MONTESSORI AT HOME: Your BURNING Questions Answered!

hi my name is ashley and i'm a mom of two little girls i have a three and a half year old named kylie and tomorrow i will have a 21 month old named mia so for today's video i am going to dive into a bit of a montessori q a with you guys because i've been asked multiple times over the last couple of weeks when i'm doing my next q a so this is it so from one busy parent to another today i'm going to be sharing with you the answers at least my answers to all of your burning questions about doing montessori at home all right so i don't always run my q and a's on instagram sometimes i do them in the community tab right here on youtube but for this particular one i decided to just go ahead and throw up an instagram story today asking you guys for your questions i think i put it up somewhere around four o'clock and right now it is about 8 30 so in the last four and a half to five hours i have gotten an insane number of questions from you guys i also had quite a few questions related to topics that i've actually already covered in previous videos in this montessori at home series on the channel and i'm guessing that a lot of those questions are coming from folks who might be a little bit newer to the channel so what i'm going to do is link down below for you in the description box to some of the really big topic videos that people were asking about like things like potty training and promoting independent play and things like that i already have videos on all of those so if you have not seen some of these videos then you might want to go check those out because i have a feeling the questions that you are asking are already answered in them now with all of that out of the way let's go ahead and dive into all of the other questions that you guys were asking so the very first question is what does a montessori day with a younger baby look like and there is no one answer to this question if we're being honest because everybody's lifestyle is different but generally speaking you're just going about your normal everyday life and you're giving your baby opportunities to observe what's going on you're keeping the stimulation in general and that can be visual stimulation it could be auditory stimulation it could be tactile stimulation you're keeping all of those levels of stimulation down to a minimum because for younger babies they are very easily overwhelmed by too much stimuli so you're aiming to provide them with a very simple uncluttered environment where they can peacefully just observe and look around and take in all of the things that they're seeing and they're hearing and they're smelling and they're feeling so you're really focusing on giving them opportunities for sensory experiences and then as your baby is growing older and they start to begin experimenting with movement and they start scooting around and crawling you're not restricting their movement you are not placing them in an exersaucer or some other type of device where they can't get out you're allowing them the freedom to explore on the floor and learn how to master their own bodies without those types of restrictions so you might have to put them on a blanket if you only have hard floors in your home for example or give them some type of a little like folding gym mat i've seen all different kinds of ways to make this happen despite having a not so friendly floor situation for a young baby and then the other part of that is you're also giving them opportunities for independent play and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're leaving them there and then leaving the room and expecting them to entertain themselves for an inordinate amount of time while you do chores you might actually still be in the room with them or nearby maybe reading your own book or having a cup of coffee or something or you might be sitting with them and interacting with them as well there's no hard and fast rules around this but as many opportunities as you can to give them time for independent play where they become accustomed to maybe just hanging out for a little bit and looking at their mobile that you have set up for them or if they're doing tummy time you can set up an interesting set of like black and white high contrast cards or pictures of familiar faces of people in your family that they are learning what those faces look like maybe you have them laying next to a mirror in their movement area where they can observe themselves and watch their own body movements or next to a window where they can see the trees and the leaves blowing and maybe the windows open and they can watch the curtains blowing gently in the wind they're just having opportunities to observe again and then for babies that are a little bit older maybe they're starting to move around you might consider placing them on their blanket or their mat and then placing a really interesting toy like a set of interlocking discs or a bell cylinder something that will catch their attention placing it just slightly out of their reach so that they have some motivation to actually reach for it and start to practice some of those large gross motor movements to help them start to learn how to crawl so those are just a couple of ideas there are honestly so many other things that you could be doing with your baby at home but those things aside the general part of your day the majority of it is going to look like you just going about your normal daily business and involving your baby at times so you might be talking to them as you're doing the laundry you will take them on a shopping trip to the grocery store with you and talk to them while you're in the grocery store about the things that you're buying or other things that you're noticing that are happening around you if your baby is old enough maybe they're sitting up and they're grabbing things you might give them some of the socks that you're folding as part of your laundry to you know observe and play with and maybe show them how they match even though they can't do it by themselves yet all of this adds up these are all experiences that your baby is storing away and one day they just pop out and they start doing them and it's incredible to watch so i guess what i'm saying is there's not really anything super special that you need to do you don't have to go out of your way to do montessori at home with your young baby it's just normal everyday life you're just giving your baby a little bit more freedom and a little bit more space to observe a little bit more peace and quiet than you might find in a traditional home where the tv is blaring 24 7. but otherwise i don't think it looks any different than any other home montessori or not the next question is is the shelving