Part 2: Reflections on the activity of independent discovery in the first two years of life: Elinor Goldschmied and Emmi Pikler

Photo from the orphanage Pikler ran in Budapest Hungary

This is the continuation of an article by Grazia Honegger Fresco where she explains how the Montessori 0-3 project has incorporated the work of other important research. Grazia has been a part of this project for 70 years - since the Assistants to Infancy Montessori School was opened in 1947. See part 1 for the beginning of the article.

"The first educational proposal that we confronted our work with was that of the English psychologist Elinor Goldschmied (1910-2009)

Elinor Goldschmied focused on these aspects of children's primary needs:

• the need to be actively learning from the very beginning of life
• the need for consistency and order in all of their experiences
• the need to develop concentration

Working in the post WW II environment, Elinor realized there was an urgent need to develop suitable materials for the poor children and the war orphans and as early as the 1950's she created a collection of materials with which the littlest ones could learn. She dedicated great care to the study of appropriate materials, and at the same time, she focused on understanding how to build a stable relationship between a child and her adult caregiver, looking for an answer to how the child can be at peace in the absence of her loved ones. Elinor developed training methods for educators that offered continuous support for their work with children so that they were ever more aware, and mindful, and at the same time, learned to avoid the fatigue of burnout.

The second educational proposal that we confronted our work with was that of the Hungarian pediatrician Emmi Pikler (1902-1984)

Emmi Pikler was the director of an institute known as Lòczy (named after the street in Budapest where it is located to this day) that was home to orphaned children between the ages of birth and six years. She is known for her important work carrying out extensive studies of the natural development of motor skills in the first years of life by allowing children under her care to develop all of their movements in the context of total freedom to follow natural instinctive movement patterns. 

She achieved the same results over and over again: confident children who conquered the standing position and who did so without any help or external stimulation, who were never put into a position to be prompted to be on their feet before they were ready to do so on their very own. She mentored hundreds of families to follow this same practice with their children and she conducted trainings for the institute's caregivers to give them the knowledge to use the same methods. These intensive trainings were always executed such that the staff themselves were in a calm and emotionally safe climate. 

Pikler inspired movement environment

At the orphanage, each day found the staff and children living in great tranquility, where caregivers used soft voices in their conversations with the small group of children entrusted to them. Every day had a comfortable repetition, unfolded slowly, and was executed using a continual practice of careful observation and deep respect for the children's spontaneous activity. Verbal and non-verbal communication between adult and child was palpable. The children were given the freedom to freely choose how to live their day, following their own personal initiatives from the very first months of life. 

Pikler's observations and research spread around the world thanks to her books and the drawings done by Klara Pap, as well as several videos that showed the reality of a life begun at Lòczy."                                          Grazia Honegger Fresco, Castellanza Italy

It is thanks to a friend of Pikler's, one of the parents she mentored, Magda Gerber, that Pikler's work has become known in the USA and elsewhere due to the dissemination of the RIE method (resources for infant educarers).   


Stay posted for PART 3 of this article:
"The third illuminating educational proposal for us was the indirect training of adults developed by CEMEA" (the Educational Center for Methods in Active Education founded in Paris in 1936)