Which parent has not found a product with a Montessori stamp? To do what with it?
According to Renilde Montessori, Maria’s granddaughter, it is not desirable to “do Montessori” at home if you think it is a question of recreating the specific atmosphere (prepared by professionals). It is very desirable to do Montessori at home by acting according to the principles of education as an aid to life that is Montessori pedagogy.
The parent’s main mission is to support as closely as possible this vital impulse that animates the child, where all this fragile and powerful human potential resides.
Is he not very well placed, the one who accompanies this child, this young man day and night during this long period of training?
He has the power to open it to the universe so that it has the keys to use it, to foster an experience of peace in the relationships forged between them, to intervene of course every time he gets lost, to witness by his own life to the essential in relation to the futile!
Living the Montessori proposal at home is free and for everyone! It is a way of being present to oneself and to the child.
This very serious path can give humanity a happy future and the joy of being that parent there with that child in today’s world.
The Importance of the Family and Parents in Montessori Education
I have been with Priscilla for eight months and she has been asking me questions live during our Skype or live appointments or by email:
- Which low bed should I choose?
- How wide should it be?
- What shape?
- Do we need colour, patterns?
- Won’t Nina (two and a half years old) bump into the furniture at night?
- Will she find a “real” Montessori atmosphere in the school where I enrolled her from birth?
- Does she suffer from our three moves when I now know that she needs order to build herself?
- I yelled at Nina, I come back to this moment very often, not her, I feel guilty, will she forgive me?
- Etc.
There are questions and doubts when you are a young parent. I can understand it, I too have loved being enlightened in this intense period of life.
Keep common sense, choose simplicity, get enough sleep, structure space and time, dare silence rather than force the expression of feelings, surround yourself well, think for yourself, etc.
These are attitudes that this solo mother is gradually discovering.
The proof is when, after many reversals that I am accompanying, she finally cancels her daughter’s enrolment in the so-called Montessori school so much planned, a few days before the start of the part-time school year.
She decides that she wants her to stay in the nursery for a while longer, where she is finally quite well, why undo her? She plans to start school at the age of three, in a school near her new home, a school that I feel good about, she told me after meeting two schools.
On this occasion I have proof that Priscilla is dealing with reality; moreover, she reveals that she no longer has the budget, that she does not have a permit and that she now lives forty-five minutes on foot from this dream place without serious public transit. Why keep it simple when you can make it complicated?
Priscilla knew how to put her ideal and the diktat who would like in certain circles, that there should only be Montessori for recourse; here she is able to assume the consequences of this choice. The relaxation provided by this decision immediately allows Nina to enjoy a certain peace at home without waiting, isn’t that a way to approach the Montessori proposal, among others, and without waiting.
By going to reality, this courageous and searching mother did not let go of her aspirations and intuitions.
She’s on her way and Nina doesn’t want another one.