and display of a baby's toys and activities important while they are still not mobile i would say yes because babies from the moment of birth are in a sensitive period for order so they're like little sponges they're taking in all of the sensory input available to them in their environments and they're piecing it together little by little and making sense of the world and for you to be able to provide them with an orderly simplistic beautiful inviting environment for them you're setting them up for success you're setting them up to be able to take advantage of that sense of order that they innately are born with and they're going to be able to focus better and concentrate and engage with the few materials that you do have set out for them and they're also going to learn from the very beginning that everything has a place and everything should be in its place when it's not being actively used by you or by the baby and so they learn very quickly oh this goes there because that's where they always see it and so once they become older and they start participating in the cleanup process then they know where that thing goes already and they will go put it away often by themselves without any prompting from you and the other part of that when you're setting up an environment for an immobile baby you want to make sure that the environment you are preparing is very low down to the ground so either a low shelf or just the bottom part of an existing shelving system or even just having things directly on the floor within reach that's totally acceptable too you can have a mirror nearby you can have a cozy little rug or blanket for them to hang out on if they are still in the newborn phase you might choose to have their montessori mobiles hung right above that area for them to just gaze at while they're on their backs and if you have a slightly older baby who is starting to like reach out for things and manipulate things with their hands but they're not yet mobile you want to make sure that the items that you're providing for them are within their reach that they're able to get to them and to pick things up at their own will and then also make sure that you're not cluttering it up you only want to have a couple of things i would say maybe like three or four things at most in that one area at that one time for your baby to choose from otherwise again they become very easily over stimulated and you might just find that they just check out entirely and they don't seem interested and it might actually be because they're overwhelmed by the choices and the options and so they're choosing to just disengage entirely as their way of coping with it so you've probably heard less is more and that applies to babies as well so the short answer is yes it's important that you put thought and care into the organization and the aesthetic of your infant's environment from the very beginning the next question is how am i going to handle my girls being influenced by other kids who are not raised with montessori practices i am fully aware that my girls are going to come into contact with lots and lots of kids who do not have any idea how the montessori home environment functions in fact they already have a couple of friends that are like that and i'm totally okay with that you know that's what we choose to do at home is our thing and we don't push it on other people at all unless they ask and they're curious and that's exactly the same attitude that i plan to share with my girls in the future so if things start to arise where for example they say oh my friend gets to do xyz why don't we do that that's when i'm going to have those open and honest conversations with my girls about the fact that here's the way we do things in our house and here's the way your friends do things in their home and families do things differently and so this is what we do and if they want to know why then we'll talk a little bit more about why we do things that way but that's just going to be the attitude is that's the way we do things and there really isn't going to be any questioning about it and at the same time i'm not like a strict hard and fast like it has to be done this way or else kind of person and i'm open to being flexible you know if my girls want to go do something with a friend that i wouldn't ordinarily allow at home or if i find out that they're doing things at their friends houses that i don't normally allow at home that's fine it's not a big deal kids are resilient as long as i maintain my personal values and my standards for what i'm allowing in my own home that's really what's most important to me the next question was which montessori principle changed my expectations about parenting the most and i thought this was a really interesting question because i immediately knew the answer to this when i thought about it with like within two seconds i remember very distinctly one of the first decisions that i made as a parent was to get rid of all of our baby holding devices that we had in the house we had a rock and play we had one of those jumparoo things we had a baby swing that didn't get used anyway we had a bumbo seat we had a high chair like every single device you could possibly think of we had it and that was because i thought that's what you were supposed to do like when i did my initial like new mom research while i was pregnant these were all the things that kept popping up in my reading and on my instagram scrolling and so i thought that that's just what everybody did and so those are the things that we put on our baby registry when we had our baby shower and those are all the things that we had in our home and as soon as i understood about the importance of giving a baby freedom of movement i was like we need to get rid of all this stuff and so i donated everything i was like i don't want it in my house anymore i don't even want to look at it and i was so excited the first time i like rolled out a little blanket and set kylie down and i was like go be free and i never looked back i mean that was when i fell in love with montessori but there was one other thing that i wanted to mention too because for me it was like a very close second on something that was like life-changing for me when i discovered montessori and that was the idea that you need to back off and allow your child time to focus and concentrate on the activities that they're choosing that they're engaging in because i was that mom that felt like i needed to be in my baby's face and making silly faces and singing and talking to her constantly and entertaining her and i didn't realize at the time that i was setting myself up for creating this dependence on me that she would eventually experience thinking that i had to be the entertainer 