Inspired

So as we've been thinking about how to prepare for this baby, we've explored a number of different ideas. But we keep coming back to an experience we had a couple of summers ago. We visited our friends Jenny and Troy and their 4 month old daughter Elsie in Minneapolis, and we were inspired by Elsie's room. It was like no other nursery we had ever seen - no crib, no cutsie characters adorning the walls, no loud plastic toys strewn about. Instead there was a regular mattress on the floor, the walls nearby were lined with mirror, and a small shelf with one or two wooden rattles was next to the bed. Black and white portraits of family members were mounted at baby eye level. Jenny explained that this was the Montessori way of doing a baby's room - natural for them, as Jenny is a Montessori teacher.

What struck a chord was that the room was for the baby - for her exploration and enjoyment - prepared for her specific needs. A stark contrast to the usual infant's nursery, where things are typically designed to confine baby or otherwise serve the convenience and/or whimsy of the parents. I freely admit that I have coveted the cute crib sets at the store - especially the chenille one with the bumble bees!! But the baby won't care at all about the cuteness of the bedding. The baby will care about seeing the world, making visual maps of the environment, absorbing information about physical relationships and laws, and as soon as possible, moving out to inspect things more closely.

Jenny recommended a few books and a catalog company called Michael Olaf, which we promptly checked out (see our registry). I'll try to summarize a couple of the more interesting ideas - Jenny correct me if I'm wrong!! One of the central ideas is that children develop best when provided with an environment that challenges them at just the right level. Too much difficulty leads to excessive frustration, but too much help takes away the opportunity for them to problem solve, develop new skills, and ultimately, build up their self esteem. So one of the most important roles of the adult is to monitor and prepare the child's environment. This allows the child to do things for themselves "just as soon as they are able." We love how this philosophy encourages kids from the very beginning to gain self esteem from their own accomplishments instead of from adult approval. How empowering for them!

We have been impressed with the implications about baby accessories and toys in particular. First, it suggests that unrealistic toys are of little use to a child whose purpose is to learn about the real world. Give them things made of real materials: wood, metal, cloth. Montessori has lots of carefully designed and time-tested toys that are not only lovely, but have characteristics that present fundamental information about size, shape, color and movement separately so the child can focus on these different features without distraction or overstimulation. Second, it reveals how a lot of the gadgets we have for our convenience could potentially hinder the child's development in various ways, or at the very least, reduce or postpone certain learning opportunities. Swings, cribs, bouncy chairs, etc., might work to soothe baby (or parents' minds) but in the long haul, really just restrict baby's movement. Another interesting example, the high chair: a fabulous thing to confine baby during mealtime, and raise them up off the floor to save Mom and Dad's backs as junior learns to eat solid foods. Montessori suggests that the child can learn more by using a child-sized table and chair instead. The child has to learn the consequences of getting up before the meal is over. They become responsible for their own behavior - an important lesson I have also learned from dog training. They can also be taught from a much earlier age to help set and clean up their table. Yes, you're most certainly asking for more messes in the beginning, but you deal with it...kids and floors are washable!

Anyway, I don't want to end up repeating the entire contents of several books here, but hopefully you sort of get the idea, and maybe you're just as intrigued as we have been. Ultimately, we are going to give these funny ideas a try to start out. We're going to make the Montessori nursery, and we want to try to provide the simple toys and other environmental things. We want to try to go without a high chair, swing, bouncy seat, etc. We want to avoid the crazy plastic baby entertainers and the like. In general, the simpler it is, the better. This style feels right to us and really fits in with a lot of the other lifestyle changes we've made in the last several months - trying to purge artificial chemicals and unhealthy foods and products from our home. It is definitely less convenient this way, but we're already sort of used to giving up some convenience for a worthwhile benefit, so it doesn't bother us!

Now this doesn't necessarily mean we are going to send our kids to Montessori school - we haven't decided about that yet! About a year after we first visited Jenny, Troy and Elsie, we saw them again and asked if they thought the way they did things was useful, or made any difference? They couldn't say for sure, but Elsie is certainly happy, precocious, independent and self-assured. Maybe its just her personality, but the Montessori lifestyle probably didn't hurt. And for us, its aesthetic is appealing enough to make it worth trying. Maybe just like a lot of other things for babies these days, its just to make the parents happy anyway!