 3 of her Montessori infancy. This leads inevitably to the question, "What did you do with stages 1 and 2?" I have in fact failed to note stages in this blog up to now, so lets recap.

Stage 1: Birth to 4 Weeks
During stage 1, her environment was basically me. We kept the colors quiet (more or less--my taste doesn't run to pastels), the noises quiet, and the lights quiet. The idea was that an environment of low sensory stimulation would ease her transition into the world outside her womb (er, my womb), and allow her to get her bearings without sensory overload. She was allowed to sleep as much as possible (!), was held for most of her waking time, and started spending lots of time in the sling from about 2 weeks--the sling being my unorthodox addition to the environment, and one I'm glad I added.

As far as I can tell, she behaved during that time like a rather quiet, perfectly normal newborn, except that people did remark a lot that she seemed never to cry. It was the sling. I know it.

Stage 2: One to Four Months
During stage 2, we introduced her to her floor bed for nap time (we are still using the co-sleeper at night) and her playroom. Her toys were simple: a red bandanna--now referred to as her "buddy"-- and a few grasping objects, both soft toys and rattles, with not more than three out at a time. She plays on a blanket on the floor, and does not sit in any contraption that she can't get in and out of on her own (except the sling, which I consider holding her, so I don't count it).

Cognitively, she started regarding her hands at about 4 or 5 weeks, followed things with her eyes from about 3 weeks, seemed interested in particular things, such as her buddy from about 5 weeks, and started grabbing things and putting them in her mouth from about 11 weeks.

I played a kind of peek-a-boo game with her starting at around 8 or 9 weeks, in which I covered her face with the bandanna, then uncovered it and smiled at her. She never seemed afraid or cried at all, but at first she would suck in her breath and move in a rather agitated way when she was under the bandanna. Pretty soon that stopped, and for about a month, she would just lie very still under the buddy and wait for me to remove it--presumably watching the spot where she last saw me. Just during the past week or so, she has begun to try to move the bandanna out of the way, and I have started varying the game by moving to a different spot while she's under there, so I don't show up in the same place where I disappeared. She appears to enjoy the surprise.

At 12 weeks, we went back to work part time. She comes to school with me, hangs out in the sling during carpool or if she's fussy, and plays on the floor during the day. So far it's working out pretty well. The children love her and give her their colds, and she seems to enjoy them, too. More on that as events develop.

She's also rolling around like a little buckeye these days, and starting to try to get her knees under her. I'm introducing gates this week.

Stage 3: Four to Eight Months
So here we are, coming up on four months and it's time to introduce a bunch of new stuff to our Montessori baby. The idea is to support the tremendous growth spurt her brain has during this time. Here are some of the new cool things she gets to play with!

Dolls: She's able to appreciate toys that look like people now, so she's getting a little soft dolly. Mostly, I expect her to eat it.

Things to stack: During the next four months, she's supposed to get interested in building, so I'm introducing some soft stacking blocks in easy to clean vinyl, since she'll probably lick them a lot.

Things to name: Representative toys, like fruits and vegetables, animals (I'm giving her some stuffed bird toys from the Audubon society. They come in different local species.), tools, people's pictures, whatever. You put them in a basket and take them out, saying their names as you touch them. We're supposed to start this before she can talk, to add to the words in her environment.

Different textures: We already do this, with soft, hard, cold, warm, smooth, rough, to give her tactile experiences. The trick is to keep the objects simple so that the tactile difference is the point of interest. Hence, they shouldn't make noise when you squeeze them.

Something to climb on: I'm still looking for the perfect infant climbing structure. It's got to be very low and small, for someone who's just crawling.

Surprises: For example, a closed box with something inside, a bag that reverses to have a doll inside. Stuff like that.

The weaning table: This one brings tears to my eyes. I can't believe I'm already thinking about giving her food. The weaning table is Montessori's answer to the high chair. It's on the floor, and the child gets into and out of the chair herself. I expect to have to deal with this in the next few months when she can crawl and sit up. I hope she'll continue to nurse exclusively for another month or so, but she's already into drinking her bath water, so I have started giving her water in a little glass. She just dribbles it all over, but I'm telling you. She loves it.

Wow. A new era already.

Motomontessori!

2006-04-04T16:37:00.000-04:00

Motomontessori!: The Montessori Infant Gets Rolling

Let's check in on the three-month-old Montessori Infant in her gloriously subdued environment!

More Montessori Rules: Tummy Time

The Montessori Infant does not get "tummy time". Why not, you ask? According to theory, the infant is more free to move and explore from her back, and is an imposition by me on her. Putting her on her tummy restricts her field of vision and the mobility of her arms and legs. Since I am minimizing restrictions to her movement by not swaddling her, etc. (don't mess with me about the sling, ok? I know it's restrictive. See previous posts for my sling exception) I place her only on her back. The thinking is that, rather than my imposing the tummy position on her, and my deciding when she should turn back over, I place her on her back and provide incentives for her to turn herself over. This "providing incentives" involves

1) not hanging toys above her head, which would make just lying on her back way too easy.

2) placing objects of interest where she can see them from her back-lying position, but where she has to stretch to reach them. Her current objects of interest are a patterned red bandanna propped up in a little peak, a clear plastic ring rattle with colored beads inside that I got by destroying the cute little Lamaze bee toy it was hanging from, a bright blue translucent back massaging thingy, a rolly wooden foot massaging thingy, and an upside-down bilibo--a big yellow bowl-seat-thing with two holes in it. Do you remember that guy on Fat Albert with the yellow helmet head? It looks like him.

3) Not using any movement-restricting apparatus, such as a swing or bouncer, but always placing her flat on her back when I'm not holding her.

Wonder of wonders, she rolled over!

Nuvy rolled over from back to front on March 25, five days before her three-months birthday. The object that most consistently gets her to roll over is the red bandanna. She loves that thing. I'm loathe to wash her drool off of it, as I think that might be part of its appeal. Maybe in tomorrow's wash.

I received considerable flak from my pediatrician for following this wacky-sounding no-tummy-time rule, but so far I'm happy with the results. The good doctor remarked about her very good head control, arm strength and trunk strength at our two-month visit, and I quote "Whatever you're doing, just keep doing it!". Then I told him what I was doing. He gave me a stern look and told me I really must give her some tummy time. I smiled and nodded and ignored him. It seems to have worked out much better for me than that time I ignored everyone who said "feed your newborn every two hours, whether she is hungry or not", see my previous post, The First Big Goof.

Damn the Dodots!

2006-04-01T09:05:00.000-05:00

Damn the Dodots!: Eurostyle, Good. Eurodiapers, Bad.

With all the sightseeing and gullet-stuffing, I hardly had time for shopping, but you can bet that anywhere I go, two things get bought. Baby gear and diapers.

In Barcelona, a cosmopolitan city which takes pride in offering the best of everything, I found two kinds of disposable diapers. Dodots (crappy and crunchy) and Suavinex ("new!" crappy and slightly less crunchy). This is a great case for why people all over the world marvel at American supermarkets. Brand competition ain't all bad, and friends, if I were a spanish--sorry, catalan--woman there is no way in hell I would use disposable diapers on my little button's tushie. Not only are they pinchy, tape-y/sticky, and crunchy, they are no match for my Noodle in a poop fight. She routed them over and over, once right nicely on the herring-packed train back to Barcelona from Montserrat (about an hour) which left me sitting in a steaming puddle of baby crap and fumigating all the neighboring grumpy commuters. Nice. Especially lovely for the clammy, smelly, humiliatingly stained walk home from the station.

