A Montessori Mother

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The child in the Casa dei Bambini advances from one scientifically graded stage of mental self-control to the next, from the buttoning-frames to the geometric insets, from these to their use in drawing and the control of the pencil, and then on into the mastery of the alphabet, always with a greater and greater control of the processes of his mind.

The control of the processes of his body are learned in the same analyzed, gradual progression from the easy to the difficult. He learns in the “lesson of silence” how to do nothing with his body, an accomplishment which his fidgety elders have never acquired; he learns in all the sensory exercises the complete control of his five servants, his senses; and in moving freely about the furniture suited to his size, in handling things small enough for him to manage, in transferring objects from one place to another, he learns how to go deftly through all the ordinary operations of everyday life.

This physical adroitness has a vitally close relation to discipline of all sorts. When we say to the average, untrained, muscularly uncontrolled child of four, “Now do sit still for a while!” we are making a request about as reasonable as though we cried, “Do stand on your head!” And then we shake him or reprove him for not obeying what is for him an impossible command. By so doing we start in his mind the habit, both of not obeying and of being punished for it; and as Nature is exuberant in her protective devices, he very soon grows a fine mental callous over his capacity for remorse at not obeying. The effort required to accede to our request is entirely too great for him, even if he wholly understands what we wish, which is often doubtful. And because he often has been forced to disobey a command to do something impossible, he falls into the way of disobeying a command which is within his powers. The Montessori training makes every impassioned attempt to teach a child exactly how to do a thing before he is requested to do it.

We give a child the enormously compendious command, “Don’t be so careless!” without reflecting that it is about as useful and specific an exhortation as if one should cry to us, “Do be more virtuous!” Dr. Montessori is continually admonishing us to use our grown-up brains to analyze into its component parts the child’s carelessness, so that, part by part, it can be corrected. Suppose that it has manifested itself (as it not infrequently does) by a reckless plunge across the room, carrying a plateful of cookies which have most of them fallen to the floor by the end of the trip. Almost without exception, what we all cry impatiently to a child, even to a very little child, under those circumstances, is “For mercy’s sake, do look at what you’re doing!” which is, considered at all analytically, exactly what it is our business as his leaders and guides in the world to do for him.

A little reflection on the subject makes us realize, in spite of the sharpness of our reproof to him, that he takes no pleasure in spilling the cookies and falling over the chairs; that is, that he had no set purpose to do this, instead of walking correctly across the room and setting the plate down on the table. The question we should ask ourselves, is obviously, “Why then, did he do all those troublesome and careless things?” Obviously because we were requiring him to go through a complicated process, the separate parts of which he has not mastered; as though a musician should command us to play the chromatic scale of D minor, and then blame us for the resultant discord. He should have taught us a multitude of things before requiring such a complicated achievement,—how to hold our fingers over the piano-keys, how to read music, how to play simpler scales.

The child with the cookie-plate needs, in the first place, a course of exercises in learning to walk in a straight line directly to the spot where he means to go, exercises continued until this process becomes automatic, so that the greatest haste on his part will not send him reeling about as most children (and a considerable number of their ill-trained elders) do when they undertake to move from one side of the room to another.

How can he learn to do this? Dr. Montessori suggests drawing a chalk-line on the floor and having the children play the “game” (either with or without music) of trying to walk along it without stepping off. I myself, remembering the forbidden joys of my reckless childhood in walking the top-rail of a fence, have tried the expedient of providing a less dangerous top-rail laid flat on the ground. Did any healthy child ever need more than one chance to walk along railway tracks? The objection in the past to these exercises has been that they were connected with something dangerous and undesirable. I do not blame my parents for forbidding me to try to balance myself either on the top-rail of a fence or on a railway track. Both of these were highly risky diversions. But it does seem odd that neither they nor I ever thought of providing, in some safe form, the exercises in equilibrium so violently craved by all healthy children. A narrow board, or length of so-called “two-by-four” studding, laid on the ground, furnishes a diversion as endlessly entertaining for a child of three as the most dangerously high fence-rail for an older child, and the never-failing zest with which a little child practises balancing himself on this narrow “sidewalk” is a proof that the exercise is one for which he unconsciously felt a need.

Another trick of equilibrium, which is hard for a little child, is to lift one foot from the floor and perform any action without falling over. If he is provided with a loose rope-end, hanging where he can easily reach it, his parent and guardian can suggest any number of entertaining things to do while his equilibrium is assured by his grasp on the rope. My experience has been that one suggestion is enough. The child’s invention does the rest. Another exercise which is of great benefit for very little children is to walk backwards, a process which needs no more gymnastic apparatus than a helping hand from father or mother, an apparatus which is equally effective in teaching a young child the fascinating game of crossing one foot over the other without falling down.

Does all this physical training of tiny children seem too remote from the older child who spilled the cookies? He stands at the end of the road over which the balancing, backward-walking, highly entertained three-year-old is advancing.

Although it is not mentioned in any Montessori suggestions I have seen (possibly because of the difficulty of managing it in a schoolroom), it occurred to me one day that water is a neglected but very valuable factor in training a little child to accuracy of muscular movement. This reflection occurred to me just after I had instinctively led away a little child from a basin of water in which I had “caught her” dabbling her hands. Making a desperate effort to put into practice my new resolution to question myself sharply each time that I denied a child any activity he seemed to desire, I perceived that in this case, as so often, I was acting traditionally, without considering the essential character of the situation. I could not, of course, allow the child to dabble in that basin of water, there, because she would be apt to spatter it on the floor and to get her clothes wet. But on that warm summer day, why could I not set her outdoors on the grass, with a bit of oilcloth girded about her waist so that she should not spoil her dress? Her evident interest in the water was an indication of a natural force which it might be possible to utilize to give her some muscular training which would entertain her at the same time. When I really came to think about it, there is nothing inherently wicked in playing in water.