Normalization is a term that Montessori teachers exhaust at the beginning of each school year.
“The children are normalizing.”
“Normalization is a delicate process.”
“We’re almost normalized.”
But what is normalization?
Dr. Montessori described normalization in this way: “And in these qualities of the child, she sees man as he ought to be: the worker who never tires, because what drives him on is perennial enthusiasm. She sees one who seeks out the greatest efforts because his constant aspiration is to make himself superior to difficulties; he is a person who really tries to help the weak, because in his heart there is the true charity which knows what is meant by respect for others, and that respect for a person’s spiritual efforts is the water that nourishes the roots of his soul. In the possession of these characteristics, she will recognize the true child, who is father of the true man.” (p. 257).
These are some of the faces of ‘normalization.’ The children are demonstrating independence, perseverance, repetition, and concentration to the exclusion of all the sights, sounds, sensations, and activity around them, because they have a greater task at hand. The children are constructing their own learning; they are shaping their own personalities; and they are building the adults that they are yet to become.
Anika places a large pink cube atop a small pink cube and the cubes fall. She removes the large cube and chooses another somewhat smaller cube. This cube also falls. She removes the small cube and replaces it with a larger cube. She places the smaller cube atop and, later, the smallest cube at the top of the tower. She sits back, observes her balanced tower, and her eyes sparkle as she smiles. one who seeks out the greatest efforts because his constant aspiration is to make himself superior to difficulties; he is a person who really tries to help the weak, because in his heart there is the true charity which knows what is meant by respect for others, and that respect for a person’s spiritual
To the onlooker, it appears that the children are cleaning, building, and working on skills. They appear to be manipulating letters, numbers, and tablets of color. They carry long red rods, stack pink cubes, and lug heavy brown pieces of wood to awaiting throw rugs. These observations are accurate; however, the process of normalization involves a great many skills, some that are visible and some that are less obvious. These children (and others like them) are learning, growing, and developing in a specially prepared environment that fosters the love of activity, concentration, self-discipline, and sociability. This process is facilitated by a sensitive adult, who has prepared the environment with order, consistency, warmth, and the removal of obstacles that could prevent this development.
Martin enters his classroom, says hello to a few friends, and walks directly to the shelf that contains the materials necessary for the parts of the tree puzzle. First he retrieves and unrolls his rug with attention to its position and smoothness. Then he gathers his puzzle and places it on the rug. He builds, disassembles and rebuilds his puzzle without fatigue, but with joyful energy.
Dr. Montessori’s discovery of the “secret of the child,” i.e., their hidden potential, had yet to be revealed and understood by adults. Dr. Montessori’s skills in observation and the circumstances that placed her in the company of children in need of a place to call their own (the slums of San Lorenzo, Rome) found a fertile place for the revelation to occur. She shared with her adult students at the second Indian Montessori training course, that the children came “undernourished, dirty, and uneducated.” “And these very small children, from three to six, did wonderful things. They had wonderful revelations. All these revelations of how to learn to write and to read by themselves at such a young age (and in the midst of joy) resulted in a transformation of their character.”
Liam is building the triangles with deep concentration. Somewhere in the room a tray falls, a child coughs, and an adult walks past. Outdoors a horn sounds and a truck rumbles past. Meanwhile, he continues the assembly of the triangles, the triangles that he has constructed many times before, without interruption.
Then and today, children enter Montessori settings with capabilities that suit them for the work and activity they will encounter. They bring bodies designed for purposeful movement, coordination, grace, and stamina. Their hands and senses serve them by allowing them to interact with and come to experience their environments. They are equipped with a mind that absorbs impressions from all around them; a mind that organizes, problem solves, adapts, remembers, is curious, is capable of long periods of attention and concentrates with little effort and without fatigue. When the body and the mind are satisfied, the true character of children is disclosed. They are peaceful, joyful, sociable, helpful, self-disciplined, satisfied, and their inquisitive and loving souls are made evident. ¢
Montessori, M. and Claremont, C. A. (2019). The Absorbent Mind. Montessori-Pierson Publishing Company.