24 7. and that i was also not allowing her an opportunity to concentrate because i was constantly interrupting her focus with little comments and faces and things like that so once i realized that it's actually better to back off and just be quiet and allow them the chance to observe what's going on or allow them the chance to like really look at and like focus on this toy that they're holding instead of grabbing it and shaking it in their face like you see most new parents doing once i realized that i was like oh this is cool it's actually a lot less stressful for me because now i can just kind of sit back and watch and enjoy my child and not feel guilty about it and it's been awesome because my girls now have the ability to actually concentrate on things that they choose they don't expect that i'm going to interrupt them all the time and when i do interrupt it's very thoughtfully and they appreciate our interactions more i think and i don't know i just i enjoy it so much more the next question was tips on cooking and doing chores with a 12 month old this is the time that your child is going to become interested in practical life and the things that you are doing at home so my tips this is exactly what i did anytime you have to do a chore do it while your baby's awake do not wait for nap time okay just do your chores when you normally would and invite your baby to either observe you or play quietly nearby if they don't want to watch what you're doing you can set them up with like a little toy or something unless they're old enough to go get one themselves then they can choose something on their own but otherwise invite them to observe you and if they want to participate in whatever it is that you're doing if they break their concentration to get up and come over and see what you're doing and they reach their hand in and try to pull a fork out of the dishwasher dispenser thing or if they try to put laundry into the washing machine because that's what they see you doing then allow them to participate say hey i'm doing laundry do you want to help and let them do whatever they're able to do given their current set of skills and abilities it's not going to be perfect it's going to be messy you're going to have to take a lot longer to get the task done than if you did it by yourself but all of those things are part of the learning process and your child is interested in those things so why not capitalize on it while the interest exists not only is it fun for your child but you're giving them life skills from a very early age that some people never achieve well into adulthood and you get to get your chores done while they're awake and then you actually have time when they are taking the nap to do the things that you want to do that are for yourself get a little bit of care in so you can go read that book that you've been wanting to read or you can go sit down and have a very hot steaming uninterrupted cup of coffee or you can take a quick shower if you haven't showered in three days because you're a brand new mom anything that is on your fantasy wish list of things that you wish you could be doing right now those are the things that you could be doing on your child's nap time if you involve them in the daily work of life instead and do it all while they're awake the next question was how do you deal with your toddler wanting tons of toys that their friends have and i think my answer to this one is pretty short they're toddlers they don't really know what they want they see it and they want it in the moment they might even ask you for it at a later time if they see a picture of it somewhere and they're reminded um but for the most part their ability to remember things like that is usually pretty limited um but even if they do remember what i would just answer with is let's add that to your birthday wish list or let's add that to your christmas wish list or whatever holiday you celebrate and that's usually enough to satisfy them you're essentially giving them their wish in theory and there's actually research that has shown that doing that actually activates the same parts of the brain as if they actually got the thing because they're imagining themselves getting it and it's still triggering all of those same hormones and feel-good feelings inside and so i can say from personal experience that's exactly what i do and it works like a charm and then nine times out of ten after that they completely forget about it eventually and it's not even a thing anymore that you even have to worry about now if it was something that they did remember for some crazy reason and they keep bringing it up which i can't imagine at how they're doing but if they did keep remembering and asking about it over and over even a long ways down the line then that might be a conversation to sit down and have and say listen you know these are not the kinds of toys that we have in our home we like to have things that encourage you to use your brain and your imagination and this toy does not do that for you and i'm not okay with you having it and just keep it simple like that the next question was thoughts on the pickler triangle because they noticed that we don't have or use one we actually do have one and we do use one every single day it's just not downstairs in our main playroom area it's upstairs in our loft playroom area that's like just outside the girls bedrooms it's like our hangout space they've got a little bookshelf there and they've got a little nugget couch and um you know just some more open-ended things to play with but my girls love it my official recommendation is it's fabulous not just for kids who can climb over it like slightly older toddlers and preschoolers but also for younger babies too because they can use the bars to learn how to pull themselves up to a standing position and they can cruise along it and then once they get a little bit older then you'll start to see them actually climbing it and i've also heard of some people using it as a wooden baby gem they'll like put their baby underneath it and suspend the mobile from the underside of the pickler triangle and use it that way as well so it's a pretty versatile piece of equipment to have if it's in your budget or if you know someone who is handy with woodworking and they can build one the next question was how to choose activities for your baby that are interesting and engaging but also slightly challenging and this comes down primarily to observation you need to spend some time actually observing your child to see what it is that they're actually working on like what skills they're working toward mastering and it's usually pretty obvious if you just take a few minutes to sit your baby down for some independent play and just look