Tag: Maria Montessori

At 21 months of age my daughter has begun eating her meals at her own toddler table. Maria Montessori calls this the weaning table and actually advocates introducing it much earlier than 2 years of age, say around 4-8 months old. The table is Montessori’s replacement for the highchair. Her take on the whole table idea is that it allows the child the opportunity to make his or her own decision regarding eating.

Independence of thought/choice is big in Montessori’s world and while I don’t know near enough about the details to discuss it in detail, I do have a post here and here on the Montessori method as it pertains to eating. I am, however, very interested in the big picture philosophy behind her method. My husband and I often fold (or one could say cherry pick) the Montessori method into our parenting style.

As for feeding time, we chose to use a highchair until we were comfortable offering Sophie the option of getting out of her chair on her own. This timing also coincided with food throwing. Really, our decision has been based on whether or not she’s getting enough to eat to sustain her growing body. However, the food throwing was a very large factor as well. I believe it is the international (and inherent) sign for “I’m all done eating this so called food.” I mean, enough with the food throwing already!

So we’ve introduced the toddler table. Sophie can sit at will and get up at will.

Disaster, you might think…but surprisingly, no. The new found independence (and no doubt trust) she feels has emboldened her to remain at her table until she is finished eating. And she actually eats! A lot.

Now, I will qualify this by saying that sitting is a loose term for what she does at the table. There is a fair amount of standing with one leg dangling over the seat, the one butt cheek on and one butt cheek off of the seat form of sitting, and my favorite the my toe is touching the chair so I’m still sitting form of sitting. Ahh, that lesson will have to come in time. Maybe when we introduce table manners.

The table, though, has successfully stopped the food throwing. When she’s done, she simply gets up. What a concept! Now, we’ve dealt with food throwing in the past and have some fairly effective methods for dealing with it while at the grown up table, but so far the toddler table is the best solution we’ve found. Granted, a semblance of toddler maturity is needed (is there such a thing?) to fully pull it off. I’m a big fan of the toddler table…in fact, I find myself sitting at it with Sophie, which makes for fun table time conversations in a language I have yet to master. I’d recommend it highly.

photo credit: ian.schofield

At less that two years old, my daughter, who sees me and my husband brushing our teeth each morning (she’s usually asleep by the time we do it at night) has taken a keen interest in the toothbrush.  On a recent playdate, she even convinced her friend to join in on the fun.

Since we’re all about Montessori in this house, I have taken her cue and begun teaching her about personal grooming habits: specifically brushing her teeth.  According to Maria Montessori, children learn best when they are ready to learn the lesson in front of them.  Their readiness is usually a sign that they feel some sense of control over what and how they will learn.  Or maybe it’s the control that leads to the readiness.  Children have, what Montessori termed, an “absorbent mind” and when the mind is ready, learning becomes more of an organic *knowing* rather than a chore.  Think of it as an exploratory environment.

We’ve been trying to get Sophie used to brushing for some time now, but only recently has she shown any real interest. I’d say she’s still *tolerant* of the nightly brushing but it’s during the day when she really just won’t let go of the thing.  I do hope this infatuation with the toothbrush stays with her.

The next lesson: potty training as her new favorite word is “poopy.”

At 16 1/2 months, my daughter is an expert walker. In fact she even runs on occasion, though not nearly as fast and often as her friend, Sadie (pictured at right) who seems to prefer to run every where she goes, little pigtails bouncing with each step.

With my daughter firmly in Stage 5 development (according to Dr. Maria Montessori it is from month 12 to month 18), I thought I’d weigh in on a few of her developmental milestones to date. (FYI, for a really good list of all of the neurological and physical developments go HERE for the mommybahn’s take). Of particular interest to me are the following advances made possible by the “right brain” and “left brain” formulation… a phenomenon about which all the artists in my family are all a twitter.

One development is heterolateral movement – meaning that the brain can navigate movement on alternating sides of the body like stair climbing or swing your arms while walking. Right now Sophie either walks like a Frankenstein baby with her knees locked and her body stiffly swaying in the direction her feet are moving or she swings her upper body from side to side while walking with such glee that she invariably knocks herself off balance. It’s utterly endearing. I did manage to capture all this on tape so that we can look back and remember how she learned to walk. I fear all these little experiments with movement and balance will cease as soon as she masters walking, never to be seen again unless on video.

