Day 168: Montessori

So I've been reading about Montessori education. It's pretty attractive, on a few levels:

• It lays out an organized path of development, beginning at birth, thus giving us an educational roadmap we can follow starting immediately. In short, it gives us something constructive to do.
• Most of what I've read so far about the Montessori method makes logical sense to me, with only a few exceptions.
  
• The profile of the Montessori kid in-action is one of prolonged attention to whatever he/she is studying. This contrasts sharply to what I was capable of doing when I was young, and I feel I'd be much better off if I'd been capable of this kind of engagement. If they know how to make it happen, that's compelling to me.
  

Of course, my friends who have kids see this as an attempt to neatly encapsulate my fatherly responsibilities into an easy-to-follow system—an over simplification of what is needed. At the same time, they probably also feel it is overly ambitious to believe one can strictly adhere to any single "doctrine" of educating/raising a child.

I'm not worried about being too narrowly focused. Mary and I are just not that rigid. And from the first chapter of the first book I've consulted about Montessori, it's clear that it would be impossible for us to create a bedroom environment that's even 50% in keeping with what Montessori adherents would recommend. We just don't have the space!

As for relying on Montessori as a guideline to give me a (false?) sense of direction/confidence while I wait to undertake the greatest responsibility of my life... I'll plead guilty, but won't stop reading. I think there are some valuable insights in the Montessori approach, and I won't ignore them just because my curiosity is motivated by uncertainty.

One friend, whom I've noticed takes an admirably Zen approach to raising his two children, rightly interprets my interest in Montessori as a need to understand what will be expected of me, as a father. He told me: "don't worry about knowing what to do, your children will tell you what they need, you just need to learn how to listen to them"—best advice yet.