The Education Babies Need
My interview with @babieswithb about viewing babies with compassion and scientific curiosity
In our culture, babies are characterized variously as eating, sleeping, pooping machines, as tiny tyrants or dictators in diapers, and as immobile lumps or helpless blobs. In more saccharine moods, you’ll hear platitudes about babies as bundles of joy, miracles, or precious angels.
The Montessori view of babies is, at once, more reverential and more grounded. Maria Montessori described young children as the “builder[s] of man”. Every capability we have, she argued, we owe to the young child we once were, who built it all from the ground up.
Far from being helpless sacks of potatoes, in Montessori children are seen as capable agents and eager workers. From birth, they need educational support and guidance so they can do all their important work.
Thus, when I found out I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to sit down with one of my favorite Montessorians to help me deepen my understanding of this framing. I’m so thrilled to share with you my conversation with Beatriz, a certified Montessori guide for children ages 0-3, known online as the baby whisperer.
Why Montessori?
Samantha: How did you find and get interested in Montessori as an educational approach?
Beatriz: All throughout childhood, I was frustrated with school. I got good grades; I generally found most academic subjects easy; but I also found it really boring, irritating, a was a waste of time. I had so much energy and so many things I wanted to learn and do, but instead I had to just sit down like every other child and go through the program at the same pace.
It didn’t matter if I was slower or faster, or if I was completely disinterested, or if I wanted to learn something else. My individuality wasn’t respected.
What was different for me is that I saw this as an injustice and I never fully let it go. It sucks, I thought, to be seen and treated like this. It sucks that this is just what it means to be a child. And I thought, “Okay. Most kids grow up, they become adults, they go to work, and they forget about all this because it’s not their problem anymore. But I’m not going to.”
So, in high school I went to an alternative, more project-based school and I got really into researching alternative schooling methods. And, in one of those internet rabbit holes you find yourself in, I discovered Montessori. I felt that she really reflected my thinking. She shared my passion for the plight of children in schooling and in society. I liked her backstory as an activist and that she was fighting for children’s rights.
But also, she had a scientific spirit. Her approach says, “Let’s find out what children actually need, what fulfills them, what helps them grow. Let’s start experimenting and develop our method from here, instead of starting from the idea of keeping them busy, keeping them entertained, or preconceived notions of what should be in a curriculum. Let’s start with the child. Let’s start by looking at the child.”
I thought, obviously, this way of approaching things is correct. So, I read The Absorbent Mind at 16 and even though it’s old fashioned in some sense, I was in awe; I really enjoyed it.
Why babies and toddlers?
Samantha: What made you gravitate towards getting a Montessori certification specifically for ages 0-3?
Beatriz: As a teenager and in college, I worked a lot as a babysitter. I helped out in schools and projects with kids. So, at the same time as I was researching and learning about Montessori, I was getting practice noticing children in this new light.
I always loved babies and young kids. I was magnetically drawn to them, and they were magnetically drawn to me. I think babies just like when people like them back and when they feel at ease, because a lot of people are stressed by babies.
But I didn’t think I would pursue this interest professionally. I think a part of me felt like child care and education weren’t serious, worthwhile endeavors. They weren’t respectable or something.
In college, I had a bunch of courses on linguistic development and child psychology. And I was really intellectually fascinated by all the development that happens in the first years. I couldn’t get enough information. I was really obsessed with these classes and watching all of the experiments and the things that we have figured out about children.
And because I was already kind of seeing children in this Montessori light with compassion and scientific curiosity, I got very upset when I realized how young children are treated in common traditional educational settings and also just by families in society.
And right as I was graduating college, a zero to three diploma course opened up in my city, and I applied immediately. It was really perfect timing.
Do babies need education?
Samantha: For those outside the Montessori universe, it might seem kind of strange to start this story with your dissatisfaction with conventional k-12 education and then to learn that the alternative education you’re focusing on now is meant for babies and toddlers.
Many people don’t think ‘education’ and babies/toddlers go together. Indeed, they’re quite suspicious, even scared, of education for this age. How do you think about it? Is it right to call what you do as a Montessori guide ‘education’?
Beatriz: In my view, and in the Montessori conception of the term, education is something that we do from birth. It’s not formal education from birth in the term of schooling, but there’s really no need to think about what we do in the home and in the family and in the school in this separate way.
