“It was thoughtful of you to fetch grandfather’s cane for him. Some little boys would not have been so kind.”
“You must not scream and kick when you are angry. It is wrong!”
We might say in contrast; we do, ordinarily, say:
“You must share because I wish you to.”
“You must be kind because the world likes gentlemen.”
“You mustn’t scream and kick, because you give me a headache and mar my furniture.”
Such commands are quite ineffectual, because they call the child’s attention to us and not to his own acts. But patiently and effectually to see that the Little Chap knows the difference between good and evil and practices good instead of evil—this gives him a chance to train and strengthen his conscience sense and forms the beginnings of his moral life.
“But how shall I give my child an idea of God?” thousands of thinking parents object.
It isn’t necessary to give the idea of God to your child. Dr. Montessori tells us that every child has it.
We think that we must do so much teaching in order to educate the little child’s mind, or his soul. In fact we need to do less teaching than watching, less pruning than watering. After observing our little ones’ spontaneous manifestations of love and giving these a chance to increase, and meeting them with encouragement after conscientiously pointing out to them the good and the evil of life and insisting that they choose the good and reject the evil—we discover a miracle. God comes to the little ones.