I have been up to now a sideline fan of the alternative diaper scene, and I bought my g-diapers but I'm not using cloth--and there is exactly one reason I have not yet fully embraced the diaper revolution: Pampers New Baby Swaddlers. They are the most seductive of diaper devils. They're soft, smooth, stretchy, silent, have a lean profile, and are almost entirely leakproof. They are also still choking landfills, no matter how small a ball I roll them into for disposal.

I think the Eurodiaper Experience gave me some diaper perspective. It seems disposable engineering is not at such a premium in other parts of the world. So now I'm home, and after a happy reunion with American disposable diaper perfection, I sheepishly admit that I have been a spoiled-brat-environment-destroying-natural-resource-squandering-big-loud-American diaper consumer. I want ideal performance, and then I want to throw it in the trash and forget about where it goes after that. As a result of some light self-flagellation on that point, I'm now a part-time g-diaper user. (www.gdiapers.com) We are using them at home, and so far I'm pretty happy with them, though the routine and technique take a little getting used to.

Of course, Barcelona is not known so much for its high-performing disposable diapers as for its cool modernist style, and there they live up to their billing. For as bad as the Barcelona disposable diaper scene was, I ran across one of the cutest baby/mommy stores I've yet encountered (dig the hat!). Check out www.pygmees-perlimpinpin.com, and www.pygmees-perlimpinpin-bx.com to see some truly funky needlecraft.

The Second Big Goof

2006-03-29T14:04:00.000-05:00

The Second Big Goof: The Montessori Baby at Palau de la Music, Barcelona

Kent, Nuvy and I spent the past ten days in Barcelona on vacation with my parents. It was the second trip for me, the first for Nuvy and my parents, and Kent's parents live there in the winter. I probably have several posts in me about the trip...

Boys and girls, I would say, "let this be a lesson to you," but no parent in her right mind needs this lesson. You will all rightly say of me, "that lady is out of her mind," which precisely sums up the looks on the faces of the music devotees of the fair city of Barcelona, when they saw me saunter past the ticket counter of the Palau de la Music, the spectacularly beautiful Art Nouveau concert hall, with my two-and-a-half-month-old angel.

Now, before you send the butterfly nets and white coats (wait, no, don't click away!) let me just say that Nuvy is a very VERY mellow chick. Since she fell in love with her left thumb two significant things have happened:

1) Her right hand has struck up a feverish affair with the right ear, and deserves every happiness I think, jilted as it was.

2) Nuvy has stopped crying.

Seriously. This child now cries maybe once every other day, or whines for the 15 seconds it takes her to find the thumb. When alert, she coos and gurgles and charms the socks off of everybody--including any nearby bevy of flight attendants-- she can reach. When hungry, she sucks the thumb loudly, pulls her right ear, and closes her eyes tight. When sleepy, she moves the thumb from side to side in her mouth and tries to stick her fingers in her eyes. The child can communicate all her needs through the conduit of the thumb. Frankly, this is starting to freak me out a little, but my point is that I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting through a short concert.

The people at the concert could be, loosely, visually divided into three categories: middle-aged locals, elderly locals, and tourists. The middle-aged locals were fur-collar clad forty and fifty-somethings with careful coiffure and snappy-looking shoes. They usually appeared in couples or fours and were openly hostile to me, an obvious tourist and obvious lunatic for bringing a baby to a concert.

The tourists looked dirty, wore comfortable walking shoes, khakis and fanny or backpacks, and looked self conscious and a little alarmed that I was about to give them all a bad rap for being rude, loud, and marginally insane.

The little-old-ladies and gentlemen were pulling for me. They were dressed as if they were going to the market, came in threes, twos, or alone, and were visibly and actively delighted to see Nuvy, and seemed to enjoy my confidence and pluck in having brought this potentially dramatic little inconvenience out, just so we could all enjoy some good music. Perhaps there was a glimmer of the bullfight in their gleeful grins, but they were unfailingly encouraging. After each number, several of them would look back at me--in my aisle seat by the door--with silent applause and encouraging nods.

She made it all the way through the Mozart, the snoring of sleeping adults was louder, and was the belle of the intermission, drawing crowds of little old ladies who tested the limits of my spanish (Si, gracias. Si, una nena. Dos meses y media. Si, se gusta la musica) telling me how guapa she is (oh, and she is!) and asking about her vital statistics. The second act was a Hayden mass, a glorious chorale. She started to squirm at around the sixth of the seven pieces, so I took her out into the side aisle, not quite ready to leave, and thinking my swaying might keep her quiet. The piece, a solemn, quiet appeal for forgiveness, ended. She wound up for a whine and I took her out into the lobby. There, she let fly the single most piercing wail I have ever heard from her, and no amount of anything would bring an end to her solo performance. I spent the last 15 minutes or so (last number and encore) nursing her in the high-design, marbly bathroom. What I had envisioned as my moment of triumph, all the old ladies cheering, all the middle-aged scowlers and tourists grudgingly acknowledging the superiority of my fantasy child, became a scramble to duck out of the music hall quietly (there was nothing quiet about us!) and avoid the judging eyes that knew it was a bad idea from the start.

This exercise was the very antithesis of "follow the child". Maria Montessori would give me a good talking-to for having taken Nuvy there with the express intent of keeping her quiet, relying on my ability to predict and control her behavior to allow her to succeed in a wildly inappropriate setting. She really did almost make it, and if she had, I would have missed that lesson. To follow the child is to decline to burden her with your expectations. The "better" her behavior is, the harder it is to do. It was so easy for me to expect my tiny baby to behave appropriately in an adult-oriented setting. She had done it so many times before! I think this is a dangerous cycle for "good" kids. Adults just kind of forget what it's appropriate to expect--forget the reality of the child. I think this probably gets even worse as the child gets older, as adults have more direct influence over the child's behavior (through praise, punishment, scheduling, etc.) The well-behaved, obedient child finds herself in a pressure cooker of rising expectations. I hope this experience will help me remember that.

Diary of a Thumbsucker: Day 72

2006-03-13T10:36:00.000-05:00

Diary of a Thumbsucker: Day 72

6:20am. I wake my mother with a big slurping noise in the right ear. By this method, I procure the morning milk without letting go of my thumb to cry.

6:32am. Mother thoughtlessly chucks me over her left shoulder for a refreshing burp between courses. What a clod! She knows that I'm a left thumb sucker! The oaf has my left thumb over her right shoulder--which might as well be in Cleveland as much as I can get it into my mouth. In the language of my people, I express this as "Waaaaaauugh!" She is not too dumb to get the message.

6:36am. What is it with this woman and the boobs? She tries to replace my thumb with breast number two. The unmitigated gall! She persists and I relent. My thumb twitches restlessly.

