My 2 year old said Sawwy…

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Aug 8th

A couple of weeks ago, Janet Lansbury reposted a story from a RIE parent, the gist of it was, the mom calmly sets boundaries and consequences, when her 2 year old son threw sand at her face, she acted, allowed him to cry and released his emotions, and then took him home. 5 hours later, after he had slept and was all rested up, he came to apologize to her out of the blue.

It was unbelievable! My son is also 2 years old and he definitely isn’t as eloquent in his speech. Now I had only started this RIE thing with him a couple of months ago, but still I can already see that his whole personality is different when he’s around me Vs. when he’s around his mom or the helper. Through learning the RIE’s way, I’ve definitely learned to read him a lot better now. For example, yesterday, we were riding in the car when he wouldn’t stop moving around, hitting the windows, throwing things from the backseat pockets, etc… His mom tried to offer him food, drinks and other things to calm him down, but I could see that he was tired and needed an adult’s help, so I set the boundaries and when he broke it, I calmly told him: “I can see that you’re tired and you can’t control yourself anymore, so I’m going to hold you in your seat by my side.” He stopped acting up immediately and sat there in my arms, leaning against my body. Within 2 minutes, he was asleep. I told my wife that I’ve learned this from Janet Lansbury’s blog. At times like these, they’re telling us to please help stop them, and we need to change from offering them more choices to removing them.

Similarly today, when he began to get tired before noon, he started acting up again, his mom was losing patience with him and I knew I had to set the “go to bed” consequence. So I calmly told him that if he threw the hard toys again, I’ll have to take him inside the room. (Actually not a good, related consequence. I need to find a more natural step in here.) Sure enough, he threw one on purpose, and I told him “OK, I have to take you in”. He started crying and throwing a tantrum as I tried to pick him up. I let him lay on the floor and said “You can cry, I know you’re upset I need to take you away, but I already said I didn’t want you to throw the hard toys, it may hurt your sister if you threw it at her. How about this? Would you like to bring a book to bed with you?” Once again, he responded calmly, picked his favorite book and walked into the room with me. Within a few minutes, he was asleep!

The big incident was he threw and broke his glass bottle while mom & the helper were busy attending to his sister. We were all startled by the sound of broken glass, I was pretty calm but I think my tone of voice still had a little bit of “annoyance” in it. I told him I didn’t want him to throw glass and food, this broken glass is dangerous… bla bla bla.“ Unfortunately, I think I broke his concentration on the situation at hand. He started wandering off while I was “nagging” him. Still, I put on a sad face and when he talked to me, I told him I’m not happy because he broke the glass bottle. And then we parted ways, he left with his mom and I went out to work.

When I see him at home after dinner, we played with his trains for a little bit and then went to bed together. While in the room, he needed help opening the water bottle, I asked if he needed help and then helped him. He then took the bottle, drank some water, and then said to me: “Daddy… Sawwy” (Sorry).

I said “Thank you” and give him a hug and a kiss. I actually have no idea what he was apologizing about, but just the fact that he knows, and didn’t needed one of us adults to force him to “Say sorry!”, made me so happy :)

Montessori Vs. Reggio Emilia Approach in Hong Kong

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:46:00 +0000

Montessori is a popular education system developed by Maria Montessori in 1897. It seems to be gaining popularity here in Hong Kong, many parents know about it but very few know about the Reggio Emilia approach. Recently, the Montessori playgroup L goes to started to have troubles with him, and it made me think more about the difference between Montessori and Reggio. I thought I’d share a bit of my own experience in the two in this post.

My son has been going to a small Montessori playgroup since he was 1 and ½. I used to like it there with their specially designed toys that train toddlers’ motor skills. Now that he is 2 however, I begin to think that some of the materials and their ways of teaching are not so appropriate.

First of all, because L is old enough and “ready”, we agreed to move him up to the big kids group, (L was really starting to get bored with the little kids group anyway,) but problem with the big kids one is that parents are supposed to leave the kids by themselves. L isn’t ready for this and he cries. The teachers would hug him and tell him to stop crying because “he’s a big boy and everything is OK”. Well, obviously everything is not OK. What’s even worse is that when they see that my boy won’t stop crying, they’ll use me as a condition / threat, “if you stop crying, I’ll ask Daddy to come in, but if you cry again, I’ll have to send Daddy away!” Through RIE, I’ve learned that we shouldn’t stop toddlers from crying. Crying is how they express their feelings, and we shouldn’t prevent them from doing that! And from Reggio Emilia’s Diary of Laura, I’ve learned that separation is an extremely sensitive matter for toddlers that must not be taken lightly! We adults don’t think twice about it, but for a 2 year old, separating from his parents to stay at a relatively unfamiliar environment, e.g. school, is a big fucking deal!! (Sorry!) It’s not something to be forced onto them!!

Next, they’re teaching the Toddlers to eat and drink by themselves by providing food and water with small size plates and utensils. This part I like, but I just heard about an ever better example from Sarah, which is to provide a day’s worth of snacks in a place accessible to them, not only can we provide good, healthy fruits and snacks, but it can also teach them to save their food for later. I feel this is a good way to introduce deferred gratifications.

Finally, my biggest gripe is about the structure of putting kids into age groups and designing tasks for each group. For example, the toys at my son’s Montessori place are designed in Korea and are meant to teach math & logic through games. I guess they’re good but I don’t really like them. They also have a set time to different activities, like at the end of each class, they’ll have singing time. It disturbed L’s concentration as he was testing his hypothesis on some new discoveries!

If you look at the key points of Montessori education, you see that last point – Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators… back in 1897!! Once again, I’m sure she did a marvelous job studying the children, but at the end of the day, it’s still giving kids a “choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options”, based on an adult structured curriculum, which means it’s still getting kids ready for the adults’ view of the world.

In contrast, Reggio Emilia Approach allows children to construct their own understanding of the world. Their own hypothesis. Their own interpretation. There’s no “One Right Answer” at the end of an activity. The children speak and see a hundred, and in Reggio Emilia, we adults do not take away ninety-nine! We learn to observe, appreciate and make apparent each child’s unique learning stories to their parents (and other adults)! The more Reggio “documentations” or “learning stories” you read, the more you’ll see how much your childhood sucked! :P You’ll realize children are far more capable than we give them credits for, and if you provide them with a good, open environment and respectful guidance, they’ll amaze you with things you didn’t think were possible! Honestly, once you learn to see your child in Reggio’s eyes, you cannot turn back to any other way, stuffing knowledge into their minds.

In short, Montessori’s categorized and prescribed approach is pretty good, definitely much better than the regular, traditional education system out there. Toddlers can learn from older kids and everyone “live” in a highly disciplined classroom, doing semi-free activities that have hidden agendas to teach them things we adults prescribed. Meanwhile, Reggio Emilia’s completely child initiated approach, where adults care deeply about the children’s relationships with their peers, their parents, teachers, and their environments, we may provide “seeds of knowledge” based on our limited knowledge, but what the kids make of them, how their path of learning goes, we do not limit at all! It’s a subtle difference but it means the world!

Or, to use The Matrix as an example again, you will raise a Morpheus with Montessori, but you may raise a Neo with Reggio Emilia! ;–)

Toddlers on Nick Wang

My 2 year old said Sawwy…

Montessori Vs. Reggio Emilia Approach in Hong Kong