like just see what they're doing with their bodies because it's a very predictable timeline of things as far as like developmental milestones go with your baby you know learning how to stretch and move their arms and then eventually they start focusing on their hands and reaching out for things and then finally grabbing objects and then investigating them and learning how to sit up and scoot and crawl and eventually walk like it's a very distinct timeline of events that most kids fall within a certain range of time so you can kind of almost predict what they'll be interested in but because all kids are unique and they're on their own timeline it is important still for you to sit down and observe your baby and to see exactly what skills it looks like they're trying to master and then you can choose some toys and activities that will help them to meet those developmental needs and to meet those interests at that given time and shameless self promo i talk about all of this in my e-course for montessori at home so if you have not taken my e-course yet then you might be interested in checking it out because i give all of that information broken down into exactly what milestones that babies achieve at certain ages and then a whole list of activities that will help your baby to work on those different skills and there's a link to my course in the description box down below if you're interested in checking it out next question what to do if we do not have a montessori daycare available where we live send your child anyway it doesn't matter obviously it would be ideal if your child could go to school or daycare in an environment that mirrors what's happening at home but for many families it's just not even a possibility like you said because there's not one nearby or because finances don't permit and it's okay children are very resilient and they are very easily able to distinguish between this is what happens at school and this is what happens at home and honestly what happens at home is going to be the most important that is the defining influence in your child's life so send your child to whatever daycare you need to send them to montessori or not and you just keep on focusing on what you're doing at home with your child and put all of your time and effort into that and it will be okay next question my 15 month old is missing out on so many experiences due to covid like grocery shopping trips any advice mama i feel you i am in the same boat and it breaks my heart poor little mia like kylie has some experience because she had you know three years worth of those types of things already under her belt so she has memories and understanding but poor little mia she has no clue and i feel you there's really not a whole lot that you can do about it honestly other than if you're really really worried you could set up i've actually seen a couple of really interesting examples of this on instagram you can set up like um almost like fake grocery shopping experiences for your child at home where you maybe like set out a bunch of like your canned goods and some dry things from your pantry maybe like a little box of fresh you know fruit from your fridge or something just whatever you have on hand you can actually set those things out and you can make like a little pretend grocery shopping list and have your child help you grocery shop at home from the things that you have set out i actually did this with my older daughter while my younger one was napping one time just to see how she would respond and it was nothing fancy i literally just set a bunch of things out along the bench at our dining room table and gave her like a little visual shopping list where i had drawn the pictures of the different items because she's not reading yet and i gave her a marker and a little like push wagon and told her to go shopping and it was the most adorable thing i've ever seen and she was totally into it so if that's something that you think you can like put together at home that's something that you could try with a 15 month old you're obviously going to need to help them a little bit more because they don't quite understand the concept yet even if they did have the life experience but it could still be fun and something to try i do think that our children are very resilient and that they'll be okay they'll be just fine by the time things calm down a little bit and we are able to venture back out into the world the normal world that they'll probably just slip right back into routines like it never happened and they're probably not going to remember it when they're older except for maybe tiny little bits and pieces if that i mean 15 months is really young i don't know about you but i don't remember anything from when i was one so i really wouldn't stress yourself out too much over it they probably don't even know what they're missing out on and it'll be okay the next question was a two-part question it said how do you start doing montessori and also how to not feel judged by other moms that you're doing everything wrong so as far as the how to start this is one of those ones i already have a video about this so i'll pop it in the description box down below go check it out but the other part of this the how to not like worry about other moms and parents judging you i say to hell with all of them you know what's best for your child you are taking the time to sit down and learn about child development and best practices and montessori most definitely falls in line with that and i know that i feel confident in the choices that i'm making for my children and i encourage you to do the same nobody else knows your child and your family's needs and what's working for you better than you do so let other people judge who cares and if they do say something about it to you then you can be very passive and diplomatic about it and just say well it looks like we have a difference of opinion this is how i do things and leave it at that and then there's also other times where i feel like we think we're being judged in a bad way but maybe we're actually being judged in a good way i've definitely had many of my own friends in real life who have become curious by what i'm doing and they want to know more so maybe it started out as a like whoa that's kind of weird why are you doing it like that or why are you doing this that way but once they took the time to ask questions and learn more about it they became intrigued and they were like wow this is actually really cool and now they're very much into it too and so i think it really depends but if you feel like you're being judged in a negative way try to just roll with the punches and be flexible the next question was how can montessori work with older kids and teenagers montessori