Dorothy Harman is an AMS Early Childhood credentialed Montessori guide. She holds a BA in Early Childhood Education and a M. Ed in Curriculum and Instruction with an Emphasis in Creative Arts. Dorothy Harman serves as a Montessori consultant and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nebraska- Kearney. She serves as a Field Consultant for the Center for Guided Montessori Studies and was a 2018 recipient of an AMS Peace Seed Grant. She is the author of Intentional Connections: A Practical Guide to Parent Engagement in Early Childhood and Lower Elementary Classrooms, published through Parent Child Press.
Do you feel like you talk too much about your child’s behavior? Are you constantly repeating your requests and explaining things your children already understand? Joe Newman, the author of “Raising Lions” will talk about how replacing our explanations and lectures with action boundaries, will get better behavior from our kids and will raise those kids into adults who are both confident about themselves and connected to other’s feelings and needs.
All classroom teachers have had experiences with children who have difficulty in school; often, it’s unclear why. We might try a number of things and still find frustration. Often, the students clearly want to do well and evince great potential, but their difficulties or challenges aren’t attributable to any sort of obvious learning disability or special need.
In these elusive cases, it is important to consider that there may be impediments to executive functioning, the set of key skills that we use every day in our daily lives, our learning, our work, and in any sort of performance.
We also regularly work with young people who seem to “get it.” They are attentive, seem to follow our lessons, and appear to understand essential concepts embedded in our lessons. In these cases, it is important to consider that these students may have greater capability in the key areas of executive functioning.
Executive functioning is key to our ability to navigate the world.
Simply stated, executive functioning is a set of essential mental skills that we employ at all ages, from early childhood through adulthood. Three of these functions, possibly the most important, are: working memory; cognitive flexibility; and inhibition control.
Working memory refers to our everyday memory, our use of it, and our ability to access it. Cognitive flexibility is adaptable, manageable, and responsive thinking. Inhibition control refers to the willpower that one manifests over one’s own actions, such as restraint, self-control, and discretion.
I cannot overstate how important these three skills are. They underlie most successful behaviors in school and, indeed, our entire professional adult life. Executive functions make possible a large number of intellectual and psychological achievements, including: advanced thinking, or mentally playing with ideas; careful planning, or taking time before acting or performing; flexibility, or meeting unexpected or unanticipated challenges; perseverance, or resisting temptation and developing stick-to-itiveness and maintaining focus.
The good news is that these skills or abilities can be nurtured, developed, and refined, so that even if one or more of them is at a less-than-ideal level, they can be improved and maintained. In short, they can be taught in our classrooms in a way that promotes their growth and utility. How? We can do this by using, quite possibly, the most ancient teaching technique: storytelling.
Storytelling has a unique relationship to each of these skills: it directly addresses and encourages working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition control. Let’s look at each one and see how storytelling can benefit and support its growth.
Whenever we need to remember something important, such as our list for the supermarket, where we parked our car, a friend’s phone number, or a set of instructions for any task, we rely on working memory. Working memory is simply the ability to hold information in one’s mind over a brief period of time and being able to apply that information to various scenarios.
Most neuroscientists agree that there is some limitation to the capacity for working memory, although that limitation (and whether it can be adjusted) is up for debate.
Of course, memories do get lost or diluted over time, but there are some ways to slow or even stop that process.
One way to improve working memory is what researchers call maintenance rehearsal, or simply repeating information mentally without regard to its significance or meaning. An example might be going over and over in one’s mind the exact items on a grocery list in the hope that nothing will be forgotten. This method may be used productively, though with limited utility, in school settings: memorizing arithmetic fact tables; conjugating verbs; or drilling spelling lists and foreign language vocabulary.
