Montessori parenting, based on the beliefs and studies of Maria Montessori, encourages children to learn through play and experience and can be an all-encompassing lifestyle.
What is Montessori Parenting?
Montessori-style parenting is an approach that allows children to learn through free playing and exploring. Children can do what they want (to an extent) and follow their inclinations to gain a sense of self-worth at an early age.
Montessori parenting encourages parents to spend quality time with their children and includes them in their day-to-day home life activities (called practical life) because this is their children’s main desire. Parents should focus on creating a safe environment where children can come, go, and play freely without harm.
Instead of what you think of as traditional discipline, Maria Montessori encourages parents to set boundaries. This becomes the focus instead of consequences and punishments. Overall, Montessori parents will think of and respect the child as the person they are and who they are becoming by encouraging freedom in their environment and ithe child’s self-discovery.
Montessori is Attachment Parenting ?
Attachment parenting and Montessori parenting are similar in some ways but not the same. Attachment parenting encourages relationship building through maximum time together. It makes it seem like you have to be attached to your child physically, often through babywearing, co-sleeping, and never letting your child be away from you. This parenting style has become popular but is a gross misinterpretation of attachment theory.
Montessori parenting doesn’t focus on this intensive “closeness” to your child at all times. Instead, it’s grounded in parental responsiveness, empathy, respect for the child, and a child’s ability to be independent when securely attached to their primary caregivers (which mostly happens naturally with a responsive caregiver).
Why A Montessori Home ?
Because the Montessori parenting method focuses on developing the child as a whole, it becomes more than a parenting method and can become an entire lifestyle.
Montessori-inspired parenting can help eliminate behavior problems in your home. It will allow children to explore in a safe space. It also provides more family time, as it causes parents to be more intentional in spending time with their children.
In a Montessori home, parents allow their children to complete tasks independently rather than stepping in and helping (which usually turns into doing it for them), leading to them doing daily tasks independently. This can mean putting on their clothes, making their bowl of cereal, or any other simple daily tasks.
“We must help the child to act for himself, will for himself, think for himself,this is the art of those who aspire to serve the spirit” Maria Montessori.
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