montessori parenting

Andrew and I are starting to think about kids, so we’ve been bingeing Montessori youtube videos.

Raising your kids “Montessori”-style means teaching them to be high-agency from a young age. Montessori youtubers have all sorts of tactics for this.

For example, everything in a toddler’s room should be sized for the toddler. Mirrors and hooks are hung low on the wall. Furniture is small so that the toddler can access their stuff themselves. (Just make sure all furniture is fixed to the wall, so that the toddler doesn’t accidentally crush themselves).

A toddler should sleep on a floor bed. This allows them to get in and out of bed on their own. In hindsight, putting your child in a crib seems strange to me; You’re basically putting them in a child-size jail that they can’t leave without you letting them out. If they wake in the middle of the night, the only way they can get out of jail is to cry until you hear them. If your child sleeps on a floor mattress, and they wake up in the middle of the night, they can just get out of bed and play with their toys.

Anyhow, the Montessori At Home series does a far better job of explaining these concepts than I can. Here’s a good starter video: