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PARENT'S SECTION - ARTICLES
June 19, 2004, 8:58PM
A lesson for Father's Day
RICK CASEY
Copyright 2004 Houston ChronicleNO POLITICAL red meat today. It's Father's Day and, begging the indulgence of my privacy-valuing family, I'm offering a Father's Day lesson.
In America, Montessori is widely thought of as an avant-garde educational approach designed for pampered middle-class and upper-middle-class children.
Once, when my daughters were in an excellent Montessori school, an acquaintance allowed as how his child needed more discipline than that.
Maria Montessori would have been amused. I watched Montessori faculty control classes with a velvet fist that would make the strict nuns of my youth envious.
Montessori was, a little more than a hundred years ago, one of the first female physicians in Italy. They honored her pioneer status by putting her in charge of an asylum.
So her theories weren't developed while working with children of privilege, but with street urchins and others at the asylum.
When my daughters were attending Montessori school, my wife and I took advantage of an evening course on the writings of Montessori offered to parents.
At that time, my 3-year-old was punishing us for the unwarranted pride we had taken in how well-behaved she had been during what are commonly known as the terrible twos.
One of our daily struggles was getting dressed in the morning. She would refuse to put on the clothes set out for her but would not select any of her own. The tantrum trigger was quick, and soon one parent would be holding her while she screamed and kicked her legs as the other parent tried to force pants onto her.
On occasion I resorted to spanking. It failed, made me feel like a bully and just made this tough, tiny girl even more defiant.
Then, in our Montessori readings, we came to a passage on how to handle a child who is acting up. This, I thought, is something I need to read.
Her prescription, like many of her theories, defied common sense. For the misbehaving child she recommended two steps.
The first was to remove the child from the group and take him to a quiet place.
Maybe that was new back then, but it was by now conventional. Parents call it time out.
But the second part was to smother the child with attention and affection.
That surprised me. We were to reward the child for misbehavior! This was un-American.
But Maria Montessori was considerably smarter than I.
So the next morning, when the battle resumed on schedule, I picked up my screaming daughter and removed her from the room with her sister and mother. I walked down the hall to a quiet place and stroked her and hugged her and calmed her.
Within three minutes, she was calm and cooperative. We returned to the room and she happily got dressed.
The next morning, we again went through the revised ritual: tantrum, removal and affection, happy cooperation. In the weeks, months and years afterward the remedy worked whenever I was wise enough to use it.
At our next weekly class I offered my testimony like a convert.
"You know what you did, don't you?" asked the teacher after I related the happy ending. He clearly was not surprised by my experience.
"I have no earthly idea," I said.
"You've reminded her that she loves you," he said.
Write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com.
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