A second approach is what researchers call elaborative rehearsal: recognizing some significance or meaning about certain information, then associating it with other information. Mnemonic devices fall into this category, as do any associations or relationships that can be established among and between various ideas, facts, or procedures. An interesting note is that researchers believe that elaborative rehearsal can help move information from working memory into long-term memory. This makes any experience that creates associations especially valuable for learners. Storytelling offers particular and substantial opportunities for elaborative rehearsal. First of all, stories often relate immediate impressions or bits of information to larger pictures which can, in turn, be applied to actual life situations. For example, who can forget the image of the grumbling fox stomping off, muttering “Sour Grapes!” in Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Grapes? Who can avoid applying the story’s implicit insights to everyday situations?
Stories create an image repertoire that is accessible through working memory and can be applied to situations both familiar and unanticipated. After hearing the story of the Four Strange Brothers from The Deep Well of Time, children have come to me years later still characterizing the four arithmetic operations as brothers and using the images in that story as mental hooks which have been translated into long-term memory.
One of the most important characteristics of classroom storytelling is repetition, which aids listeners in not only following the story but developing and utilizing the working memory to learn the story themselves. The repetition sets up what amounts to a series of mental guideposts that children can (and do!) follow in re-telling the story.
There are two forms of repetition that are common in storytelling: pattern repetition and word or phrase repetition.
Pattern repetition is the reiteration of specific behaviors, situations, or ways of communicating or acting. Regularly repeated patterns frequent the plots of many stories and folktales the world over. Well known examples are The Little Red Hen or Stone Soup. Another example is in the descriptions of each character in The Four Strange Brothers. The repeated patterns in these stories and others like them provide a well-defined structural framework for working memory.
One of the most common pattern repetitions in traditional storytelling is the “rule of three.” This refers to a pattern in which there are three characters or three situations—the first two somehow fail, but the third is successful, however unlikely it may seem. The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, and the Three Bears, and The Fool of The World (a Russian folktale) all employ the rule of three. Another example is my story Measuring the Farm, in The Deep Well of Time.
Becoming familiar with the rule of three encourages the listener to make predictions based on the unfolding three-part storyline. This involves working memory on several levels. Memory usage is encouraged by the three-part structure, and it is also rewarded when that structure is revealed to be a unifying plot element, as had been anticipated. This involves the listener in making predictions, creating a hypothesis of what will unfold. “Minds exist to predict what will happen next. They mine the present for clues they refine with help from the past…to anticipate the immediate future.” (Boyd, page 134).
The second form of repetition used in stories is direct word or phrase repetition. This refers to a specific pattern of words literally and exactly repeated. In the opening moments of a story, these words or phrases become immediately recognizable to the listeners. The children may even chant along, “Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”
In The Deep Well of Time, an example of specific word patterning occurs in The Four Strange Brothers. Recalling these specific passages can sometimes be enhanced by being written in a rhythmic or poetic format.
The gift of the memorable is one of the key benefits of storytelling that I introduced in The Deep Well of Time. The gift of the memorable refers to the presentation of stories or lessons, or even components of them—like striking images, characters, or incidents—in such a way as to facilitate children’s recall, even many years later. This concept exemplifies an important way that more constricted short-term working memory moves into more stable, long-term memory. By using stories, teachers can consciously and intentionally create memorable moments in their classrooms. These moments may well be recorded in a child’s memory for years to come.
Orally told stories are rich with images, characters, and plot devices, as well as patterns. These all have the capacity to stand out and find a special place in children’s memories. These memories are of a specific kind called episodic memories. Episodic memory records particular events that a child experiences. It can be linked to a specific place or time that essentially ‘grounds’ the incident or image.
These episodic memories are not always related to actual events in the child’s life: they are just as often based on events, places, people, or times that are experienced vicariously—through stories. This is how we may remember the evil queen in Snow White reciting “Mirror, mirror on the wall…,” the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, or Cinderella’s glass slipper. These story-based images are recorded in episodic memory.1
For children to follow a story and then later discuss and comment on its content and meaning is oral comprehension, an important precursor to any form of reading or literary comprehension. Oral comprehension clearly requires working memory. Listening to stories, discussing them, and using them as bases for comprehension exercises also develops episodic working memory.
