How to help your little Kids develop more naturally.
How to help your little Kids develop more naturally.
The education of even a small child… does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.” Maria Montessori
This is a lovely quote from Montessori. Let’s see what she really means and how we can help our children achieve their potential. The first years of life (0-6) are well known to be the time of greatest brain development, the building blocks of a child’s Psyche and a move from helpless infant to independent little person! This is a common and well understood way a child develops in these early years.
The question then is why so much time and energy is put into activities that offer little or no benefit to these amazing and life moulding areas. A child goes from understanding nothing about their world, to building a complex Mind map of what is out there, what opportunities there are and where he fits into this enormous world he finds himself.
For many children this mind map can be small in experiences, limited in opportunities, and debilitating to his psyche – which has learnt he is small and incapable in his world and reliant on others telling him what to do and when to do it.
If we lived a more natural life. – We would be showing our babies the landscape they live in, where to go and where not to go. How to move and navigate through their world, what to eat, what to avoid, what they need to practice and develop to be ready for the bigger world. How to interact and use judgement with others and themselves.
This would be a child with a huge mind map. One filled with experiences, good and bad which he has managed to navigate. A child full of confidence in a body with great control and strength. A child with common sense and the skills and interest to learn new skills. A child who is near the full potential of his first stage of development.
An extreme example perhaps – but these are the same skills and experiences our little ones need now. Academic attainment comes easily to a child who has confidence, context, imagination, self-esteem and communication skills.