7:00am. Thirst slaked, it's time for "Monkey in the Middle" where the bigs lie around on either side of me and tell me how perfectly and uniquely beautiful I am. It's sweet, but I have to be "on" all the time for them--smiling and gurgling and the like. The audience is going wild, but the thumb calls to me softly with her music sweet and sublime. No time now, lovely digit, for he carries me away to the changing table, where I'm expected to deliver sparkling conversation while he tends my nethers. The morning passes.

8:00am. Have we been apart so short a time? I return to you, thumb, as if from six months' journey at sea. I take you in my right hand and crush you to my lips--in my convuslive rapture, you slip away across my cheek--but I will have you. I trap you between my head and right hand and press you, sweet protrusion of the left hand, between my waiting gums. Ah, rapture! Thumb, I will kiss you into dreamland.

1:00pm. She has it in for us. She is against our love, I know it. Now it's to be a walk, eh? Sleeping in the sling? She can tear us asunder, thumb, but she can never erase your sweet, wrinkly memory.

10:00pm. So in love... so in love... so in love with you, my thumb, am I! But soft! Is that a tiny pang of hunger? Just a twinge? I'll cry for milk--but no! Hush me! Here she comes to pry us apart again with food and sleep. A thousand times goodnight, thumb! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I would say goodnight 'til it be morrow...

A Walk Without Hats

2006-03-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

A Walk Without Hats

Today we walked out without hats into a warm breeze, up hills, around corners and past a small playground where nobody was. A beautiful woman with broken teeth said her eight-year-old daughter had been shot, with a gun, in daycare. She had received a call from the hospital. She stopped us on the sidewalk; pronounced my baby beautiful. I had not read about it in the Post.

The Rock Creek Church cemetery is charming. The one for soldiers across the street is soul crushing, with its regiments of white crosses and stars. We wandered past the church, past gatherings of monuments, past a white truck surrounded by workmen and absurdly outfitted with a snowplow.

We came to a sort-of ornamental retention pond full of broken reeds and winter's refuse. Beside it was a low, rounded stone under which one Josiah Neuman Perry had lain now eighty-five years and death, it was written, had no more dominion over him. The same might not be said of his father, Rev. Josiah Bedon Perry, D.D., Rector of St. Andrews for 23 years, whose dominion over him was evident in the cool shadow of a looming monument. I sat on Josiah Neuman's marker and adjusted the buckle of my shoe, adjusted my sleeping baby, and looked out over the reed-choked pond. I wondered what diminutive name Josiah Neuman must have endured from his mother, Frances, to distinguish him from Father Perry.

Among the bread bags and leaf litter in the pond there was a flash of orange, then another and another. The pond was alive with carp of every color--orange, white, black, mottled, hundreds and hundreds. Many more than any sensible person would have stocked. I had to guess that these were generation upon generation of fish, surely as many as that little bit of water could sustain. I looked at my Nuria, with her mouth open in sleep and her grandmothers' names, and laughed at how life just kind of goes on like that. We threaded our way down the little lane, through the graves, out through an open iron gate and onto our street. The sun shone pink through her tiny ears all the way home.

My Dad, Unsung Parenting Guru

2006-03-07T13:19:00.000-05:00

My Dad, Unsung Parenting Guru: or How I Came to Disregard My Bellybutton Lint Just Now

"There are some things you just don't need to have."

--My Dad, as quoted by my Mom, regarding my brother's desire and mine to upgrade our beloved Atari to a Nintendo, sometime in the late 20th century.

He was totally right about that, and it occurs to me that I have a great tool, right here in my hands, for stepping outside the Montessori books and refining my parenting strategy by listening to real human beings instead of people selling books. So how about an interactive post!

Given my stated commitment to minimalism in the infant environment, and the impending necessity of actually giving my child things to use/play with, readers, bloggers, and lurkers, I'd love for you to tell me--

If you are the parent of a baby or young child:

Tell me about something you decided not to use with or give to your child, and why you made that decision. (Feel free to post anonymously, so whoever gave it to you as a shower/birthday gift won't recognize you.)

and/or...

Tell me about an element that is/was unexpectedly essential to your infant environment, and why you couldn't have done without it.

If you are the parent of an adult or older child:

Tell me about something your children lobbied hard for, that you might have given them (meaning you could have afforded it/ had room for it/ it wasn't illegal...) but didn't, and how you feel about that decision now.

If you don't have any kids, or if you do but can still remember being one:

Tell me about something you really wanted (and really could have had if your parents had been willing to give it to you--see above restrictions) when you were a kid, but didn't get. Do you still feel the lack? Are you better off for having missed it?

Philosenpfeffer 201

2006-03-06T12:16:00.000-05:00

Philosenpfeffer 201: Now Quit Trying to Spin your Bellybutton Lint Into Gold and Tell Us Why Your Kid Can't Have An Exersaucer!

Ok. So you all went to college and even if you were totally baked all through freshman year, you still came away knowing what a philosophy is. If you were so baked that you can't remember what a philosophy is, or you think maybe I can't, or you just have some time on your hands, read my previous "Philosenpfeffer" post. That other post addresses why I decided to follow all these rules, but not why the rules are what they are. This second question is addressed right here.

Why Montessori-types don't do "infant stim"

Life is already stimulating enough. Like all the Montessori people I keep telling you about, I do not believe that the real world is boring for babies unless we make it that way. Singing crib mobiles, swings and bouncers and Baby Einstein all work to distract the baby from reality, and if you slow down and look at it, reality itself is plenty stimulating for someone who has lived up to now in a tiny, soft, quiet, dark ninety-eight-point-six-degree womb. There is a book I love called Trees Make the Best Mobiles. It says all this better than I can.

The hand is the chief teacher of the child. One of the primary tenets of the whole Montessori philosophy is that children first learn with their hands. For that reason, a Montessori classroom is full of beads and pegs and sticks and sandpaper to count, sort, touch and examine. None of these things "do" anything at all without the child's manipulating them. These materials are very powerful learning tools, but try putting a computer with a math game on it in a Montessori classroom and see how fast the kids drop their geometric solids to go play with it. The point is, reality sometimes has a hard time competing for attention with special effects, and I think a lot of valuable things get missed because of this, especially when you're young and it's hard to tell what's real and what's special effects.

Desensitization. We have become desensitized to too many things. The evening news and movies have desensitized us to all kinds of violent horrors. We are able to watch real people killed and maimed over our dinner plates, and we hardly give any thought at all to all the pretend people we see killed and maimed in movies. We have seen so many buildings blown up and people mown down with machine guns that it hardly registers when somebody sets a fire or throws a punch. This goes along with the previous point that too much artificial stimulation causes people to lose the ability to see and respond to real things, and I think that's kind of a shame.

Why I don't think I'm overreacting.

ADD. I see a lot of little kids in my line of work, and even though I totally believe in ADD as a real psychiatric disorder (though I do think three years old is a little early to tag a kid with a diagnosis), parents who suspect their kids of having ADD have--to a man--reported that the kid is totally content and focused while watching educational TV, and is successful in learning through computer games. Now I still remember the one about the chicken and the egg, and I know correlation does not constitute cause, but I have a theory that overstimulation desensitizes kids and can cause focus and behavior problems in a low-key environment like a Montessori classroom.

