Montessori Parenting – Encouraging Children to Grow into Better and Brighter Adults

Montessori education holds immense importance. It instills in children a love for learning and develops empathy, independence, and social justice in them. Focusing on book learning alone isn’t sufficient. If you want the best for your child, you need to provide them with an environment that encourages play and learn. This is the reason why a lot of parents enroll their young ones in Montessori schools. But did you know you could be a Montessori parent yourself?

While teachers at a Montessori are educated and trained to deal with young children, Montessori parenting can be equally, if not more, effective for your child’s early learning. Montessori parenting involves providing your child with an environment where they can play freely without being punished for something you wouldn’t want them to do. Living the Montessori philosophy at home isn’t easy, but it has an everlasting impact on the child and parent. In fact, Montessori parenting is quite intimate. You get to establish a deeply connected relationship with your child.

Understanding Montessori Parenting

Montessori parenting focuses on the needs for learning in children through play and their desire to take up responsibility. It urges the parents to nurture the desire to learn in their children and give them the space and freedom they need to learn without any bounds. Montessori parenting suggests you only intervene if your child is doing something that might risk their safety or when your child needs something. Montessori learning discourages parents from being helicopter parents and requires them to give their children the freedom they need to learn and grow.

Montessori parenting is a respectful parenting approach that helps children grow to their full potential academically, socially, and emotionally and empowers them to be more confident and passionate as individuals.

Day-to-Day Montessori Parenting Practices

Montessori parenting requires a lot of conscious effort from a parent’s side. Practicing the Montessori philosophy at home can be extremely daunting, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it at home. You most certainly can. I’ve listed some Montessori parenting practices that you can incorporate in your everyday life and assist your children in growing to be brighter and more independent adults.

Respect Your Child

Respect your child just like you respect your elders. The idea of respecting your child may seem odd, but it’s one of the basic elements of Montessori parenting. Just because your child is still very small to understand doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be respected. In fact, this is one of the reasons why you should respect who your child is as a person. This would make them feel loved and heard, and they will know every individual is to be respected. The factor of respecting others, elder and young, will be instilled in them from a very young age.

For example, your child is asking for your attention, and you are busy with something, don’t neglect them. Instead, tell your child to give you some time to come back to them. When you do so, make sure you return to them with the acknowledgment that they waited for you so patiently. It may seem insignificant, but making these habits can leave a lasting impact on how your child grows to be.

Promote Independence and Freedom

Giving your child freedom and allowing them to be independent is something most parents struggle with. Let’s be real – it’s not easy allowing your child to be on their own when you can help them around, but it’s extremely important for their development. If you interfere and intervene too much, it’ll only affect their intrinsic motivation and self-confidence while impairing them to make the most out of their learning experiences.

Children love to be free and on their own. They love the idea that they have control over something. In fact, when you allow your child to do something on their own, even if it’s something as small as changing their clothes or fetching their own plate from the kitchen, it’ll make them feel accomplished. It’ll boost their self-esteem, and they’ll learn not to be dependent on anyone from a very tender age.

Allow Freedom within Limits

As much as giving your child freedom is an integral part of being a Montessori parent, defining limits is necessary. Freedom within limits involves allowing your child to carry out the daily activities as per their interest while setting certain limits. Make your child understand that certain things are unacceptable for you. Any activities that may hurt them or risk their safety are the ones where you need to set limits. Be vocal and tell them what’s not okay.

Give Your Child Space

Another key element of Montessori parenting is to give your child sufficient time and space to explore and experiment. Children’s minds don’t function as adults, and it can get difficult to understand sometimes. But you need to be careful. Hovering around your child all the time isn’t the best of the ways. The more space you give your child – with supervision, of course, the more they’ll learn on their own.

Use Rich Vocabulary around Kids

If you think sitting your child down to learn new words is going to help you, you’re mistaken. What will help is incorporating new words into your day-to-day life. Your child may not understand new words in the beginning and may ask you what they mean or may pick up the meaning themselves through contextual clues. With time, they’ll adopt these words and use them in their conversation. Using rich vocabulary around kids will improve the quality of their language and enhance the word pool that will help them in the future.

Observe Your Child

Another significant feature of being a Montessori parent is to observe your child while they’re playing. Observe what excites them, what frustrates them, and what bores them soon. All of this will help you understand what your child likes and dislikes, and you can cater your activities at home according to what your child prefers. And that’s how you will be able to engage your child in play and learn activities more efficiently.

Why Practice Montessori Parenting

Montessori parenting is a philosophy that you need to practice. The question is – why?

There are numerous reasons why practicing Montessori parenting is a good approach. Let’s have a look at the most prominent ones:

Helps Unlock Children’s True Potential

It helps parents understand their children better and help them unlock their true potential. It’s a way of understanding what your child enjoys more and what they are more inclined to, allowing parents to tailor the activities accordingly so that your child can enjoy maximum learning through play.

Maximize Learning

Montessori parenting requires parents to be extra vigilant and observant around their kids without constantly hovering around. It helps them identify the “sensitive periods,” which is the time during which a child is likely to learn the most with ease. Once you’re able to identify these sensitive periods, you’ll be able to maximize the learning process by utilizing that time in the best possible manner.

Boosts Self-Esteem

Children don’t like to be pointed out and corrected all the time when they do something wrong. Montessori parenting ensures that parents aren’t around their kids all the time. If a child does something wrong, they self-correct, which gives them a sense of achievement and boosts their self-esteem.

Best for the Child

Since Montessori parenting requires parents to give their children space and time, it enhances their learning process. Through this approach, parents are able to cater to all individual needs of their children in a way that helps them flourish both emotionally and academically. Montessori parenting is the best for your child in all regards.

Children are Motivated Internally

When you expose your child to the right environment, they’ll pick the right things. They’ll be motivated to explore and learn on their own. Children who are motivated internally are more likely to grow into successful adults.

Children Grow to be Happier

Montessori parenting instills positive discipline in your child that makes them grow into happier and more positive individuals.

Establishes Focus

When you allow your child to perform activities that are designed to suit their interest and preferences, they’re more likely to spend more time doing them with more focus. This improves their ability to focus and concentrate, which will promote healthy brain development in your child.

Children Learn to Respect Others

Montessori parenting encourages parents to respect their children, which teaches the children to respect others, both those older than them and those younger. Montessori parenting ensures that your child grows into an adult who is respectful towards others and their choices.

The benefits of Montessori parenting go far beyond the early learning years. It helps in the development of your child emotionally and academically and improves the chances of your child growing to become more successful and respectful adults in the future. While the idea may seem too far stretched to you right now, but trust me when I say – Montessori parenting is the best parenting approach that you should practice with your kids at home!

Ashley Yeo