Part 4 - Reflections on the Activities of Independent Discovery in the First Years of Life: Freedom and Limits

An article by Grazia Honegger Fresco

A Nido operated by Percorsi Per Crescere in Bergamo, Italy where simple curtains provide for endless opportunities of the binary nature of activity (behind/infront - and thus the 'scientific explanation' for the love for PeekaBoo!)

"We confronted these other educational methods (Elinor Goldschmied, Emmi Pikler and CEMEA) with our Montessori ideas over and over again, in our meetings and focus groups, in gatherings with parents and during our observations of children. We consistently confirmed that these ideas blended together in harmony with the Montessori principles of 

• preparing the environment on the basis of direct observation of those who are using the it, and
• allowing for complete and continual freedom of choice

Freedom and Limits

Individual freedom is important. But we can't live in a community and grow and prosper together without living by a set of rules. In childcare programs and schools, these rules must be established based on the capacities of the children and their level of development.

For instance, in the first three years many indirect YES's are provided through the messages available to the children in the environment. There are very few NO's, but the one's present allow the children to learn healthy boundaries and to control urges and desires. They also help the children develop self-esteem.

Two examples of important boundaries or limits are:

• we do not take an object away from another child and 
• we always put away the materials. 

Reorganization, in principle, is done together with the child, but the "how" and "when" is to be reinvented every time for each child in each situation. And it is simply done with a kind gesture and a smile rather than with a spoken expression of words.

We know as Montessorians that rules and boundaries have to be applied in harmony with the SENSITIVE PERIODS in the first three years of life. The sensitive periods, also known as critical periods, can be found in any infancy, both in vertebrates as well as invertebrates. All species have their very own specific sensitive periods. Multitudes of interesting academic work can be found on this topic.

• ethologists Konrad Lorenz and I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt
• primatologists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey

• attachment and separation researchers James and Joyce Robertson, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth
• anthropologist Barbara Rogoff

Rogoff investigates cultural variation in learning processes and settings. She is particularly interested in cultural aspects of collaboration, learning through observation, children's interest and keen attention to ongoing events, roles of adults as guides or as instructors, and children's opportunities to participate in cultural activities or in age-specific child-focused settings.

• psychoanalysts Rene Spitz and Anna Freud

Rene' Spitz film (1952) "Emotional Deprivation in Infancy"

• pediatrician and clinical psychologist Arnold Gesell
• psychiatrist Daniel Stern

Anyone who works with children in the first years of life should have
a good knowledge base of these authors.

But not only these authors...

Here is a book that helps us understand the psychology behind mental asylums, boarding schools, jails, orphanages and other institutionalized control of groups of people:

Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates by Erving Goffman (1961).

It is always the same thing: the denial of other people's dignity. 

This is the brutality that can happen in childcare when a child is separated from his mother and his crying and screaming lasts for many days, and the adults say, "He will get used to it eventually". He is not given a chance to have a more gentle and gradual separation, and the adults say, "We can't have parents in the environment getting in the way". 

This is also what happens in many institutions that call themselves educational where the children must follow a program of activities and are expected to "behave" a certain way and are judged on their ability to obey the authority of the adults. This is what happens to newborns as they enter the world in many hospitals, taken from their mothers and treated as objects rather than persons, subjected to procedures and protocols and stripped of their dignity."       GHF

The next chapter will explore some misunderstandings that are commonly seen in the application of Montessori in educational settings, stay tuned!