When a 5-year-old helps a 2-year-old

For the last two weeks, I’ve been observing in a classroom at a Montessori school. 

As a student, consultant and teacher-to-be, I learned a tremendous amount watching these 30 children between 2.5-6 years old. As a parent with two children just starting Montessori school, it was a revelation. 

B and M started school six weeks ago (they attend a different school than the one I observed at). They are the youngest in their class of 25 children.  Until now, I’ve spent nearly every moment of their lives with them. Suddenly, they are gone for so many hours. I often wonder if they are too young to be in school for this long. My biggest worry came three weeks after school started, when they started getting extra clingy and needy at home. Even M, who was usually independent, started throwing herself on the floor and whining because she wanted me to pour the milk for her. That was unusual. 

I got some clue to what was happening when I started observing Jackson, the newest 3-year-old in the class.  Watching him helped me realize what happens with young children in a mixed-age classroom: the older children love taking care of them. They don’t crowd them like adults do, but if the little ones show any sign of hesitation, the older ones will swoop in like little super-heroes and help. For a second, I thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have my children surrounded by so many older children, who were getting in the way of their independence…until I spent two hours observing what else Jackson was experiencing. 

Jackson’s Day

The day starts with Jackson doing some knobbed puzzles (also known as cylinder blocks), which the teacher had shown him a couple days ago. He puts it back on the shelf and starts roaming around the room.

He stops to watch 5-year-old Artie make bread, measuring out ingredients, pouring them into a bowl then kneading them with his hands. While the dough is rising, Artie starts cleaning. He gets the table crumber (a small dustpan and broom for the table). Jackson follows and gets the second table crumber. Artie starts sweeping and Jackson imitates him. Artie then fetches the dustpan and broom for the floor. Jackson does the same thing. Just as Jackson was about to sweep the table again, Artie says, “That’s for the floors. The crumber is for the table.” 3 year old’s aren’t always expressive, but I could’ve sworn a lightbulb went off.

As Artie is waiting for the dough to rise, Jackson watches him do math for a bit, then decides to get snack – bananas, carrots and raisins in a box. He sits down to eat the raisins, but cannot get to the last couple. Olivia, a 4-year-old girl, goes over to help him take out the last couple. I don’t know how she noticed, but she did!

Olivia sits down at her own table to do gluing. He finishes snack and comes to observe her. Music comes on for Walking On the Line. That’s a special Montessori activity where the teacher plays different kinds of music, and the children who participate can walk, skip, march, run or walk sideways along a line on the floor. The marching song comes on.

Olivia: “That’s the music for Walking On the Line.”
Jackson: “Yeah, you stomp.”
Olivia: “Yeah, that’s the marching music.”
Jackson: “Marching?” 

Jackson starts marching in place. The next song comes on.

Jackson: “What’s that?”
Olivia: “That’s the song for running.”
Jackson: “The running song? Like this?”

Jackson starts running in place. They laugh. It was a funny moment only children understand.

Later, another four-year-old, Anna, walks with him around the shelves pointing out the different activities: “You can open these (containers). This is bead stringing. You sit in this chair to comb your hair. This is the Russian doll. You need a mat to do this.” And then she goes to fetch a mat, rolls it out at a table and shows him how to take out each of the Russian dolls and how to put them back. 

A little while later, he goes to watch the teacher give four-year-old Henry a spelling lesson with the alphabet box. He watches as Henry spells ‘cat,’ ‘dad,’ ‘bird,’ ‘horse’, etc. – 11 words in total.

All of this was followed by a birthday celebration for a 6-year-old complete with astronomy (how it takes one year for the earth to move around the sun), story-telling, poetry and song. 

In two short hours, I observed Jackson immersed in an environment with way more information than any adult could teach him. And with his ‘Absorbent Mind,’ he took it all in: from math, to spelling, to the procedures of making bread, to music, to art, to all the different activities available in the classroom, not to mention all the different children he interacted with. He experienced many activities he could do now and many others that were just 2 or 3 steps away from where he’s at now. This environment was rich, meaningful and, dare I say, perfect, for the development of this child. With all my training, even if I could do the same activities at home, I could not give them the richness that comes with all these mixed-age children. 

This morning, I dropped off B and M at school. I looked inside their classroom and saw these things: the same Montessori materials, equally well-trained teachers and 25 other children of varying ages. I breathed a sigh of relief. They’re getting a great education here and I could go off feeling relaxed and happy.

Epilogue 

I just came back from parent-teacher conference and found out that B and M do not whine at school at all. They are very independent and want to do everything themselves. So it’s just with Mom…*sigh*. The teacher, whose class I observed, was an incredibly patient human being, and I’ve been channeling her every day when necessary. I go back to the principles of Connection Before Correction, the 3 stages of obedience and general deep breaths. I’m not perfect, but I’m trying!

*Interested in setting up the perfect Montessori home environment for your little one(s)? Click here to find out more about my Private Consultation Services.

**All the names of the children mentioned in this article have been changed

B rinsing a scrub brush with a garden hose

The young child has a brain different from ours – like, totally different. And yes, it’s scientifically-proven. 

Here’s an example: if given the right environment, children can learn 4 languages simultaneously, and understand all of them by the time he’s 3.  

Because we have different brains, we learn differently. Children absorb everything in their environment – effortlessly, easily, unconsciously. We, unfortunately, don’t learn that way.