actually goes all the way up through high school there are entire montessori education programs devoted specifically to these age groups and the way that it works is that you're following your child you're following their interests you're giving them space for independence and focus and concentration you're giving them responsibility and so you're doing the same things that you're doing with a young child just at a bigger level at a level of more responsibility because your child is older and they can handle those kinds of things so just to give you a tiny example of what i mean with a young toddler or a preschooler you might have them helping you in the kitchen for practical life activities where they're like helping you cut vegetables or peel potatoes or you wash the lettuce or something like that you're giving them small tasks to help prepare the family's dinner and that is their work in the kitchen but for an older child let's say like a teenager like a 13 year old they are fully capable of cooking at that age so that's the time when you might be hopefully sitting down and having more family meetings and maybe your child has chosen a meal for that week that they are planning to prepare for the entire family and you might still be on hand for assistance if they need you but at that age they're fully capable of cooking there's no reason they can't so they're still involved in the kitchen they're still doing practical life activities just like your toddler did it's just that the level of independence and the level of responsibility that they have in the kitchen is much greater because their capabilities are much greater so and it looks like that with all of the other areas of learning and all of the other areas of life at home as well the next question is how much time do you spend on shelf work with a two-year-old and the answer to this is as much time as your child wants to work at the shelf montessori is about following your child's lead and at two years old they're still very young they're still very much focused on gross motor development so they're climbing all over everything they're running through the house they're doing flips and rolling all over the place they're spinning in circles they're jumping they're throwing they're they're just focused on moving their bodies at that age still and so you might not find that they really want to sit down and work on shelf work for any length of time really and that's okay there is nothing wrong with that there is no like prescribed said okay for two years old they should be working on their shelf activities for 30 minutes a day that is not what montessori is about it is again about following your child's lead and observing to see what they're naturally interested in right here right now and so if they want to sit and work on their shelf work the activities that you've set up for them for five ten minutes a day great that's a great amount of time for a two-year-old to sit down and focus on one task if they choose not to work on any shelf work that is also okay and then if your child happens to be the exception to the norm and they will sit there and do you know 20 30 minutes an hour of shelf work because you've hit the nail on the head and provided them with a bunch of activities that they're really engaged in then great that's awesome but just because they choose to not sit down and do shelf work that doesn't mean there's anything wrong necessarily with the things that you have on your shelf they just might have a greater need at this moment their need for gross motor development might be greater than their need to sit down and work on fine motor skills and work on those types of shelf activities so the short answer is there is no certain amount of time for a certain age you just have to observe your child and respond to their needs on their schedule the next question was is there anything about montessori that you don't like honestly i am a montessori nerd like through and through i am in love with almost every aspect of it but there is one area that i have purposefully chosen not to subscribe to at home with my girls and that is i provide books that are completely fictitious with talking animals and the whole nine yards that is part of my children's library we read fairy tales we read anything under the sun if my girls are interested in it and i'm okay with that so here's the thing we know from research that children under the age of six have a very hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality that's why young children very readily accept the idea of santa claus and the easter bunny that's why they're afraid of the boogie monster in their closet that's why they do weird things sometimes like jump off the edge of something dangerous because they think they can fly like they don't really understand that that's not real they have a hard time making those distinctions and so in a montessori environment it is encouraged to only provide children with books that have an entirely realistic basis so real photographs realistic illustrations no talking animals no cartoons like nothing of that nature and so personally what we do in our home is i try to provide as many of those kinds of books as possible like if i'm going to invest my money into children's books i try to make them those types of high quality montessori-friendly types of books but whenever i would go to the library with my older daughter before the pandemic we would go like once a week and check out books and there were so many times that she would see a book it would catch her eye that was a total fiction book that i would not have chosen for her and she would pull it off the shelf and say she wanted to check this out and dump it in her bag and i would usually flip through it and kind of see if it was like something that i was in general okay with and if it wasn't i would put it back on the shelf but nine times out of ten they were innocent harmless fiction books that i was like you know i don't really care and so i would let her check them out and read them and that was kind of how that all started because before that i was almost exclusively trying to focus just on the realistic books and i have come to realize that my child's world is not turned upside down by reading books of talking animals we do have conversations about the fact that that is not real animals do not talk and anytime there is anything in the book that is not realistic i point it out i make sure to have those conversations with her and for a long time i wasn't really sure if she truly understood what we were talking about but i said it anyway we still had the conversations and now she's almost four years old at this point now she will actually sit and think and sometimes she'll