Dear friends,
Let us tell you about some obstacles that newborns face on their way immediately after birth. Dr. Silvana Quattrocchi Montanaro received her degree in medicine and surgery, with a specialty in psychiatry, from the University of Rome. In 1955 she joined the staff of the Rome Montessori School for Assistants to Infancy, where she has taught mental hygiene, child neuropsychiatry, nutrition, and obstetrics. Dr. Quattrocchi M. is currently the Director of Training for the Assistants to Infancy course in Rome and San Diego. She has been the Director of Training for the AMI Assistants to Infancy courses in London and Mexico City and was responsible for bringing toddler training to the U.S.
Here, what she shared:
Restriction in Movement and Observation
These are also obstacles in the road of optimal human development. Let us listen to Montessori:
The first activity of the newborn, which may well be called a conquest, is the use of the senses. The eyes are bright and eager, not only affected by light. Newborns are active seekers in the world and looking for impressions. (1)
The newborns are endowed with an urge or need to face the outer world and to absorb it. We might say that they are born with the psychology of the world conquest. They are in love with the world. (2)
It is clear that children come into this world eager to explore it in order to know it, to orient themselves in the new place and to make sense of it. Let us remember that they already have all the hundred billion neurons in their brain!
What do we usually offer in response to this necessity and eagerness for knowledge? With affection and best intentions we buy fancy clothes that restrict movements and cribs and beds with bars. Imagine the type of vision available for these children who, being in the supine position, must look night and day to a white ceiling. And, if this is not enough, let us think about the type of fragmented environment they can see because of the bars of their bed.
What happens to the psychology of the conquest and to the love for the external world that these children have inside? How can they use the human tendencies at work in this period, especially the human tendencies of exploration, orientation and order that are there exactly for helping them enter happily and securely into the new life? Montessori gave us, a long time ago, the right answer:
One of the greatest helps that could be given to the psychological development of children would be to give them a bed suited to their needs … Children should be given a low couch resting practically upon the floor, where they can lie down and get up as they wish. Like all the new helps for children’s psychic life, a low bed is economical! In many families this reform in a child’s sleeping habits has been achieved by placing a small mattress on the floor and covering it with a large blanket. Children can thus of their own accord go off cheerfully to bed in the evening and rise in the morning without disturbing anyone. (3)
The low bed Montessori proposes is the true, first act of love towards the newborns! We, the people who work with children at the beginning of life, use these beds, and we can testify that newborns love them, look around with great interest, concentrate for a long time on the objects available to them. Sooner than we can think, they come out of these beds and also slither back there when they want to sleep. They have perfectly understood that it is comfortable to stay there when in need of rest.
What about another sensitive period, the one for assimilation of images that also starts at birth in order to make it possible for these children the storage of perceptions in the part of the brain that can be considered their personal illustrated dictionary?
Psychosomatic medicine explains to us that: “In the first phase of organization of our perception it is fundamental to have the possibility of coordination between motility and sensations.” (4) In this same book we find: “When the energy of the sensitive periods cannot be used in real situations, it loses its right direction and it remains fixed in a lower stage of development.” (5)
Simplifying these mental, evolutionary mechanisms, we can say that the internal program of the newborns must find in the environment the possibility of being satisfied so that the sensorial impressions can become perceptions, be stored in the memory and, when needed, be retrieved for their mental work.
CLOTHES are another tragedy for newborns during the first months and years of life. In some maternity hospitals, during the preparation courses, mothers are told to contain tightly the newborn because they need to be contained! What about the significance of coming out of the womb, called by Montessori “the first act of independence” and “coming out of a prison”? (6)
We can conclude that the basic needs of human newborns are:
• direct contact with mother;
• space for unhindered vision and movement;
• exploration of the new environment with all senses; and
• order in which actions are done to them and order in the environment.
More recently, many researchers and scholars have tried to better understand prenatal life, newborns and children of the first three years. None of them refers to Montessori, but they say exactly what she discovered so much before. Let me give just two examples:
1) From A Primer of Infant Development:
Infancy, the brief period between birth and the use of language, is the most critical period of human life, the period when all the basic human abilities and all processes of thought are formed. The newborn is a fascinating organism and can learn from the first day. The experiences of this period have a permanent effect on the following development. (7)
2) From The Scientist in the Crib:
• in the crib is the greatest mind … p. 1
• at birth newborns have in their original program … p. 7
• they have a flexible brain … p. 8
• they are scientists capable of thinking, observing, reasoning, and actively research in the environment … p. 13 (8)
It is not necessary to continue, but let us remember that it is our responsibility to become aware of the obstacles which impede the right development of our children’s lives. Montessori recommends this when she says:
What has to be defended is the construction of human normality. Have not all our efforts aimed at removing obstacles from the child’s path of development and at keeping away the dangers and misunderstandings that everywhere threaten it? This is education as help to life, an education from birth, which feeds a peaceful revolution and unites all in a common aim, attracting them to a single center. Mothers, fathers, politicians: all must combine in their respect and help for this delicate work of formation, which the little child carries on in the depth of a profound psychological mystery, under the tutelage of an inner guide. This is the bright new hope for mankind. Not reconstruction but help for the constructive work that the human mind is called upon to do, and to bring to fruition, a work of formation which brings out the immense potentialities with which the children, the sons and daughters of human beings, are endowed. (9)
References:
1. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind. Clio Press Ltd. 2000. p. 90
2. Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood. 23ibidem, p. 91
3. Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood. Ballantine Books 1972. p. 74, 75
4. U. Piscicelli, Introduzione alla Psicosomatica. P. 172
5. ibidem, p. 119
6. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind. Clio Press Ltd. 2000.
7. T.G. Bower, A Primer of Infant Development. Freeman USA 1977. pp. 1, 2
8. A Gopnik, A.N. Meltzoff, P.K. Khul. The Scientist in the Crib. Morrow, New York 1999.
Chapter 1
9. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind. Clio Press Ltd. 2000. pp. 15, 16
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