In the same way, when children use those orally told stories as launching pads to make up their own stories, orally and in writing, working memory is required. There may be no other activity in the classroom which has so many applications to working memory as stories and all that goes with them: storytelling; story absorption; acting out stories; retelling stories; and writing story-based compositions.
Cognitive Flexibility
The second major pillar of executive functioning is cognitive flexibility: the ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts or to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. It includes: mentally rearranging; reevaluating, and integrating a variety of ideas and images, many of them new or unusual, as well as sometimes challenging preconceived notions. The term also applies to our ability to consider or adopt alternative approaches, solutions, or courses of action.
One of the essential characteristics of cognitive flexibility is the ability to think in images, archetypes, representations, and metaphors – “out of the box” thinking. This flexibility allows us to hold in our minds an external “reality” like everyday life, while we simultaneously immerse ourselves in metaphorical worlds of fiction, fantasy, or make-believe
In the stories in The Deep Well of Time, geometric shapes get together to plan clubs based on their characteristics; numbers conspire to form groups; and triangles try to fit into rooms that just seem too small. In other stories, nouns and verbs have active discussions, cats tell tales, elves make materials, and strange images from dreams become reality. Metaphorical thinking, which is innately flexible, is at the heart of storytelling. The very essence of meta-phorical thinking is the manipulation of images and ideas, changing established rules of existence, and putting ideas, images, people, thoughts, animals, or supernatural beings into situations, which are unusual, impossible, or unheard of in the ‘real’ world. This is clearly thinking about multiple concepts simultaneously.
Story listeners and story participants develop the ability to appreciate these situations and use this sort of thinking in a variety of situations. Doing so keeps us fresh, or at least keeps our thinking fresh. This is essential, not only in young people but in adults as well. Magnusson and Brim (2014) draw attention to the fact that “Cognitive flexibility declines with age and often results in an inability to adapt to new situations and environments.”
I believe that this effect of age can be diminished, at least somewhat, by active story participation. Storytelling, story listening, participation, and story creation all demand and utilize cognitive flexibility. Just as all physical exercise maintains and increases fitness, ongoing exercise of metaphorical thinking and applied imagination can maintain and strengthen cognitive flexibility and “cognitive fitness.”
More, listeners to stories react emotionally as well as cognitively to the story. This dual response demands key components of cognitive flexibility: imagination, visualization, interpretation, personification, and identification. It means putting one’s imaginative self into the story and leaving one’s real, earthbound, strictly logical self behind. It may mean accepting what seems to be impossible and then examining the consequences.
Thinking only in straightforward patterns and within highly structured and rigid organization is simply not possible while being immersed in stories. Stories take us to a higher place. In support of this idea, I wrote in The Deep Well of Time (p.22) that,
As soon as words like “once upon a time” are uttered … children enter into what poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the “willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge, 1817, p. 174). This stimulates the motivation of a story listener to accept and enter into the world of a fictional or fantastical tale as if it were literally true, even while he or she fundamentally understands that it is not. Children in the elementary years relish this distinction, just as we adults do when we enjoy novels, theatre, and film.
Inhibition Control
The third of the three critical components of executive functioning is inhibitory (or inhibition) control, sometimes also called response inhibition. Inhibition control is the ability to put off gratification, to not require immediacy in response, or to avoid acting impulsively. It means not getting what one wants immediately but being able to wait patiently. Inhibition control suggests planning, forethought, and anticipation of responses or repercussions.
Inhibitory control involves being able to control one’s attention, behavior, thoughts, and/or emotions to override a strong internal predisposition or external lure; instead, to do what’s more appropriate or needed. Without inhibitory control, we would be at the mercy of impulses, old habits of thought or action (conditioned responses), and/ or stimuli in the environment that pull us this way or that. (Diamond, 2013, ¶ 1).