ask me mommy is this real or mommy does that really happen and i'll say no it doesn't it's just you know it's pretend it's make-believe and then other times she'll tell me she'll say mommy that doesn't really happen in real life and so i know that she's actually thinking about these things now and she's trying to decide for herself what's real and what isn't and she does have a general understanding of this concept so i choose to have some of those more fantasy based books in my home i choose to have those conversations with her to make sure that i'm still grounding her and what's real and what's not and i don't think that she's any worse for the wear and that is my official perspective on it the next question is we're speaking three languages at home should we focus on just one or is it okay to have all three at the same time now i'm not an expert on this area because in our home we are primarily english only although we have been experimenting recently with introducing some mandarin chinese from my husband with our girls so we're kind of dipping our toes into the water of bilingualism but i will tell you what i have learned from other families who are bilingual in a montessori home and just in general and that is that it's okay go ahead do all three languages there is nothing wrong with that in fact the more languages your child is exposed to from earlier of an age the easier of a time they're going to have mastering all of those languages with a much greater level of fluency later on in life they will be much closer to native speaking if not completely native speaking the earlier they have that exposure there is no reason to wait to introduce other languages to your child i know that in some families they will choose the one language one parent approach where like say one parent speaks english the other parent speaks spanish or whatever the two languages are and they will exclusively speak to the child in those languages whenever they're all together and that's it and the child has to respond to the parent in that language for that specific parent or else the conversation doesn't continue and the child picks it up very quickly and so they're able to actively practice both languages without confusing which language they should use because they always know okay you know my mom will speak english to me and my dad will speak spanish to me and that's just the way it is and so that's one approach that you can take with three languages i'm not sure for your circumstance who is speaking what but the advice that i've heard from other places is that you should focus on speaking with your child your native language whatever your native language like you personally is so for example if your native language is french then that's the language that you should be speaking to your child in and then you can leave the other languages to the other people and places that your child experiences so if they're learning english at school because they're going to an english school or like a language immersion school where they do multiple then that's fine they can learn english at school but you're gonna focus on french exclusively at home but again i am not an expert on this topic so what i will do for anyone else who is interested in this topic i will leave a link to a workshop that is offered by simone davis who is the author of the montessori toddler book that i love so much she has a workshop specifically about this about bilingualism or multilingualism in a montessori environment and how to make it work and she has that workshop offered exclusively online it's very inexpensive and i would highly recommend taking it if this is something that you are experiencing at home and wanting to know more about all right so there were lots of questions on this idea of helping your child concentrate because they're not interested in shelf work or how do i get my child to do their shelf work because they don't seem interested in doing it at all and here's my answer for you you don't you don't make your child do anything the best thing that you can do as a montessori parent is to step back and take a breather first off and then reassess the situation try to spend more time observing your child and try to figure out what exactly it is that they are interested in what are they doing what are they spending all of their time focusing on are they running around and being crazy as far as you're concerned like with all of the gross motor activities then they might just be in a phase where they have a greater need for working on those gross motor skills and that's why they're not at their shelf if you notice that your child doesn't want to be inside they'd rather be outside and be doing things outdoors then they might have more of a need for sensory experiences and so i would say go outside and spend more time with them and just forget about the shelf for a while it's okay if you notice that your child is very focused on like building things and wanting to do with their hands then provide them with more opportunities to do that give them some blocks go outside and collect some rocks and twigs and let them build with that you know let them get dirty in a sandbox if you have access to one and it doesn't even have to be something that you spend your money on at all it could be if you notice your child is into like building towers and things like that save a couple of your boxes from like cereal and if you like have any packages or something that arrive at your house save those boxes and tape them up wrap them with wrapping paper or some or paint them or something just to make them look a little nicer or or you can just leave them just as boxes too that's fine but save some of those boxes and use them as giant building blocks and just give your child a whole bunch of them and let them challenge themselves to see how high they can stack them up without them falling over or maybe you save a really big cardboard box from something and you know let them turn it into a fort or a rocket ship and give them things to decorate with and allow them to work with their hands that way if you notice your child is spending some time at the shelf but it's only on one specific material then hone in like what is that material that they're working on what what seems to be drawing their interest that maybe they're only paying attention to that one thing and ignoring everything else because that's the activity that's calling to whatever developmental need they have in that given moment of time and then see if maybe you can provide a couple of more opportunities in different ways for them to explore that same need and then the other thing that it could be is maybe the work that you are providing is too easy and so they're bored by