One brain is not better than the other. But, as you can see, we are totally different. Here’s another example:

Children are sensorial learners. That means they learn through their senses. A child who rips a book is fascinated by the feeling of paper ripping and crumbling in his hands. A child puts his fingers in his drinking cup and swirls it around because he’s experimenting with water. A child making a mess at meals is because he’s learning how to eat. 

Now, from our point of view, as the parent who has to tape up the book, wipe up the water and clean up the mess (along with the six zillion other things we have to do as a parent), it could look like he’s screwing around, doing it on purpose, or maybe, he’s spoiled and ‘bad.‘ With our logical, rational adult minds, we make these kinds of assumptions. 

So there’s the child’s brain – and then there’s the adult brain. Two totally different brains, trying to co-exist.

Because the adult is bigger, Mom and Dad can dominate the child and physically remove him from anything they don’t want him doing. But the child! The child is driven to learn. In fact, that internal force is so strong, deep and instinctual, his whole existence depends on it. Therefore, just so you know, the next chance he gets, he’ll probably do it again. 

So we essentially have two choices. We can overpower the nature of the child (and watch those wrinkles and gray hair proliferate) OR we can align ourselves with it. 

Here’s what happened to me a while back. So it’s bathtime. B and M are playing in the tub with their various water containers, pouring water from one container to another. Well, someone came up with the bright idea of pouring water outside of the bathtub and onto the floor. The first time this happened, my husband came in yelling, “No water outside the bathtub!” then grabbed both of them out of the bath and ‘made them’ clean it up (except with two-year-olds, they love to clean and eagerly fetched the towels to clean – so it wasn’t the punishment Mark had in mind). Of course that didn’t stop them the next day (and the next), when we again, promptly took them out of the bath, shook our fingers at them and raised our voices to teach them a lesson. 

Until I realized this: they love water. They love pouring water. Trying to stop them is like trying to stop a seed from growing or the sun from coming out in the morning. 

So I decided to align myself with Nature instead. 

The next day, while the girls were in the bath, I took out a large empty garbage can and put it next to the bathtub. I told them, “If you want to pour water, you can pour it into the garbage can. See if you can do it without spilling any on the floor!” 

It worked. They immediately filled up that big garbage can with cups of bath water. Carefully, too. I then dumped out the water in the toilet. And then they proceeded to fill it up again. Before they were halfway through the second round, they had already lost interest and started playing with their sea animals.  

Children will want to play with water all the time. They will drip, dribble, grab and smear while eating. They will want to touch everything. They will run around and climb on everything. They will sing and talk loudly, even when it’s inappropriate. That is their Nature. You can come down on them, punish them, manipulate them, distract them (and I’ll admit, there are a few moments when you might need to do these things). But consider working with Nature, at least most of the time. Find creative ways for them to get their needs met. They are going to follow their nature, whether you like it or not. So find a way so they CAN do the things they want to do: let them walk around freely in a new environment and touch things (they are capable of learning how to stay away from danger and handle fragile things), give them something they can climb on in the house, give them stacks of paper to rip, let them play with water that extra 20 minutes at the sprinklers/sink/bathtub, etc. 

When you hear yourself saying, “No!” or “Don’t do that!” mostly, I suspect, it’s because you’re not aligned with the Nature of the child. So whatever you’ve got to do, figure out a way to align yourselves, my friends. It’s your path to peace and sanity.

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It was bathtime. B and M are sitting in the bathtub while I’m reaching in to brush M’s teeth. She shakes her head from left to right and back again to dodge the toothbrush. I give up. She then takes her bath spray bottle and starts spraying first Brooke, then me. I say sternly, “You can spray water at the wall, but not at people.” Then she opens the bottle, takes a sip and spits the water out of the bathtub onto my feet. “No. Spitting. Water.” I say even more loudly. She throws the spray bottle on the floor, turns her head toward the wall and refuses to look at me. 

I was about to blow up when I stopped myself. Something was off. This was not a matter of setting more boundaries. She was doing this on purpose. Then a voice from somewhere reminded me: Connection Before Correction. 

I picked her up out of the bathtub (we have a rule that when you pour water outside of the tub, you get taken out). She starts to resist, but then, I get really close to her cheek and start sniffing exaggeratedly. “Hmmm…your cheeks smell good!” She smiles. I then take her feet and put it right up to my nose, “Do your feet smell good?” She laughs. I then bend her over to smell her back. She squeals with delight. Then she gives me her arm to smell. Then her hair.  “Smell, Mama!” We play and play. I finally give her a huge hug, look her in the eyes and tell her that she is delicious-smelling all over. 

I pick up her toothbrush. Without me saying a word, she opens her mouth and waits. I take the opportunity and give her a thorough flossing and brushing (I do this twice a week and let them brush their own teeth the other days). She then puts on her pajamas, runs off to play and is completely absorbed in independent Lego-building till I announce that it’s bedtime.  

In those moments of anger and frustration, I often want to go the route of yelling and punishing. I mean, don’t you? On bad days, I’m already yelling before I can stop myself. But over and over, I’ve witnessed just how ineffective it is. It may work for a few moments, but then it’ll just pop up somewhere else.

It turns out nothing works as well as connecting – I mean the genuine kind where you are fully present while playing, tickling, hugging, kissing, loving them. 5 minutes of it, and I find the children often go off to do their own thing: happy, fulfilled and satisfied.