Inhibitory control is essential in social situations and is at the core of many traditional manners lessons, not to mention the “Grace and Courtesy” element of the Montessori classroom. It is an essential component of self-regulation in any setting; it prevents us from making fools of ourselves!
Problems with inhibition are seen at three levels (Brenitz, 2020): motor, attentional, and behavioral.
Attentional control issues appear as distractibility or difficulty paying attention. For example, during a lesson or while at work, a child is easily distracted by a sound outside, another child in the classroom, or even some innocuous object.
Poor control in motor behavior often manifests in overactive or uncontrolled movement. For example, certain children may not be able to control their movements during a presentation or lesson. In that case, a child may fidget, get up and wander around, or even roll about on the floor.
Behavioral control issues present as impulsive behavior that cannot be inhibited. It might include shouting, hitting, or bumping into another child.
One of the first things that story listeners need to master is control of their bodies, voices, and minds. They quickly learn not to shout out comments or questions in the midst of a story or to jump up and make physical gestures. Story appreciation means controlling one’s impulses for questions and responses until the story has been concluded. Discussion of the story not only requires cognitive flexibility but also develops inhibition control; one must avoid immediate and thoughtless responses to others that can damage or destroy the discussion process.
When I tell stories as a visitor, teaching artist, or artist-in-residence, I always explain to my young audience that I have two rules, and two rules only. First, they are to stay quiet. No questions, no hands up, no whispering. However, I do assure them that if they have questions, I will certainly address those questions immediately after the story.
The second rule is: Keep your hands and your bodies to yourselves. This means no touching, poking, or high-fiving.
Essentially, I am asking them to develop and exhibit inhibitory control. This kind of inhibition makes it possible for them to stay quiet and focused when a story is being told, even though they may want to say or do something.
Amazingly, these rules work. In classes that I have led, for toddlers through teens, the listeners almost invariably practice inhibition control. The only groups with whom I sometimes have problems are adult learners, but they, too, eventually practice control.
The reason my rules work is that stories are intrinsically rewarding. They are, by their very nature, so positive and engaging that students and other listeners want very much to hear what comes next and how it all turns out. They don’t want to be shut out of the remainder of the story because of an untoward word, action, or behavior. As a result, they learn, quite successfully, higher degrees of self-control. This also translates into a sort of shared group expectation of controlled behavior.
When these three elements (working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition control) are established, and in place, they are not limited to the storytelling and story listening context. In fact, once these skills are learned and mastered through stories and storytelling, they can be transferred to many other areas and contexts within the classroom and the school. They simply become habits of mind, regular, reinforcing tendencies that produce consistent, beneficial results.
This constitutes a strong argument for emphasizing storytelling in every area of the curriculum and throughout the school. It can be foundational in the development and support of executive functioning.
There are, of course, many other excellent reasons, discussed here and in many other articles, for stories to be told in schools of every sort and at every age level. However, every one of those other benefits is enhanced by working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition control. One of the wonders of storytelling is that it successfully develops and enhances these skills, intrinsically and joyfully rewarding the listener, the entire student population, and the storyteller as well.
1 Thank you to Ashley Darcy, Montessori teacher educator, for suggestions and valuable ideas on repetition and working memory. (Personal communication, November 21, 2020).
References
Boyd, B. (2009). On the origin of stories: Evolution, cognition, and fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Carroll, L. (1869). Alice’s adventures in wonderland. Boston: Lee and Shepard.
Coleridge, S. T. (1817, reprinted 1834). Biographia literaria. New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co.
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology Vol. 64: 135-168 (Volume publication date January 2013). First published online as a Review in Advance on September 27, 2012. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1146 annurev-psych-113011-143750
Dorer, M. (2016). The deep well of time:The transformative power of storytelling in the classroom. Santa Rosa, CA: Parent Child Press.