it and they're not interested so they're off seeking other things that they feel are more challenging or maybe the work is too challenging i think sometimes parents very well-intentioned parents see some of these videos and pictures on instagram and stuff of activities that are actually intended for slightly older children like in the preschool setting and they'll try to set something up and give it to their young toddler and then wonder why their toddler is not interested in it and it's because it's not developmentally appropriate so you really have to think about what you are providing and then compare that with what it looks like your child is actually interested in what's actually keeping their attention throughout the day because they must be doing something um so pay more attention to what it is that they are doing and then focus on those interests that's the best thing that you can do do not worry so much about the shelf work especially when they're still very young so the next question is how to deal with the existence of santa or not and how to explain that to toddlers and this is actually a very timely question for me to have discovered in this list tonight because i just had this conversation with my daughter at bedtime tonight and so i can share a little bit about that with you but first what you need to know is going back to that whole thing about fantasy under the age of six so santa claus falls in that category santa is not typically taught as a real person a real entity parents are not encouraged to perpetuate the lie to their children about santa in a montessori home and the reasoning is because children again have a hard time distinguishing between what is real and what is not and they are more apt to believe you especially if they are seeing santa in public during the holiday season when you know people are taking pictures of the santa it all seems very real and they're getting it from every angle anytime you go out to the store during the holidays but it is the most respectful thing to your child to their intelligence to not lie to them about it so here's what you can do and this is what i did you can sit your child down and share with them the story of saint nicholas and if you don't know what that is then go look it up it's on google very easy to find but share with them the story of saint nicholas you can talk about it after that and say well you know santa is a story he's pretend he's not real it's kind of like a fun game that a lot of people like to play and if it's okay with you we can play santa each year we can play santa pretend that he's bringing our presents we can leave him milk and cookies and all of the things that everybody else does but we can do it knowing that he's not actually real he is pretend and that's okay but it's still fun to play and do you think that's something that you would want to do and give your child that option leave it open for them to decide if they actually want to do it because you might be surprised some children i've heard are kind of freaked out about the idea of a strange man coming down their chimney in their house in the middle of the night and they might not want to do it and that's okay but if your child is all about it and they want to do it as my daughter was then fine go for it you guys can play santa to your heart's content but at least you know that you're being respectful you're not perpetuating a lie that potentially i've heard from many parents who've told me that they remember feeling crushed when they found out as a child that santa wasn't real so you can avoid that situation happening entirely by being honest with your child from the very beginning the next question was how do kids handle the transition from montessori school to a regular school i know that there is a really big argument out there that children who are accustomed to a montessori setting are accustomed to having way too much freedom and so when they transition to the regular traditional setting where they're expected to sit in a desk and follow rules and raise their hand to go to the bathroom and all of that that they have a hard time with that aspect of being in school and i guess i can see why some people might think that but i also think that what's not being considered is that in a montessori environment a child has to learn how to be very self-disciplined you know they have the freedom to get up and walk around and choose whatever work it is that they want to do and choose the people that they're working with when they're a little bit older on like group projects and stuff and so they have a lot more freedom and they have to learn how to corral themselves they have to learn how to motivate themselves to sit down and focus and do the work that they know that they need to work on and i think that's a skill as a former teacher in a regular public school setting that is a skill that was very hard to come by in students most of them were very externally motivated they simply just did not have that sense of self-discipline and motivation to keep themselves on track and so i think that aspect of a montessori student coming into a traditional setting i think that they would be more than well equipped to actually thrive in a traditional school setting the next question is i introduce the object permanence box to my 10 month old and she doesn't get it even after i've demonstrated what do i do anytime you as a parent show your child how to do something and then say okay you have a turn and they're just like uh and they don't get it it could happen for a variety of reasons the first being that perhaps you've introduced the work too early maybe it's a little bit too challenging a little bit too developmentally advanced for your child in the current moment in time and if that is the case and that's kind of the feeling that you get after you've introduced it then what i would say is pack it up just don't even worry about it put it away for a few weeks or a few months even depending on how challenging it might be and then reintroduce it at a later time try it again when your child is a little bit older and you might be pleasantly surprised that they catch on a lot faster the second time around now if you are absolutely sure that your child is developmentally ready for this activity and you've introduced it and they don't really seem to know what to do with it i would say give it a little bit of time sometimes children need to see a demonstration more than one time before the light bulb goes off and they're like oh okay and they can imitate what it is that they saw you doing and then they'll catch on and be able to do it or it might be that their motor skills are not quite advanced enough to make it happen so in the example of the object