Sensorial Acuity. A primary tool in Montessori teaching is heightening the child's sensorial perception, so why not try to keep my kid's senses "sensitive" to lower-levels of stimulation by cutting out some background noise?

Why I don't believe my baby is bored.

So far, she doesn't look bored. She talks to me a lot, she looks at the bumblebees embroidered on the curtain, she smiles and coos when her arty, Calder-esque, totally quiet, too-high-to-bat mobile gets blown around by the ceiling fan, she sleeps well, and she stares and reaches for toys that don't do anything but sit there. She doesn't watch commercials yet, so she doesn't know what she's missing.

How long do you think she will let me get away with this?

Philosenpfeffer!

2006-03-05T16:45:00.000-05:00

Philosenpfeffer!: Answers to the Persistent Question of "What's Your Point?"

I have heard various manifestations of this question from family, friends, bloggers, and my own husband, and I think it bears examination. Why would a sensible parent want to follow such a strict code in her interactions with her own natural, beautiful child? Why follow all these rules? Why don't you just follow your instincts? The answer to that question is admittedly more complicated the more I think about it. Please indulge my dissecting it in print.

Philosophy and Conduct

You can dichotomize people into oblivion, so I'll see how far this gets me. You can live according to philosophies or you can live according to instinct. I think most people do a bit of both, and both extremes are uncomfortable to those of us in the middle. People who live on the extreme philosophy end we call zealots, and those on the extreme instinct end we call anarchists (or out of respect for the zealously philosophical anarchists out there, we should call these people Ferris Beullerists, "A person shouldn't believe in an 'ism', a person should believe in himself"--benign lawlessness, no?). Most of us acknowledge rules, if not whole philosophies. We follow rules we find beneficial and dismiss rules that don't suit our purposes. The degree to which we do this defines us in more ways than we'd like to admit.

Rules

If you agree to follow a rule, you are agreeing to an assumption that the best course of action in a given situation has already been decided, and as such is not negotiable. Rules are usually at least strategic, if not philosophical. Sometimes the strategy is for keeping things fair, sometimes it's for keeping things unfair in the same direction all the time. Observable trends in rule-making can turn into philosophies (or the other way around, I suppose). A philosophy is a system of broad intellectual rules that gives us a framework for thinking about things, and helps us make all the little rules. So putting aside the chicken and the egg, that brings me around to...

Strategy

Strategy is what develops by trial and error when you do something a lot of times: like playing chess or cards, or driving to work or investing money. You learn from your mistakes. A person who plays chess or bridge follows either a strategy she's developed through experience or one she's read about in chess/bridge books. I will now follow the chess analogy a little farther than many people care to go. The easily bored should skip this next part.

Tortured Chess/Parenting Analogy: One thing's certain about chess. If you play chess a lot, you will be better at it than you were the first time you played by virtue of avoiding first-timer mistakes. If you really play a lot and you have a talent, you might develop a good strategy through learning from your mistakes. Possibly, you could get so good at chess that people would want to hear and follow your strategy, and you might be able to sell your chess book or give lessons.

Of course, any bonehead can learn the rules of chess and write a strategy book but if your strategy isn't any good, or is good but already widely known, people are going to stop listening to you pretty fast. Further, different people who are experienced at playing chess will come up with different strategies. People who are interested in chess strategy will read the various strategies and pick and choose what they think will help them.

It's often better for inexperienced chess players to follow one strategy to its logical conclusion, rather than to try to cobble something new together from a lot of different strategies because in the cobbling, the strategies lose their integrity and the inexperienced chess player, while perhaps better off for having picked up a few good tips, has not gained as much insight as he might have. This is because his choices about good advice and bad advice are informed by the same ignorance that previously informed his trial-and-error decisions.

Most of the very best chess players have a combination of experience and broad knowledge of the strategies in chess books, plus a little talent, and are able to innovate based on these elements. There is no question that practical playing experience is a key factor here. The very best chess players all have one thing in common. They play a lot of chess.

So how is parenting strategy like chess strategy? I think you can get better at both parenting and chess by experience and by reading. However, the number of children you can raise is a lot more limited than the number of chess games you can play, so it stands to reason that you'll have to rely on the wisdom of others. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can canvass lots of parents, or you can listen to smart people who deal with a lot more children than they could actually parent (like teachers or pediatricians), and extrapolate from what they say works for them. You could just listen to your mother (I do that a lot), but strategically speaking, unless she is VERY prolific, she is not much more experienced than you are.

But wait! Instinct is a kind of strategy! Yes, instinct is nature's strategy, which develops when death is the result of bad decisions and continued life is the result of good ones. However, a few things bother me about it. For one, learned behaviors can override good instinct (witness the average American diet). For another, I am not always able to distinguish sound reason from gross rationalizing from moment to moment. I don't trust my instincts in the face of stress or marketing, which are demonstrably powerful influences. That's why I have decided ahead of time to stand on principle.

Ergo...

The conclusion I draw is that I would do well to follow a known strategy that appeals to me (within the Montessori philosophy, which appeals to me) all the way to its logical conclusion rather than to follow my instinct through trial and error, or cobble together pieces of strategies in my inexperience. I don't see this as blind zealotry, but measure-within-blindness. I have exactly no experience in parenting, and some experience with the Montessori philosophy (enough, I think, to choose a strategy within it), So I have chosen a strategy--to which even now I have made certain modifications, evident in previous posts--and I plan to stick to it. With a little luck, my humble experience in this regard will be a useful addition to the common wisdom.

Anyone buying that?

Rules of Engagement

2006-03-03T08:20:00.000-05:00

Rules of Engagement: User's Manual for the Montessori Home Environment

In addition to all the restrictions on my environmental design, the Montessori infant-care gurus would also restrict my behavior around my baby. So far, I am reasonably compliant and tolerant of these restrictions, looking for the zen within the method. In many ways, I've actually found it pretty liberating.

Talking To the Baby

Baby Talk. I am supposed to talk to my baby in a low, familiar, normal tone of voice--like the one I would use to talk to a good friend. High-pitched "mommy-ese" is to be avoided (yes, I catch myself at it now and then). So what do you say to a 2-month-old? I play baseball-announcer. I tell her everything I do, such as "I put my left leg in my pants, now the right, now pull 'em up, button and zip. All done." Diapering, bathing and dressing are all "sports-announced", and they are all done much more slowly than is really necessary, so that the child may help where she can. Also, I try to help her hold up her end of a conversation, a la "Tell me that story again, the one about where you lived before you came to live with me. I didn't understand it all the first time." She responds with delighted "Guh, goo" syllables.

Result: I don't find this as confining as I thought I might. I have come to actually think of her as a rather quiet friend. She looks at me when I talk, either concentrating on my lips--trying to figure out how I'm making all those sounds, or else with complete comprehension--as if to say "yeah, I totally get you." At first, I felt like my tone was sort of flat, but once I got into it, I find that I am able to express a broad spectrum of emotion to her, just by thinking of her as a person, rather than as a baby when I talk.

Puppy Talk: Puppy talk is just what it sounds like. Things you would say while scratching the head of an especially beloved family dog, and that you would not be likely to say to a good friend. "Good girl! What a good girl!", "No!" and the like. These are to be more pointedly avoided than mommy-ese, as the goal is to respect the child as an empowered individual. The idea is that we do what we say, whether we mean to or not, and making value judgements about the child, such as whether she is "good" or not, depending on her obedience to you, is seen as a bad verbal and mental habit.