When working with Montessori teachers, we always start by asking them to list their current stressors. Inevitably, they share that children exhibit a high degree of disrespect, entitlement, and lack of self-regulation. Children don’t listen to adults. Teachers overwhelmingly agree that these behaviors are more frequent and blatant now than when they grew up or when they first started working with children. Teachers who’ve been in their profession for a while observe that schoolwide misbehavior seems more intense than in previous generations. They often ask: What happened to the good old days, when children respected adults? Where are all these behavioral issues coming from? Is it environmental? Is it parenting? Too much screen time?
The Culture Shift
Was there really such a thing as the good old days? We know that, since there have been children, there has been misbehavior; however, there have been some significant changes in society in the last fifty years that have impacted children. We believe that these changes provide an explanation for some of the differences that we are seeing in children’s behavior today; it can help us prepare the social-emotional environment in our classrooms to help compensate for outside factors beyond our control (e.g., video games, diet, materialism, entitlement, and child-centered homes where children decide what and where to eat, what to watch on TV, etc.). Fifty years ago, the world was rife with models of authoritarian leadership and submission. You could find examples at home, where dad’s word was final; in workplaces where the boss was the boss; and in schools where the teacher was considered a highly respected authority figure. In those good old days, there was cultural support for top-down (or vertical) leadership. Parents didn’t ‘advocate’ for their children. If a child was reprimanded at school or in his neighborhood, his parents were likely to take the adult’s word for what happened without much interest in what the child had to say. Neighbors could discipline each other’s children with the full blessing of the parents.
Through the rose-colored glasses of educators who grew up in an authoritarian culture, it may seem like authoritarian methods ‘worked,’ because children are remembered as being more compliant and obedient. On a tough day, compliant and obedient children might seem like water in the desert to a discouraged teacher. But what are the long-term results of demanding that children be compliant and obedient? Too often children become ‘approval junkies’ or ‘rebels without a cause, except when they need to prove, “You can’t make me!”
Montessori wrote, “No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child.”1 And while it may have seemed easier to require children to comply in an authoritarian culture, the result was the oppression of the child’s spirit. Oppression was the very thing that human rights advocates have been fighting against for decades. It is oppression that Montessori felt was the root cause of war.
At the turn of the last century, educational and psychological pioneers, such as Maria Montessori and Alfred Adler, were writing and lecturing about a radical idea: equality even for children (including equal rights to dignity and respect). While this idea would not meet much resistance today, it was considered counterculture at the time.
Permissiveness
During the 1960s and 1970s, human rights movements gained momentum. The idea that all people were worthy of dignity and respect gained wider acceptance in western cultures; however, this was a messy and arduous process, especially for parents and educators.
The rules were being rewritten; yet, parents and teachers did not yet have cultural support and access to respectful discipline tools to replace the old authoritarian methods. As a result, like most countercultural movements, the pendulum swung the other way, and permissive parenting and teaching became more common. We are still reeling from this pendulum swing today.
Soon, alternative or experimental parenting models gained traction. Especially in the home, yelling was replaced with discussion, bargaining, and negotiating. Spankings were replaced with time-outs. Punishments were replaced with rewards. Children were given more freedom and more choices—but without limits or responsibility. The authoritarian top-down model of parenting and teaching was replaced with permissiveness.
The problem with permissiveness, though, is that it is still top-down. It’s just that the roles are reversed. In the permissive model, the child is on top and the adult is on the bottom. As Maria Montessori wrote, “To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom.”2
Indulgence
Children today are exposed to a myriad of stimuli that vie for their attention. Children have more things, more entertainment, more recreational experiences, more toys, more media, more ‘educational’ experiences that deliver information without true interaction, more activities, more everything. Children are the center of the universe. They often decide what kind of meals are prepared at home and where the family should go when eating out. On the other hand, they are often not taught many real-world skills. In our frenzy for progress, we have inadvertently stolen opportunities for true human connection, discovery, and exploration.