permanence box your child might see you drop the ball into the hole and they might understand that they're supposed to drop the ball into the hole and they'll pick up the ball and maybe start bringing it toward the hole but not quite be able to make it into the hole yet so they might try but they can't quite do it and so that's just a matter of time that's a matter of practice and then having many opportunities to try to get it in there with accuracy and eventually one day they will they're going to drop it in and then oh cool you know the ball comes rolling back out and repeat a thousand times so in those cases i would say leave the activity out allow your child the opportunity to experiment with to explore the materials to pick up the ball and investigate it maybe mouth it a little bit especially at that age to allow them to bang it on the ground or bang it on the object permanence box itself whatever allow them to explore a little bit with it and then eventually they might come around to discovering for themselves again that the hole exists and then they might just out of sheer curiosity drop it in there just to see what happens and that's the beginning of them actually using the material in the way that it was intended but if you feel like you've left the material out for a reasonable amount of time and your child still just doesn't seem to be getting it then i would divert to my first answer which is they're probably not ready for it so just pack it up and try again in a few weeks and see what happens then and then finally if you introduce the activity to your child and then you give them a turn and they kind of mess around with it but they're not really using it correctly you decide to leave it out you put it on the shelf and then your child just doesn't go back to it just sits there collecting dust for the next week and a half then i would say probably pack it up again your child might not be ready for it or maybe they're just not interested in it and that's okay too all right i've got it this is the perfect ending question because i think i get asked this all the time and i'm sure a lot of people maybe don't ask what they're wondering it is do you ever lose your cool as a parent every time i see this question i want to burst out laughing yes of course i lose my cool as a parent all the time as i've said in so many of my videos we are not perfect none of us is perfect i for one am certainly not perfect far from it and i think it's interesting because a lot of people see montessori online they see the instagram pictures you guys watch some of my videos where i don't show those moments out of respect for my children's privacy and they think that they don't happen they think that there are no bad times that you know our children are perfect and they never have tantrums they never argue with each other and that couldn't be further from the truth and it's not again that anyone is lying or trying to deceive and pretend like they don't i'm certainly not i'm telling you up front they do happen it's mostly about a privacy thing i think for most people you know no one wants to put their moments when they're at their worst on the internet for the entire world to see like that's not okay in my book not just for myself but again for my girls if i'm going to put them on the internet in any capacity it's going to be in the best light possible because i know that i would want someone else putting my worst moments on the internet and i just i wouldn't be okay with that so i pick and choose very carefully the things that i show to you guys and i'm sure many other people will tell you the same thing other um social media influencers and whatnot they all say the same thing you know we show you our highlight reels not to deceive but out of respect for our children so yes they have tantrums yes i lose my cool as a parent but i consider that part of my work as a parent to better myself to recognize when i've lost my cool and kind of assess the situation and figure out what happened why i lost my cool what i would have done differently is what i usually find myself thinking at that point and then i apologize i make a very good habit of being upfront and honest about when i screwed up and i apologize to my girls very openly we talk about what happened and how to make it better for the future and then i vowed to do better going forward and even with all of that there are still times that i will mess up again in the future parenting is a learning process it's a journey no one is going to get it right from day one and just be fine from there on out like that's just not reality so when you watch videos when you are on instagram looking at people's profiles and everything looks perfect i want you to remember that like we're all normal people just like everybody else we all have kids that you know have meltdowns in the middle of the grocery store just like everybody else we all just have really stressful bad days sometimes and snap and yell at our child about something that we probably wouldn't have if we weren't so stressed like we have these moments too so you are in good company and i hear you i get it i know how hard it is and my best advice is hang in there alright so that is all i have for you guys today again i wish i could answer all of your questions but i would just be here until the end of time if i did so if you have anything to add to the discussion here today about one of the topics that i talked about please feel free to leave it in the comments down below and again if you are interested in learning more about how to do montessori at home i have an entire ecourse dedicated to it that walks you through it step by step so i will leave a link in the description box down below to that if you're interested in learning more about it and just in case you are new to my channel i also wanted to let you know that this video is part of a much larger series on this youtube channel called montessori at home which is aimed at providing practical tips and advice for busy parents like you and i for implementing montessori at home with your children so if that sounds like something that you're interested in watching more of then you might consider subscribing to my channel this way you don't miss a new video because i upload a new one just like this one every single week thank you so much for watching today and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Hapa Family

Views: 78,075

Keywords: montessori at home, montessori for babies, montessori baby, montessori toddler, montessori parenting, montessori teaching method, montessori playroom, diy montessori, montessori, montessori santa claus

Id: XCyYVMwfoN8

Length: 52min 32sec (3152 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020