Education is the process of helping a child adapt to the time and place they live in. This is something Maria Montessori said, and I think it’s so important to think about it this way. Educating a child is giving them the tools so that they can grow ever more capable and independent. We’re building a bridge between them and the world around them, because we have been here for a longer, we have context, we have ways to help them, and that’s our role as adults: to be a prepared adult.
Samantha: Tell me more about that role. What do you do as a Montessori guide for this age?
Beatriz: What we do with babies and toddlers doesn’t really differ, in principle, from what we do with older children and teenagers. We observe and study them to know what they are capable of, what they need, what they’re still working on, and then we create an environment where we can scaffold the learning of those new skills in a way that is respectful and non-coercive, so that the child can follow their own internal desires and drives, and we give them as much freedom as possible within reasonable limits.
This is going to look very different dependent on age, right. What you can allow a baby to do versus what you can allow a teenager to do is different. So, we provide educational materials that help them develop the skills of the stage that they’re currently in. And then we work individually or in small groups. We’re observing, keeping tabs on their development, to know when to introduce a new challenge, and we are helping them develop socially with other children and adults. This is all education, and it can be done at any age.
Something that people wouldn’t typically consider education with babies and toddlers is caregiving time: feeding, hygiene, dressing, soothing. These things are so much of a baby’s life and they can also be thought of as education.
Everything that you are doing with a baby, if it’s purposeful and mindful, is a way that you are educating them on how the world works, how they expect to be treated and to treat others. All of this is fundamental learning. They are probably learning more than they will ever learn in their lives.
Samantha: I think your metaphor about being a bridge is really helpful for thinking about those caregiving tasks. We’re being a bridge to all of life, even with something that seems really basic and simple and “non-academic” like a diaper change or bath.
Babies are capable
Samantha: Another component of education in the Montessori conception is how we view children. And you recently published an article, “What does a newborn need?” where you emphasize that you see, even newborns, as tremendously capable.
Many people do not think newborns are capable of much of anything, to put it mildly. So, why should we think that babies are capable? What reasons are there to challenge the commonplace view of the baby-as-a-helpless-blob?
Beatriz: There’s kind of this running joke or idea that, “Oh, human babies are so useless. All of the other animals are born and they can walk, blah, blah, and humans are useless.”
No, human babies are not useless. We know that they are active participants in a natural birth process, for example. If the birth was peaceful, newborn babies can use their senses and their motor skills to crawl up to the breast to nurse if they’re put on the mother’s stomach. They can cry loud, powerful cries to ensure that we give them food. They can soothe themselves in the same way that they have been doing for months in the womb.
When they are born, they have this sudden, huge shift in everything in their lives, and then their internal systems start to work: digestion, breathing, etc. So, in the most simple conception, this is a very capable creature, right? They are ensuring that they can stay alive, either on their own or by ensuring that other people will take care of them. They’re equipped to do so.
Then, if we think then of the first three years, how most children develop, it would be insane to think that they’re not capable. With more or less assistance from the world around them, almost every child learns to roll, sit, crawl, climb, run, eat solid foods, control their sphincters, gesture, babble, understand and speak these really complex languages with almost adult level fluency, grasp lots of complicated concepts and be able to manipulate them, move small objects with precise movements.
Adults, perhaps, compare themselves to babies, and think, “Oh, they’re blobs, they’re uninteresting, they don’t really move much.”
But babies and other young children are super, super capable. They are exerting effort basically all of the time and growing immensely every day. The early years are a period of extreme challenge and overcoming their weaknesses every day, like every single second of the day.
I feel a sort of reverence towards babies, because I imagine myself in their place, and I think I would be exhausted if this was relative.
Samantha: I often think about how if an adult grew in some skill as astronomically as a young child does over their first three years, that person would be a prodigious genius. Like, I imagine myself going from zero gymnastics ability to being Simone Biles in three years. That would be inconceivable. But there’s something very analogous to this achievement happening with a young child. And not just in one skill, but across every domain of life!
Beatriz: And even though there’s a lot that we can do to support this development, as the adults around them and in preparing the environment, most of the child’s achievement is done out of sheer determination.
If you have ever observed a baby trying to roll, they will try over and over and over and over again, or if they’re trying to learn how to climb stairs, or a toddler trying to carry something really heavy, or pick up an object that’s really small. They will try over and over and over and over again, and they don’t want to quit, even if they get frustrated.