Fewer Opportunities for Real Responsibility
We do not need children the way that we did up to the early part of the twentieth century. Children, generally, are no longer needed to make the farm or the household run on a day-to-day basis or to bring income into the home.
(Chip) grew up in a farming community in upstate New York. It was not uncommon for some of my classmates to have been up since before daylight doing chores to help keep the family farm going. Most twelve-year-olds who lived on working farms had tractor licenses. They didn’t spend their weekends playing soccer, taking dance lessons, or having play-dates. Those of us who didn’t live on a farm had paper routes, mowed lawns, worked in small shops, and had responsibilities at home. It was real work. It was real responsibility.
Real responsibility gave young people the opportunity to develop some incredible life skills. They knew that they were needed and that they were capable. They had the opportunity to develop practical life skills and qualities, such as resilience, perseverance, self-discipline, responsibility, and a strong work ethic. Children were needed but not usually respected or treated as equal in value to adults.
( Jane) grew up in a city; however, children were still expected to do chores, including scrubbing toilets. Having homework was not an acceptable excuse. And my parents didn’t help with homework; that was considered my responsibility. There wasn’t any pressure to get good grades to get into a good college. Most girls got married right out of high school and were expected to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. Fortunately, a wise mentor advised me to take one college class a semester so I would have a degree by the time my children were grown. Eleven years and five children later, I received my BA.
As the movement to value children gained momentum, we provided them fewer opportunities to truly feel needed. Today, most children don’t make their own lunches for school, and many don’t have chores. In the name of love, they are given too much and required to do too little. They develop an attitude of entitlement. In an effort to give children ‘the best,’ adults have robbed them of the opportunity to develop strong characters and to experience the sense of belonging (unconditional love) and significance (capability and responsibility) that comes with making a meaningful contribution.
Many people are drawn to the concept of ‘positive discipline,’ because they are against punishment and authoritarian methods of discipline. However, some ‘positive discipline’ followers mistakenly perceive that the best way to avoid authoritarian methods is to simply provide love. This can lead to permissiveness, because these parents are kind (to provide love) but are not firm (which helps children experience significance through learning skills for responsibility and capability).
You can give children love, but they need to develop responsibility. When parents don’t understand the importance of helping children develop responsibility, children often fall into the trap of pampering, which often leads to development of an ‘entitlement’ mentality. When parents understand the difference between belonging and significance (along with the importance of balancing both), they can help children develop the characteristics and life skills they need for successful living.
The Montessori curriculum is designed for children to develop a sense of significance through responsibility and capability. As you will soon see, a sense of belonging is created through the basic ‘positive discipline’ concept of ‘connection before correction’ and the involvement in daily class meetings to give and receive compliments and to focus on solutions.
Fewer Siblings
Another dynamic to mention is that of family size and birth order. In addition to today’s busy lives, where children are given more and less is required of them, families are also having fewer children than at any other time in our recent history. Most families today have one or two children. Today it is not uncommon for a classroom to be populated with many only children. Recently, my (Chip’s) school had a classroom of twenty-two children, of which seventeen were only children and the rest younger siblings (no middle children). While the research on birth order is controversial, many teachers report noticeable anecdotal effects. With smaller families comes more adult help and intervention. There are fewer opportunities for children to develop responsibility and more opportunities for parents to do for children what they can do for themselves.
In today’s world, providing opportunities for children to contribute in meaningful ways and develop true responsibility takes intentionality. It’s hard work.
If you have ever had a small class size, you know how hard it can be to promote independence among the children and how intentional you need to be to do so. When I (Chip) was a young teacher, just learning the ropes, I thought I would prefer a smaller class size. It seemed more manageable in many ways (giving lessons, staying organized, managing behavior, etc.). However, it turned out to be a lot more work. While I was able to give the children more individualized attention, the more I gave them, the more they seemed to need, both socially and academically.
