Living Montessori
By: Rosana Colón Basora
Who are toddlers?
Toddlers are children that have learned how to walk. They start to carry things with their hands as they toddle and they begin to apply what Montessori called “maximum effort:” they need to practice new movements and work carrying heavy objects. Toddlers also observe with curiosity everything around them: movement, language, the use of things. They possess what Montessori called an “unconscious absorbent mind:” a type of mind that is capable of absorbing absolutely everything around them, without effort or fatigue. They don’t use reason. A toddler doesn’t say to herself: “OK, I think today I’ll absorb the way my dad speaks to me.” No, her own “internal guide” leads her to observe and internalize the way she is spoken to, the activities others do around her, and endless elements of her world. She also repeats with utmost interest the activities she can: she uses her hands, her ways of communicating and her ways of working. We see toddlers go up and down the stairs countless times, look for and read the same books over and over again, sing the same songs, and try the same activities they tried ten times yesterday. Errors are common in this stage (and in all stages of our development), because “to err is to be human.” Mistakes are overcome by trying again and repeating. Repetition, Montessori also reminds us, is a human tendency that helps us concentrate and try again, in our search for perfection (not perfectionism). Ultimately, errors are chances to begin again. We can conclude that toddlers are 1-to-3-year-olds that:
Walk.
Absorb everything.
Explore ceaselessly.
Are interested in cause and effect.
Thrive with order: they need order in the physical and the emotional environment (including adult consistency and a daily routine).
Go through sensitive periods for language, movement, order and the refinement of the senses. They are very sensible to these aspects of development.
Need to repeat activities we make available to them, in order to be able to do them independently.
Communicate in various ways, until, approximately at 2-years-old, achieve an “explosion of language” and the baby that only communicated by crying, gesturing or by saying single words, begins to speak to us nonstop, marveled at his own human discovery.
Are in the process of a very concrete self-discovery. They begin to know and understand their bodies, their language, their potential, and their emotions.
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