Joy is a reflection of living our values, and we would argue that finding it as parents is critical to our children's success in life. There are a number of things you can do to be joyful yourself as well as teaching your children to be the same way.
Self-esteem can be a mixed bag. When people move from a sense of justified pride earned by working their way through a task to being convinced of their own superiority with little to no justification, something has clearly gone awry. But there is a clear area where self-esteem is healthy and where, particularly in children, it can serve as an armor against all manner of negative influences. Building that positive self-esteem and thickening the armor starts early. As parents of preschool children, there is no time like the present.
Rather than the traditional public school approach of "sit down and shut up" (which has thankfully started to disappear in many places), we actually find it beneficial to take the attitude of "if it keeps them working and it isn't hurting anyone, then we don't care".
If you consider yourself a hands on learner, whether completely or even partially, we suspect you will be able to relate to why we love this aspect of child development. The playground presents an opportunity for societal learning and practiced citizenship in a hands on fashion. As individuals, children on the playground are presented with a number of scenarios that they must work through.
Entering first grade, children are confronted with social hierarchies and politics to navigate that are going to be, in some fashion, new to them. One of the advantages for children in childcare is that all of them have at least been in a group social situation by the time they move to elementary school. But mere attendance in a group environment does nothing to prepare a child for the transition.
Think back to childhood. Who did you look up to? Were there people in the media and entertainment that you looked up to and idolized? Sports stars? Actors? Pop singers? From a perspective of being worthwhile in your development, how did that work out? If you are like most people it probably didn't work out well.
Making positive memories with children is one of the great joys of parenting (and childcare). The first time you hear your grown children waxing eloquent about the wonderful time they had when you did something special as a pair or as a family is absolutely priceless. It is a concrete example that you as a parent handed something of value to your child
We are always looking for ways to be better parenting partners. This includes staff training, virtual coffee klatches, engagement with parenting and early childhood education organizations, research and good, old-fashioned conversations with you directly. But to date, being better/simpler business partners has been a bit of a challenge.
There are a few ideas that get floated about when it comes to children that make us cringe. Perhaps the worst of all of these ideas is the one that can be paraphrased as "that child did something 'bad', so they are a bad kid". When "that child" is our own, these labels can lead to feelings of guilt and even shame as a parent.
We know that more than a few of our parents were Montessori educated themselves, but for those who weren't we offer up our belief that it is never too late. Below are some suggestions for how we can all become Montessori adults.
Compassion, which differs from empathy, is defined as a consciousness of the distress and suffering of others that drives a sympathetic response to help alleviate it. There is a growing body of evidence that compassion is in many ways an innate instinct rather than a learned value and it appears in varying degrees depending on the person. We see this quite strongly in some children at school where they are immediately concerned if another child so much as groans in discomfort.
Courage is a moral strength. It allows us to move forward in the face of fear, challenges and even real danger. We say that those with courage are brave. But at times it seems that we limit the definition of what it means to be brave to a narrow band of seemingly heroic acts. Courage and bravery can seem relegated to warriors and superheroes. And this is a shame, because we see acts of courage every day at school that…
Honor means we possess the traits of honesty, fairness and integrity. These are high goals to be sure. They are truly challenging to exhibit consistently as we are all flawed human beings. But somewhere along the line striving to be honorable went from being required if you were to be admired to being seen by many as an impossibility and thus not even worth working toward. Cynicism not only crept in; it took over.
Whether talking about our leaders and their responsibility to govern fairly and within the bounds of their defined power or of ourselves and our responsibility to accept the consequences of our actions and reactions, this concept separates adults from children and commoners from despots. But the thing is, there is no switch that flips.
Our series on values started with an overview. In that overview we mentioned we were adding in a new value and breaking off another. We felt that these new values were important enough to merit their own emphasis . Because we have already covered this week's value, self-reliance, we wanted to address one of our new values. This related value is leadership. In a standard classroom where chairs sit in a row and order is maintained by a central figurehead…
When adults have six definitions for a word it is a foregone conclusion that it is not easily definable to young children. But thankfully, justice as we use it is very demonstrable. As we use the term, we are referring to the moral principle that emphasizes objective evaluation and equal, fair treatment of others.
If you scroll back to the first article that launched this series you might notice the emphasis we place around responsibility. So much so that three of our values represent three different key tenets of responsibility. Responsibility itself, leadership, and this week's value - self-reliance. A critical aspect we like to point out when it comes to the last item on the list is that Montessori doesn't just teach self-reliance as a concept, but rather it is at the very core of the method.
Of all of the dangers that social media presents to children, perhaps the worst is the unrealistically inflated sense of self that the culture of likes conveys. The ease with which the same machinery can crush the ego of those who do not yet have the life experience to contextualize what they are experiencing is equally appalling. The persistent forces that convey the message that our worth is defined by what our group believes is incredibly destructive.
Of all of the values we emphasize at Greystone House, frugality is perhaps the most at odds with our culture. In a day and age where we are pelted with ads and messages to buy more, many of which we do not even consciously register, the idea of balancing our inputs and outputs can seem quite odd. But ultimately, the payoff of a frugal life is the freedom to take advantage of more choices while defining our path in life.
Wisdom is a value that it can be hard to get a grip on. We all have lightbulb moments where we suddenly realize something important. The futility of a certain action, a better way to accomplish a goal, a realization that maybe others matter just as much as we do, or even a moment of quiet reflection where we realize we will never have it all figured out. These moments are frequently the foundation of our personal growth and ultimately help us make better judgments and decisions.
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