Result: This is kind of hard, as I actually do often think of my baby as someone I am "training", and at this level, she does feel behaviorally a little like a puppy. It helps me if I keep in mind that she is, in fact, training herself. I am just showing her by example how people are supposed to behave. Unlike a puppy, she is hard-wired to try to be like me (then later to try to be as unlike me as she can) so I don't have to praise her for cooperating. Instead, I can thank her. "Can you pick up your bottom so I can put the diaper under you? Thank you!"

This rule is even harder for Kent. He is such a daddy-type, and really does treat her like a scruffy little dog. It's cute, and sometimes I would like to just give in and do it. It'll be interesting to see how she reacts to our differences as she gets older.

Questions: I ask my baby questions she can't answer all the time. "What's wrong?", "Are you sad?", "Do you want to tell me something?". However, I am not supposed to ask her permission to do things if I'm not willing to take "no" for an answer. I'm not to say "May I pick you up now?", "Should we change your diaper?", "Would you like to go to the grocery?" because I know damn well that we're picking up/changing diapers/ and going to the grocery whether she likes it or not. Instead, I am to simply tell her what's coming up next, as in "I'm going to pick you up, then we'll change your diaper, and then we have to go to the grocery."

Result: My enforcement of this one is a little spotty, but I'm working on it. I am so looking for a reaction from her (she is really making a lot of sounds now) that I find myself phrasing things as questions, probably because I'd like her to answer me. However, I really do think it's a good habit to speak accurately, especially with people who are trying to figure out how language works, so I really want to achieve this one. Again, Kent is even spottier than I am in doing this. The only argument I have that sticks is that one day, it will matter very much how you talk to her, and you never know what day it will be.

Baby Sleep

I am lucky. My baby sleeps easily and a lot. I have heard a lot of horror stories from people regarding their babies' sleep habits, so I'm not a good reference for what works with sleepless kids. Here's what I'm doing, and it works for my easy-sleeper.

Bedtime: I am to put my baby to bed while she is awake. This way, she is not disoriented when she wakes up--she is in the same place where she fell asleep. Likewise, I am not to move her from place to place without trying to wake her up first. I am also to leave her alone before she is actually asleep. The idea is that she falls asleep alone, she won't need me to help her get back to sleep if she wakes during the night. This is meant to empower her and build her self-confidence, and I see the logic in it.

Result: This has gotten WAY easier since she found her thumb. (Aside: My baby has learned to self-soothe without ever being left to cry. I don't know who scores a point for that, but someone probably does.) Before, it was pretty hard, and required a lot of work at night. Now, when she starts to get cranky, I just lay her down, read her a little poem or something (she goes to sleep during long stories, so that's out as I am supposed to leave her to fall asleep alone) and either walk away, or roll over and go to sleep myself. It works beautifully for me.

Nap time: The same principle applies as for bedtime. She is not to be left to sleep in her play area, or encouraged to play in her bed. Ergo, no toys in the bed.

Result: Ok. She doesn't really play with toys yet, so I'll have to come back to that. It's a little harder than the bedtime rule, since her daytime sleep schedule is still kind of unreliable. I have to watch her for signs that she's tired and try to put her in her bed before she passes out. It takes a jeweller's eye, I'm here to tell you.

Baby Feeding

Breastfeeding: I am to do nothing else but feed her when we're nursing. I am supposed to find a quiet place where I can give her my complete attention while she's suckling. The Montessori gurus consider breastfeeding to be something close to a sacrament, and do not encourage carrying on casual conversations or watching TV during such an important bonding moment. When presented with the argument about breastfeeding in social/public situations, the gurus sternly respond that such situations overstimulate the infant and shoud be avoided if possible.

Result: I am not religious about this. It sort of flies in the face of my quasi-militant public breastfeeding attitude and my tendency to travel around a lot with my young infant--kind of a no-no. Can I help it that she has far-flung grandparents whose homes are in attractive, exotic locales? However, when I'm at home, I really do stay away from the TV and other people (though I am susceptible to blog-reading).

Table feeding: Remember how I told you we had no high chair? The Montessori baby has her own table and chair for eating as soon as she is able to crawl up to a little chair and sit in it. before that, she is fed while seated on someone's lap (and that someone is wearing a raincoat!). There are all kinds of further rules about how the containers have to be transparent so she can see the food disappearing--and if you want to stop a Montessori teacher cold in her tracks just bring up the spoon placement question--but all that gets a bit anal-retentive after a while. Also, no sippy-cups are allowed at the table. The infant drinks from a little glass. Technically, sippy-cups are not allowed at all, since food and drink should be taken only while seated at the table, but who lives like that these days?

Result: Yeah, I know you're all snickering at me now because I have no idea what I'm in for. Ok, I can take that for now. There are lots more rules regarding play and the like, but I'll just let you chew on these for a minute while I go and respectfully nurse my quiet (mostly) friend.

Ennui-ui-ui All The Way Home

2006-02-24T19:19:00.000-05:00

Ennui-ui-ui All The Way Home: The Boring Simplicity of the Montessori Home Environment

Preamble: I said I would talk about something besides crying. Many parents I meet want to know how to bring up a good "Montessori child". To begin, I don't believe that some children are "Montessori children" and some are not. I believe they are all Montessori kids--but you can ease the transition into a Montessori school environment and improve a child's experience if your parenting style is Montessori-compatible. I guess I could start writing about my Montessori parenting experiment anywhere, but I'll start with interior design, just for fun--and because I like it.

For the record, I mean to judge no one's nursery decor. Creating this environment is something of an academic exercise. Call it "Extreme Montessori Decorating"

Designing the Environment:There is a lot of philosophy out there, and many interpretations. Here's my take on designing a Montessori-appropriate home environment, the crux of which is simplicity. It's harder than I had imagined. There are so many cool and beautiful things for our babies that it's hard for a girl to keep her wits about her. I WANT that adorable little egg-shaped bouncer they have at modernseed.com (go check it out, it is so cute!). I want a slick modernist high chair and an heirloom crib tricked out with the dwellbaby crib set. Those things have been marketed successfully to me and I WANT THEM. However, I will not have them because they are not part of the Montessori infant environment and I want to do this all the way.

The following things are omitted by design:

Swings and bouncing contraptions of any kind. We have no bouncy seat, no wind-up swing, no vibrating chair, no exersaucer,and no high chair. The bumbo seat and the bilibo rocker are waiting, gathering dust. There can be nothing to sit on, other than someone's lap, that the baby cannot get into and out of herself, including the chair she eats in. At two months, it's still early for many of those things to be relevant, but the day of reckoning is coming.

Any and all toys that "do" anything. Toys in the Montessori infant environment may not light up, buzz, spin around or move in any way or for any reason that is not visible to the child's eye. My saddest omission in this category is the cute little caterpillar and the bumblebee Lamaze toys--both of which vibrate when you pull the cords. I LOVE these toys. (snif). Rattles must have all the clattering parts on the outside, visible to the child. The Tiffany silver rattle has to stay in its box for now.