After a few years of experience, I was given a much larger class of thirty students. With more students, the children had to become more independent. Out of necessity I had to learn to trust the children, and as a result I found out how responsible, independent, and capable they could be. More importantly, they discovered their own capabilities. It was amazing to see them rise to the occasion, just as Montessori had said they would.
Other Factors
In addition to increased permissive parenting, fewer opportunities for true responsibility, and fewer siblings, we have other external factors that affect children’s behavior. Screen time now dominates the hours spent at home; children are over-scheduled; some children rarely see their parents because of busy work schedules; there are a variety of lifestyle choices and family structures; there are violent video games and cyberbullying.
The good news is, that while the modern factors that affect children are real and significant, misbehavior is not new. In The Secret of Childhood, a teacher writes to Montessori about her experience with “pampered children”:
An American teacher, Miss G., wrote to me as follows from Washington: “The children snatched the objects from each other’s hands. If I tried to show something to one of them, the others would drop what they had in their hands and gather noisily about me. When I finished explaining an object, they would all fight for it. The children showed no real interest in the various materials. They passed from one object to another without lingering over any of them. One child was so incapable of staying in one place that he could not remain seated long enough to run his hands over any of the objects given to him. In many instances movement of the children was aimless: they simply ran about the room heedless of the damage done. They ran into the table, upset chairs, and trampled upon the material provided for them. Sometimes they would begin to work in one spot, then run off, take another object, and abandon it for no reason whatsoever.” 3
Sound familiar? This is a wonderful reminder that we are not alone and that the good old days were not always easy. Today’s problems are not new problems, even if some behaviors are exacerbated by different factors. Maria Montessori, Alfred Adler, and Rudolf Dreikurs were brilliant thinkers. Their philosophies have survived and grown while many others have come and gone. And we have to admit that we are delighted that neuroscience now validates the effectiveness of these methods that have contributed so much to the world of happier parents, teachers, and children.
Excerpted from Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom: Preparing an Environment that Fosters Respect, Kindness & Responsibility. Originally
Jane Nelsen, EdD, is a California Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and author or co-author of nearly 20 positive discipline books, including Positive Discipline Parenting Tools with her daughter, Mary, and her son, Brad; and numerous experiential training manuals for parents, teachers, couples, and businesses. She earned her doctorate in education from the University of San Francisco, but her formal training has been secondary to her hands-on training as the mother of seven, grandmother of twenty-two, and great-grandmother of eighteen. She now shares this wealth of knowledge and experience as a popular keynote speaker and workshop leader throughout the world. Learn more about Jane’s work at: www.positivediscipline.com
Chip DeLorenzo, MEd, is a school consultant and positive discipline trainer; he specializes in training staff and administration at schools worldwide in positive discipline methods and practices. Chip served as Head of School of the Damariscotta Montessori School, in Nobleboro, Maine, for twenty years. A veteran teacher and school administrator, he began his teaching career in 1995 after serving in the United States Air Force and working as a financial advisor. Chip is the father of four amazing Montessori children. Lean more about Chip’s work at: www.chipdelorenzo.com
3 Montessori, M. The Secret of Childhood (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2013), 143–144.
This PDF file is an excerpt from our book, the Montessori Way, by Paul Epstein and Tim Seldin, Copyright 2003
There is an ironic prejudice about education found in almost every country: the older the students are that one teaches, the higher the pay and respect for the teacher. We take it for granted that a professor in a graduate school is a more prestigious position than that of a high school teacher, which is, in turn, considered a more sophisticated position than teaching elementary and, of course, both are far more respectable than that of a nursery-school teacher. And no one in his or her right mind would want to teach infants and toddlers, right? Yet research clearly shows that the most important period in a human being’s educational and emotional development are not the years of high school and college but rather the first six years of life. Human beings are a magical combination of at least three factors: our genetic inheritance, our biological development, and our experiences.