Simple at-home Montessori activities
Samantha: You create a lot of really great resources to help parents incorporate Montessori principles into their daily life. One of the free resources on your website is a collection of simple Montessori activities that parents can do with their really young children at home.
Could you share a couple of your favorites and what makes these activities special?
Beatriz: I’m always trying to make this style of education and of parenting seem more accessible. I had this idea of creating a guide of activities that you could do that are basically free or very cheap, and you can do with things that you already have at home.
One of my favorites for babies is what I call the discovery basket.
This is essentially just a basket or a small container where you offer your baby a selection of household items that are safe for them to touch and to bring to their mouths, but they’re things that maybe they don’t get to usually interact with: kitchen utensils, objects from the bathroom, objects from the office etc.
Babies are always observing us and trying to understand and fit into our world. They are really fascinated by the objects that they see us use much more than they are by toys that they really don’t see other people use for anything.
This is a good chance to let them freely explore these objects. Maybe you can even sit with them and give them the names for the objects. And it costs nothing. You can do this with what you have, and you can do this basically from the time that a baby is comfortable on their tummy or sitting.
For the toddler stage, one of my favorites is peeling a hard boiled egg.
Maybe this isn’t what people are imagining with Montessori, but in Montessori classrooms, children are peeling a lot of eggs!
This activity is very challenging for toddlers. It requires a lot of concentration and fine motor skills, plus it’s a way that they’re being a part of the family and help prepare food or a snack for themselves.
One thing that will help parents make this activity successful is preparing the activity in an orderly way so that they know what to do next. This can be done with things that are already at home, like a small tray or placemat to define their workspace and to contain messes. Then a place for the egg, a discard bowl for the shells, and then a place to put the peeled egg at the end, like an egg cup. Typically, you would set everything up from left to right, and you would model it for them first so they understand what to do.
Toddlers have a deep, deep sense of order, even if it might not seem like it to us, so they are really helped by having external order in the environment so things make sense and feel intuitive.
Samantha: You mentioned that people might not think of these activities as ‘Montessori’. But if we go back to what you started our conversation with, this idea of education being a bridge to life, they all make sense. We’re trying to help children make sense of the world and feel confident acting in the world. The resources you’ve created are all simple but powerful ways that parents can do that.
Beatriz: Yes, as the adults, we welcome children to the world. We are the primary ‘Montessori’ material. We are the primary resource children need in order to learn from the world and to adapt.
Avoiding Montessori Slop
Samantha: On the other end of the spectrum, there are a ton of materials marketed as ‘Montessori’ that aren’t at all aligned with the approach or the goals of Montessori. I’ve seen you criticize some of these things and I’d love to get your full perspective. What makes a Montessori busy board, for example, not really Montessori or not as developmentally ideal as peeling an egg or exploring a basket of real objects?
Beatriz: There is a lot that is sold under the term Montessori, since it became such a popular word, which seems to cover everything from like wooden toys to remotely educational books or games, and it has nothing to do with actual pedagogy. And I get how this can be really confusing for parents and grandparents and people buying gifts.
Samantha: And they are really well meaning. They’ve probably heard something about how Montessori is the gold standard and they just want to do what’s best for their child.
Beatriz: Yeah, it can come from a great place. But the market is really saturated with these nonsensical products, honestly, so I find it’s helpful to separate out a couple things.
There are Montessori materials
And there are a lot of toys and books that can be compatible with the Montessori approach (or incompatible)
A Montessori material is a specific, close ended object or activity that you use in a Montessori classroom to help children to train a specific skill. These are great but they’re not strictly necessary at home.
When parents are looking for Montessori-compatible things to get for their child at home, I would suggest:
Look for things that are based in reality
I‘m talking about these first three years, right? As the child is developing their idea of what the world is, their sense of reality, we want to offer them items that reflect reality. We want books, for example, with realistic themes, not talking animals.
Young children are just so curious and so surprised by normal things around them, everyday situations that we don’t really need to go into fantasy. And at this point is kind of it’s kind of counterproductive, because it’s not telling them the truth about the world that they’re in.
Look for ways to involve them in real work
The problem with the faux-Montessori busy boards is that they substitute real work for something fake. We give them mounted light switches, locks, gears etc. that do nothing instead of letting them use real objects that accomplish real things.