The crib. The Montessori mobile infant should be able to get in and out of bed on her own power. Nuvy has a floor bed, which is basically a mattress on the floor, surrounded by a lovely wooden tray, to make it look a little less like a mattress thrown on the floor. Just now she can't move much and she only naps in it, but I'll bet the floor bed thing is about to get very interesting.

Hanging overhead toys. These must be omitted until the baby can get under them or away from them on her own. The Montessori environment may not impose toys on the baby by hanging them in front of her face. She has to choose to play with them. There is a sort of arty, Calder-esque mobile above her bed, but it is high out of her reach, and I consider it an aesthetic element, like paint or a picture on the wall, rather than a toy.

Other environmental design restrictions I'm following:

Separate play and sleep areas. Lucky for me, this is the only practical arrangement in my house. We have two small areas, rather than one big one. There is nothing to play with in her sleep area but a few board books and a "mouthable" book with family photos in it. Later, if she wants it, she can have a "lovey" to sleep with, but I don't mean a menagerie to play with in bed.

Cartoon images. Images of people, animals, or whatever have to be as realistic as possible. I will make certain allowances for stuffed animals, justifying them by not calling them by real animal names. For example, I do not refer to the cutest stuffed horse in the world by saying "This is a horsey!" It isn't. We'll just call it "springy", which it is, and let her figure out that it looks like a horse after she's seen some photos/real horses. Why? So as to preserve the delight she'll get from discovering the likeness herself.

Montessori eyebrow-raisers in my environment:

Mirrors. Mirrors are a subject of hot debate in Montessori infant culture. Those in favor assert that the mirror allows the child to see her own realistic image, and realistic images of other people present. Those opposed say that the mirror image is complicated and confusing--like the rattle with the moving parts inside and out of view--and should be left out as a deceptive element. Personally, I love mirrors, my house is full of them, they brighten and enlarge small spaces of which I have plenty, and I am including them.

Bright colors. Strict adherence to the Montessori infant-environment-design-code requires that all colors be neutral, so as not to overstimulate the new baby, who's got enough to process as it is without the color riot. I have tried to restrain myself, painting the rooms a rather mellow shade of yellow, but I do have a red rocking chair, red cubby storage, and a bright-stripey rug in her bedroom. It's still pretty austere.

The red rocking chair. Strictly speaking, Montessori gurus do not advocate rocking, bouncing or swinging by human hands any more than by mechanical means. It is said to distract the baby from its chosen work (usually screaming its head off, in my experience). After all that discussion about crying and soothing, I've decided that this is hogwash and I will rock my baby in my own arms to soothe her, but I'll try not to rock her all the way to sleep. That's for another post. The rocker gets in by being my contraption, not hers.

Slings and carriers. Same principle. Baby can't control it, baby can't get in and out of the carrier on her own. I object on the same grounds. It's a device to help me use my own body to soothe the baby. Plus, I love wearing her. (Lalala, I can't hear you, Magda Gerber!)

The co-sleeper. It's not exactly co-bedding, but almost, which is not forbidden, but sort of frowned upon. Well, go ahead and frown. When she stops nursing at night and starts rolling over a lot, I'll put her in the floor bed at night.

The Product:

Nuvy's Sleep Room

Nuvy's Play Room

Results so far: So far what seems to happen is that I am humanly responsible for all the forbidden mechanical activities and entertainments, by virtue of my unwillingness to let her cry (Ok, I almost got through the whole thing without talking about crying). I swing, bounce, carry, lull, and make noises and movements for the purpose of her entertainment. Thusly, I have sort of justified the invention of all the conveniences I shun. Of course today, she finally found her thumb, and has spent much of the day in her spare environment, sucking it with relish while gazing at the muted walls or the patterned bandanna she is given to play with. All in all, a pleasant start.

Ineffable Infancy

2006-02-12T01:51:00.000-05:00

Ineffable Infancy: Magda Gerber and the Existential Baby

One last brain-twister regarding crying, and I promise I'll talk about something else. I re-read some sections on crying in Magda Gerber's Your Self-Confident Baby, and found a sort of black hole of the unknowable baby-mind waiting for me that I had simply overlooked before Nuvy came.

First of all, Gerber makes the rather weird assertion that, since a baby's language is crying (this is one of the few points over which she and Sears might not come to blows), a (fed, dry, etc.) baby should never be stopped from crying. Seriously. Here's the quote:

I feel a baby should never be told not to cry
or be distracted from crying, even if listening to it is difficult for the
parent. I often say to parents that if you tell your child not to cry, you'd
better set aside lots of money to send her to Primal Scream Therapy when she
grows up. People go to therapy because they no longer trust how they feel,
thinking, "I feel desperate, but maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm okay after
all."

Now, before I had my own baby, I read this passage without even a pause to ponder how deeply crackpot this advice might sound to a parent. Nothing but red onions will bring me to tears faster than not being able to comfort (read: quiet) my sweet little shrieking baby. I have heard a lot of babies, and have not had too much difficulty keeping my head around other people's crying children, but it's against my every instinct to sit over my own child and watch her cry without doing anything. I mean, I can do it, but I almost have to breathe through it as if I were in labor again--careful not to make any "shh" breaths that might be misinterpreted as a suggestion that the baby cut short her screaming jag.

Gerber has clearly heard this argument before. She goes on:

Parents have asked me, if crying is a
child's language, isn't she telling us to do something? My
answer is, not necessarily. It's different from when a grown-up
cries. It's the baby's mode of self-expression. Since an infant
cannot talk, crying is the only way she can express her feelings or
discomfort. Babies also cry to discharge energy. They don't run and
play as older children do.

So here we have a child who is using a mode of expression that, for an adult, indicates extreme negative emotion, but Gerber seems to assert that, since the child's expression is not codified according to learned meaning, her emotional state is unknowable to us. Therefore, we should not project our adult meaning onto the gesture the child is making--one of a very limited repertoire available to a very young infant. Lets assume she's not hungry, wet, sick or injured. Perhaps some crying doesn't indicate discomfort at all. She could be expressing anything, or nothing in particular--just letting off a little steam, or maybe conducting a little linguistic experiment by testing the parent's reaction.

But then, if we posit that expression is integral to experience, and the child has only two means of expression, crying or not, does that mean the child only experiences contentment or despair, and that nuances of expression become apparent alongside nuances of experience? Well, that doesn't seem so far fetched, does it? And supposing we do accept that, does it get us anywhere?

It's easy to fall off that particular precipice in either direction. You could say that, if the child is in apparent despair, with no apparent reason, you must treat it as real despair and relieve it in any way possible, trusting that experience and expression will become more modulated with time. I would call this "Attachment Parenting" or "Searsism". Alternatively, you could say that, if the child expresses despair in a situation that doesn't seem to call for despair, you must modulate your response in order to allow the child to discover nuances of experience and expression authentically. I would call this "RIE Parenting" or "Gerberism".

Either way we get to the same place, right? Listen to your child's unintelligible signals. Once you've interpreted those signals, respond to them according to our very-well-researched model. Otherwise you run the risk of raising a very damaged individual.

Great. Thanks. I should have gone into the head-shrinking business.