Further evidence of the communication between brain hemispheres is hand dominance. Unfortunately, since I’ve broken my right hand Sophie has been mimicking my left handed movements so it’s hard to tell which hand is dominant for her yet. She seems quite ambidextrous at this point.

And finally, cross-patterning. The brain can now, in Stage 5, manage to navigate your hand across your body to do something. Think shaking hands, reaching over your plate to grab a spoon, opening doors.  Ahh, the opening and closing of doors. This activity is done repeatedly all day as often as possible. In fact, Sophie so enjoys this that she doesn’t even realize she’s closed herself into a closet or the bathroom until she realizes that she can’t grab the edge of the door to open it. It’s a wonder we spend any money on toys!?!

All this to say our little one is progressing right on target…however, as I read more and more about milestones I’m learning that I care less about the time frame that she masters said milestones and more about her discovering new possibilities. It’s easy to get caught up in the constant competition of comparing who is doing what and when they do it. I know, I’m guilty of it myself more than I care to admit. Only, if I take a step back and just watch Sophie and her discoveries, I find that I’m more inclined to share in the wonder of them with her rather than gloating about them.

I have an affection for raising our daughter in the Montessori way and have tried, as you may have figured out, to follow the rules but wind up modifying them to fit our needs. I’m certain Maria Montessori would turn over in her grave if she knew we called what we do “Montessori.”

Regardless, this is how it breaks down in our house. We research what the method is, attempt it, and then retro fit the method to our reality. With eating and feeding, these modifications happened quickly with much mess. I pilfered these rules from my Montessori Guru cousin whose blog has excellent info on all things Montessori.

1. No high chairs or propping up in a seat. We tried lap sitting – i.e., Sophie sat in my lap and either I fed her with my free hand that wasn’t holding the food or my husband fed her. While it does work, this method is exhausting for everyone! What with squirming, head shaking, hand waving and general mayhem, the food made it in our little one’s mouth, and all over us, and the table, and the floor.

I stopped to think about what we were teaching our daughter…what I intended to teach our daughter was family dinner time, and this wasn’t it. So, we opted for a high chair that uses our table as the “tray” and Sophie now eats dinner (and lunch and breakfast) at the table, with her own placemat. Teaching her not to throw food overboard on to the floor is an entirely other matter and deserves it’s own post.

2. The container must be see through so the child can see the food. This teaches a child that the food exists outside of them, then through the act of eating, the food goes inside of them. They are just learning about food, so the clarity allows them to see the food as it actually exists, not as purple oatmeal. Also, with all of this talk of BPA contamination, I opted for clear glass tiny bowls and they work perfectly for freezing, microwaving and washing. Also, same goes for water. We uses a small votive glass and it works amazingly well. It can’t hold too much water, so when the glass goes flying, as it inevitably does, it’s really no biggie. I have taken to holding the water for Sophie and letting her use her hands to guide the water in, just to save time with clean-up…again, not a strict adherence to the rule.

3. You offer the food to the baby and the baby either eats or doesn’t eat. No games or tricks. Generally, with patience, this works well. However, Sophie goes through phases of refusing to eat anything unless we eat it. So I found that a few tricks do in fact work and I resort to these when I worry that Sophie will waste away to nothing after 2 days into a food strike.

5. Food is served solo – no mixing. Oatmeal gets one bowl, peas get another. Mac and cheese is served separately from small bites of chicken. I find this one of the hardest to maintain. Sometimes oatmeal won’t cut it, but oatmeal with apples and some cinnamon goes down easy. Also, how am I supposed to get Sophie to eat anything green besides peas if I just serve it to her plain? I don’t eat like that, why should she? Plus, if she will only eat something I’m eating, well, then, you can guess why we break this rule all the time!

Basically we approach feeding the same as we do most things. We figure out the lesson we want to teach and go from there. Keep things simple.