Look for passive toys, not active toys
You want to look for toys where the child is doing most of the work themselves, instead of toys that are entertaining the child as they sit passively.
Try to isolate the difficulty
If you are offering something a little bit more close ended like a puzzle, try to isolate each little difficulty or skill. This is something that we do in Montessori materials, to preserve order and to help the child focus. But it’s very common to see in these so called educational toys, an overwhelming object that does a lot at once.
There will be a cube for inserting shapes, but it also has buttons, and then it shows the letters on one side and the numbers on another side. And it’s just trying to do so much. It’s more for the adult’s eye and mind than the child. The child is not getting as much from that as we think they are.
Tailor toys and materials to your child’s stage of development
We don’t want to be offering something that is too boring or too difficult. A baby who has just turned one, for example, probably won’t benefit from a wooden puzzle with 10 animals, but they would benefit from a puzzle with only one shape or a few shapes.
Just because something is wooden and looks ‘Montessori’ like what we think Montessori looks like if we Google, it doesn’t mean that it is. In fact, it’s much more important, if we are thinking of something being Montessori-compatible or not, that it is adjusted to this specific child at their stage.
What Montessori parents discover
Samantha: You work a lot with parents 1:1 to help them put these principles into practice in their lives. I’m curious if there’s a common thing that that parents end up surprised about once they start applying Montessori at home with their babies and their toddlers.
Beatriz: There’s a general thing that I think happens, which is that parents are often underestimating their child without realizing it. They are really surprised when they finally take the step to offer their child a challenge, something that they thought they couldn’t handle, and the child steps up to that challenge.
There’s a general fear that the child is still too young. They’re too young for a bed on the floor, because they will wake up and destroy the room. They’re too young for eating on their own, because they’re going to throw everything everywhere, so you have to spoon feed them. They’re too young to help getting dressed, because it’s just going to take too long, and they can’t do it. They’re too young to learn to use the potty, because they’re going to just pee on the floor, and they and they’re going to have problems forever.
So there’s this fear, and it’s very common. But then the parents are very surprised, like, “Oh, actually, my child can already do this.” And in fact, the child could not only handle it just fine, but they wanted that challenge, they wanted to go to the next step.
Montessori really relies on trusting your child—trusting that they will rise to the occasion. And they often do.
The most important thing
Samantha: If a new parent was in front you and you could only tell them one thing to do for their child in the early years, what is the most important thing you would want them to know?
Beatriz: The most important thing is to treat a child with respect. We can’t go any further if we don’t start there. A person who is not treated with respect or dignity is already impaired in their ability to go through life and learn.
Adults will sometimes think, “Oh, the baby doesn’t really perceive things yet, or remember things”. So, it’s easy to get into this routine way of treating them, almost like objects. Things are done to a baby instead of with them. We don’t tell a child what’s going to happen, what we’re doing to them, where they’re going. Things are just kind of happening to them, and they have no control or are not informed.
I often ask people to imagine being old or injured with little control over your body and communication, and then to think: how would you like to be touched? How would you like to be talked to? How would you like your caregivers to be? What would you like them to do? This is how we should think of babies.
Treating babies and toddlers with respect means talking to them as people, handling them with care and noticing the signals of their body, not ignoring them, giving them time to process and respond to what we say and what we ask, observing them and honoring what they show us about themselves, giving them plenty of time and space for concentration, for movement.
Part of respect is to not hold back in supporting their pursuit of independence. I think it can be deeply disrespectful for our child if we stand in the way of their journey towards independence. They are seeking dignity. It’s something that they deeply crave, and we can often get in the way for our own convenience.
And there’s also this idea, then, that the baby has no real ability to choose, no real preferences, so the only important thing is to keep them alive and entertained so they don’t bother us. This is not a very respectful way to treat a child.
So if we can treat them with more respect and more dignity, I think that’s the most important thing, even if we don’t do any of the other things that I would recommend, this is the most important.
Samantha: It goes back to what you were saying earlier. In Montessori, we try to view babies, and all children, with compassion and scientific curiosity. This is the spirit I think we should all try to cultivate.
Beatriz (@babieswithb) offers parenting consultation calls on a wide range of topics: from preparing for a newborn, to tackling toilet learning, to designing spaces in your home that empower independence.
You can schedule a call on her website, find free resources, and purchase Montessori resources in her online shop, as well as find her writing here on Substack and across social media as @babieswithb.