The Shutdown Syndrome

2006-02-02T16:32:00.000-05:00

The Shutdown Syndrome: Sears Sucker-Punches the Maternal Guilt Complex

Welcome back to the crying game! To continue our discussion, I found an anecdote at askdrsears.com that I found worthy of deconstruction. Anyone care to join me?

Dr. Sears writes:

Heather had previously been a happy baby, thriving on a full dose of attachment parenting...The whole family was thriving and this style of parenting was working for them. Well-meaning friends convinced these parents that they were spoiling their baby, that she was manipulating them, and that Heather would grow up to be a clingy, dependent child.

Parents lost trust...They let Heather cry herself to sleep, scheduled her feedings, and for fear of spoiling, they didn't carry her as much... Heather went from being happy and interactive to sad and withdrawn. Her weight leveled off, and she went from the top of the growth chart to the bottom. Heather was no longer thriving, and neither were her parents.

Baby lost trust. After two months of no growth, Heather was labeled by her doctor "failure to thrive" and was about to undergo an extensive medical exam. When the parents consulted me, I diagnosed the shutdown syndrome...They unknowingly pulled the attachment plug on Heather, and the connection that had caused her to thrive was gone.

Ok. I can picture this situation. Everybody is telling you how to handle your perfectly happy, well adjusted child. You make some ill-advised changes based on half-assed renderings of child-rearing wisdom from people you didn't agree with to begin with, your new grudgingly-imposed restrictions work for no one. Everybody loses. But seriously, how far did these people go? Failure to thrive? Sad and withdrawn? Top to the bottom of the growth chart? Pretty dramatically not good. Did they lock her in her room and pass her a bottle through a slot in the door every four hours?

Where I get hung up is with the "shutdown syndrome" part. It's not that I don't think emotional deprivation has physiological consequences, that's been shown everywhere. It's just that a thing like "shutdown syndrome" gets sketchy when the first symptom of it is the child not crying--unthinkable failure masquerading as success. Ouch.

To illustrate, here's Sears again:

Babies thrive when nurtured. We believe every baby has a critical level of need for touch and nurturing in order to thrive...We believe that babies have the ability to teach their parents what level of parenting they need. It's up to the parents to listen, and it's up to professionals to support the parents' confidence and not undermine it by advising a more distant style of parenting, such as "let your baby cry-it-out" or "you've got to put him down more."

True, who would argue against the idea that children need to be nurtured. You can't walk away from a newborn and expect her to sleep through the night. If you have one, your whole being forces you out of bed in the middle of the night to give that baby the physical and emotional nurture she needs. However, are we to equate nurture with shutting the baby up no matter what it takes? Binkies? Wind-up-swings? All-night car rides? Car seat on the washing machine? Is it OK to tend the child's physical needs, and then just hold her or sit beside her through the hurt we can't solve for her? Supposing we succeed! And if we do, what do we do with the next statement?

Babies who are "trained" not to express their needs may appear to be docile, compliant, or "good" babies. Yet, these babies could be depressed babies who are shutting down the expression of their needs. They may become children who don't speak up to get their needs met and eventually become the highest-need adults.

Now this is just what the Maternal Guilt Complex needed. I mean, are we talking walk-don't-run trained, wind-down-a-few-minutes trained or Romanian-orphanage trained? Supposing I follow my mother's advice and do everything I would normally do (rock, sing, walk the floor) then put the baby down and go away for a few minutes. What if the baby actually stops crying? How can I tell if my baby is content or depressed? Do I get to blame my mother for making me a "high-needs adult?" Where are the data on high-needs adults?

Actually, lets construct some data. If there are any readers lurking out there who think they could classify themselves as either "high-needs" or "low-needs" adults, go call your mom and ask her what she did with you when you cried as a baby, then let us know on the comment board. We'll compile the data and see what we get!

The Crying Game

2006-02-02T01:23:00.000-05:00

The Crying Game: Magda Gerber and Dr. Sears Face Off

Welcome to the philosophical paradox of crying babies. Beyond the obvious reparable (or irreparable) reasons, nobody knows why babies cry, and nobody can keep them from crying from time to time, yet all the experts agree that this no-apparent-reason crying is a meaningful, authentic form of communication that must be honored, interpreted and responded to by the parent. Experts further agree that if you follow the advice of the wrong expert, you will do irreparable damage to your future relationship with your child, and to your child's self-esteem as she grows up.

In other words: everyone knows you can't win, but nobody can call off the game, and just to keep it interesting--loser gets a kid who's scarred for life. Well, I protest! I will sit down and extemporize while my fussy baby yells herself purple in my helpless, sagging arms. I will do this because nothing I do will do any damn good anyhow. I might even wear my iPod while I type!

For the benefit of grannies, childless people, and other readers who are less baby-obsessed than I am, I will explain who these people are. If you have a young infant you probably already know, so skip the next bit and go attend your screaming baby. If you're pregnant, go take a nap and when you wake up, get your doc to write you up a scrip for some Librium. Trust me. It's for later.

In the white corner, wearing yellow trunks: Magda Gerber, founder of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), disciple of Dr. Emmi Pickler, who did a lot of research with some very nice Hungarian orphans, and author of Your Self-Confident Baby, which is required reading for Montessori infant-types. Magda would like for you to respect your child's individual competence as separate from you. She would have you respect her "need to cry" by letting it be "ok" for her to cry sometimes. She cautions against rocking, swinging, bouncing, walking the floor, cars and washing machines, and other physical stimulation methods of baby soothing, as they intrude on the baby's natural ability to work through its newfound emotions. She would have you go to the baby's bed, talk to the baby, maybe lay a hand on the baby's tummy, and "be present" while the baby screams its head off.

In the red corner, wearing blue trunks: Dr. Sears (actually, now there are three--Dad and two sons), Attachment Parenting (AP) guru. Check out the whole AP philosophy at www.askdrsears.com. Dr. Sears would probably like to eat Magda Gerber alive. He cautions against "letting your baby cry-it-out" as this is against almost every parent's natural instinct toward her child, and will damage the trust bond between parent and child, cause easy babies to become apathetic (i.e. quiet), and difficult babies to become totally unglued (i.e. disturbingly noisy). He advocates bouncing, swinging, "baby dancing", walking the floor, pacifiers, and pretty much anything you have to do to soothe (i.e. shut up) the baby, and he advocates doing this for as long as it takes. No "crying it out" ever. He does make a certain allowance for colic, and at some point in the future, moving from being a "yes mom" to a "yes-and-no mom", though he does not specify when or exactly what the hell that means.

And so I'm...Stuck in the middle with you.

Let's all digest while I settle in for the 2:30am feeding. Anyone have upfront opinions before the main event?

On Demand Nursing and the Pacifier

2006-01-30T15:46:00.000-05:00

"On Demand" Nursing and the Pacifier: Which One Am I?

Nuvy is now about a month old and we are, right on schedule, experiencing "periods of fussiness" which I would characterize as the clean, recently fed child screaming her fool head off for God knows what reason. Now there are many professional and lay opinions in the comfort/cry-it-out debate, and I am trying very very hard to avoid what I think is a poor compromise: cry it out until I can't take it anymore, then I'll pick you up.

If you don't have kids, let me tell you. This is way harder than you think. If you do, well, then you know what I'm talking about.

They say that, by now, I should be able to distinguish the wet cry from the hungry cry from the just-a-little-whiny cry. Of course, in the course of a cry-it-out, it always comes down to the hungry cry. She may be young, but she's not stupid. She knows what cry will get me to pick her up, even if the clock tells me she can't possibly be hungry, she wets and soils 15 diapers a day, and her little thighs are so fat and dimply I could just eat them up.

So when should I feed her? The AAP breastfeeding manual answers "as often as she's willing." Ok. Are you kidding? I have never seen this child turn down a lunch ticket. She will nurse until she's literally overflowing--not swallowing the last mouthful, but letting it run down her cheek, still hanging on. The AAP further states that "sucking is comforting to infants, and they may require more sucking time than feeding time allows...so unless you are strongly opposed to pacifiers, offer your child one."

Well, guess what?

I'm strongly opposed to pacifiers. They're gross, they get dropped, lost, you eventually have to take them away, and they say "Put a sock in it!" very clearly not only to the child, but to everyone else you meet. Everyone tells me that this is "so first-time-mommy", which may be true, but I maintain. I can hang on until she finds her thumb. I swear I can.

Of course, I have a bag in the closet full of brand-new binkies, sort of like an emergency carton of cigarettes after you quit smoking, you know, just in case I turn out to be spineless. But I digress.

So if I choose to quiet the baby by nursing "whenever she's willing", have I made myself a human pacifier? Am I saying "put a sock in it" just as clearly as if I popped a binky in her mouth, and if so, why fight it? Alternatively, can she really be this hungry? Does she have worms or is she playing me for a chump? Am I really "honoring her feelings" by letting her scream?

Follow the child. Follow the child.

It seems like following the newborn child is a little like following the ghost of christmas future. It doesn't say anything intelligible, just makes funny noises and mysterious gestures.

The Daddy Factor

2006-01-28T23:37:00.000-05:00

The Daddy Factor: Can The Infant Care Gurus Stand Up to Paternal Instinct?

Kent is a natural daddy. He's a big boy. He can stand a little screaming-meemie time, is able to enjoy changing diapers, sings to the baby with abandon, catalogs her every breath in pictures and video, carries her around everywhere in his Baby Bjorn, and can't wait to show her off to all his friends and colleagues. He's the daddy for the new millenium. Sensitive, loving, involved, and working hard to make it a fifty/fifty, two-parent show.

So, can my Montessori Baby experiment survive him?

The Montessori Baby is "respected" above all. The gurus teach us how to demonstrate respect for the baby by how we touch and talk to her--mostly by giving her what is, to many parents' natural instincts, way too much personal space. We, the Montessori Baby club, speak to the baby in a natural, adult tone of voice, tell the baby what we're going to do before we do it (as in "I'm going to pick you up now." or "I'm going to put this fresh diaper under your bottom, can you help me by lifting your legs?"), and say meaningful, true, and respectful things to the baby, as if she could understand our every word--because you never know when she will.

We move slowly around the baby, speak softly, carry her "respectfully" and only sometimes, not constantly. We give the baby "space" in which to move her body independently. We give the baby time and loving support in working through her feelings (i.e. we sometimes let her cry) We watch her and broadcast her accomplishments back to her in a calm, not-too-impressed voice.

In other words, we are no damned fun at all.

Kent often handles Nuvy, our daughter, as you would a cute, scruffy dog. He raises her high in the air, then brings her very close to his face and wiggles her a little, saying in that puppy-talk voice, "Who's just the most perfect f-ing thing?", or "I love you SO MUCH, you f-ing little sh-t!" He bounces her and swings her to quiet her, dances her around the house, and generally has such fun playing with her that I can't bear to tell him that he's outside my experimental protocols.

I have a feeling it would sound like a big load of crap to him. He might be right.

Don't get me wrong. I am a true believer. I have drunk the Montessori Kool-aid. The kids I've seen respond beautifully to the methods, the baby-groups are unquestionably successful. So why can't I insist on his "respectful handling" of our child? I mean, it's impossible to tell if a one-month-old child "enjoys" one style over another, and that may not be relevant anyway. After all, don't we all "enjoy" ice cream over steamed broccoli, or a good movie over two hours at the gym? Does enjoyment make it better? Or am I some kind of sicko for "experimenting" on my own child by trying to raise her according to some wacky theory?

Will I lose my mind as I watch all my hard work in "respecting" my child come undone as she and her Daddy enjoy hours of natural, unschooled, scruffy-dog fun? Will I lighten up and give it a rest? Will she be orphaned after Daddy and I kill each other over disparate parenting strategies?

Stay tuned to find out.

Day Three: The First Big Goof

2006-01-28T00:44:00.000-05:00

Day Three: The First Big Goof--Following the Child Into Medical Hell

Never did a brand new mommy come home from the hospital with more confidence in her personal competence, knowledgeable support network, and careful preparation for the delicate work of caring for a new infant. I was unstoppable--ready to take my brand-new baby out on the open road.

And in for a hell of a ride.

Now the Montessori mantra is "Follow the child. Follow the child." So when everyone from the midwife to the pediatrician to the lactation consultant counseled me that newborn infants need to eat every two to three hours, I smiled politely and trusted my Montessori newborn to let me know when she was hungry. This was the first wrong turn on the road to nowhere good.

The first night passed without incident. She woke me up to eat twice, maybe three times but after all, who was counting? Follow the child. Follow the child. How sweet and perfect she was, and how not-very-hungry. So sleepy, and cried almost not at all. What a dream baby!

Next day, Mom and I spent the day dismantling the overdue Christmas tree and watching the perfect baby sleep the day away in her picture-perfect little basket. No mother could be as lucky or as perfectly competent as I. I continued to follow her lead and let her sleep, as she was clearly very sleepy. She slept for seven solid hours. When I did finally find the good sense to wake her up, she was jaundiced to her tender little umbilical stump, unable to stay awake for more than three minutes of nursing, and beginning to squeeze my mommy-insanity button. I called the pediatrician. You know, just to be on the safe side.

The pediatrician recommended we swing by a nighttime clinic or the ER, you know, just to be on the safe side. I was beginning to suspect that it was too soon to start following this particular child.

What I expected from the hospital experience was a few minutes under the bili-lights and a patronizing pat on the head for being a neurotic mom. What I got was three days in the joint with IV fluids and antibiotics through the scalp (the ER nursing staff managed to blow out every vein in both arms, both legs, and one side of her head trying to establish IV access) plus a lumbar puncture for my perfect little pigeon. This is apparently the standard protocol for "lethargy and sepsis ruleout" which is what they call anybody under 2 months of age who comes in with this set of symptoms. Imagine my surprise.

To my chagrin, several of the hospital staff, including one NICU nurse and an attending doc, reported having had just this delightful experience with their own first children. I learned little tricks like applying icy washcloths, blowing in the baby's face, and sundry other unpleasantries designed to keep a sleepy little one awake and sucking. Back on the outside, several more friends offered sympathy and their own little tricks for avoiding the apparently bonehead pitfall I had, in my infinite wisdom, walked right into.

Of course, she's just as perfect now as when she went in, only less yellow and more perforated...