Reforming the Reformers (The Lego Box)
We’re so focused on political life but what about our own personal lives?
As Maria Montessori said, “We all need to be changed.”
#children #parents #teachers #knowthyself
“Reform the reformers”, from Maria Montessori Speaks to Parents, p.2
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About Jesse McCarthy
For 20 years, Jesse McCarthy has worked with thousands of children, parents, teachers and administrators — as a principal for infants to 8th graders, an executive with a nationwide group of private schools, an elementary & junior-high teacher, and a parent-and-teacher mentor.
Jesse received his B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and his Montessori teacher's diploma for ages 2.5 to 6+ from Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), the organization founded by Dr. Maria Montessori.
Jesse has spoken on early education and child development at schools around the globe, from Midwest America to the Middle East, as well as at popular organizations in and outside of the Montessori community: from AMI/USA to Twitter. Jesse now heads MontessoriEducation.com and hosts The Montessori Education Podcast.
Transcript: Reforming the Reformers (The Lego Box)
Hey everyone. So we're here day after the elections here in the States. Uh, pretty wild times. So it made me think of how strange it is how we are sometimes politically the opposite of what we are in our personal life.
So just to give you two quick examples, I have a bunch of Liberal friends and some of them will say that Trump is a bully. And then, Interestingly enough, they will go home and yell at their own children.
And then on the other end, I have Conservative friends that they often talk about freedom and then how Kamala, Biden, the Democrats generally are trying to take America away from freedom, and yet with their own children, they often send them to traditional school and that's public or prep school where their kids literally will be sitting in desks all day long, all week long, all month, for years, just listening to somebody tell them what is supposedly true. And they're sitting in a chair. So basically have very, very limited freedom as children. So it's just this interesting kind of contradiction between what we espouse politically and often publicly, and then in our own private lives, we sometimes are the exact opposite. It's bizarre. In a way we treat children in the kind of way that we ourselves don't want to be treated.
Now, I hope you don't take this as an offense. If you consider yourself a Democrat or a Republican and you take offense to this, because I will tell you, as you'll see later in the discussion today, that's I fall into this trap as well in some respects.
So Maria Montessori talked about what we really need to do as adults, and really parents and teachers in particular. She said this, "There is an anecdote of a king who wished to reform his kingdom. He sent for his counselors, and one wiser than the others said, 'First, you must reform yourselves, you and your court.'
Okay, Maria Montessori goes on, "It is a question of reforming the reformers. We all need to be changed." So, reforming the reformers. And notice that Maria Montessori includes herself. We all need to change. And I definitely include myself. In fact, the reason I'm sharing this today is I wanted to tell you about a story where I very closely lost my cool on my own son.
Um, Ragnar is about two and a half years old now, but this happened a couple of months back. So we were in the house, I'm walking by his room and I look over, just glance over, and he is scaling his dresser in there. Kind of almost like a mountain climber. And he, you know, these handles could really, bend down and break.
The whole thing wouldn't fall because it's attached to the wall. But, I'm looking over and seeing him doing this. I have told him before not to go up that dresser. My wife has as well. And I just look over and he's doing that. And I gotta say, I just happen to not have a lot of sleep the night before.
So you can imagine how I was feeling in that moment. Now, I'm curious, what would you have done if you were in my shoes? I mean, for real, like, I'm gonna tell you what, what I ended up doing, but maybe pause this and just think about it. I'm curious. Actually, funny enough, I was giving a talk, uh, in Santa Cruz a couple weekends back, and I asked all these parents the same question, and this dad immediately yells out, "I'd say, get your ass down!"
You know? I, I mean, I love the honesty. And then funny enough, there was this other person, I think it was a mom. It could have been a teacher without a child. Who knows? But she says, "Oh, I'd get him a ladder." Everybody was kind of laughing because I was like, oh, what a sweet sweet lady. Anyway. What would you do in that situation?
And then what we'll do is I'll come back out for the intro and we'll, we'll talk that through.
The educator, Dr. Maria Montessori once said, "The child developing harmoniously and the adult improving himself at his side make a very exciting and attractive picture." Welcome to Montessori Education with me, Jesse McCarthy, where we talk raising children and educating students while bettering ourselves right alongside them.
Okay, so we're back. You guys know the situation. Two year old son, Ragnar, he's scaling this dresser right in front of me, and he's not supposed to be doing this, you know, um, and he, incidentally, he can't see me. I'm kind of hidden behind the doorframe. So I'm in this situation. What do I do?
And I'll tell you just, just honestly and directly, my first reaction was somewhat like that dad's, uh, in that, in the Santa Cruz audience, where I just want to be like, I "What the hell are you doing?" Um, that's how I felt. That's how I felt. But I'll tell you, I did not act on that initial anger. Somehow I was able to control myself and say, Jesse, take a break, man. Take a break. And I'll tell you that one alone was a win for me. I think when you can kind of question your immediate emotional response, that's pretty huge. So anyways, I paused, I took a breath and decided just, just observe, just watch, see what happens. And at this point he had reached the top of the dresser.
And he's peeking over it and his face was so interesting to see for me. He had this alive look. I mean, if it could talk, it might say something like, "I made it... now I can finally see what the heck is up here!" Like it was just this excitement, joy. It was kind of like a thrilling moment, you know?
And I got to tell you, when I saw his face. Anger was gone, completely. It was like, boom, out. And it was just this delight for me as a dad watching. Um, and, and I understood it. I was able to understand what he was attempting to do. So at that, at that point, I walked in, you know, I still didn't want those dresser handles to break because he was, you know, putting all of his weight on it at this point.
Uh, now when Ragnar saw me, he immediately climbed down to the ground. You know, kind of like he'd been caught, stealing the cookies at a cookie jar when people say that. Uh, and then I actually felt bad, because for him, he had just accomplished a feat. Like, I really believe that's how he was viewing this, like, he, he wouldn't journal, "I just accomplished such an amazing feat," you know, but he just had the emotion, the feeling, um, but now he's feeling like he's been caught.
That sucks. I don't want that to be the feeling when I walk in the room, you know, what my son feels.
But then again, I got to say for those naysayers out there, there is some validity to the feeling. Like I had told him before not to climb up the dresser. So he was clearly not following my direction.
And he does need to learn to follow directions, you know, particularly here when he could literally break something. And then no doubt in other situations that could be more serious where he might really hurt himself or potentially others. So there is self discipline. There's a need for following directions, all that stuff.
But the reality is that here my son was climbing up there not to break some rule of mine or my wife's. Or because you know children are naughty or because he wanted to test me, you know all that kind of stuff that we hear. But he was just climbing it for the simple reason that he was genuinely curious to check out like what was up there.
And when I realized that in the moment, it was kind of my understanding of children that just kicked in. Again, versus that immediate emotion, which, you know, where's that even coming from, of anger or just upset. Almost like this is an injustice to me that he's, he's doing this.
So using what I know about children, I was able to take a moment to think before, again, acting on the emotion before I made my move.
So setting the scene here, I'm looking at Ragnar. He's looking dead at me. I don't know what exactly he's expecting, but it probably was not what he got.
Um, so I said something, I don't remember the exact words, but something like, "You know, I can see you want to check out what's up on top of the dresser. Is that right?" He nodded. Uh, then I said, "I, I mean, I get that, I understand you were curious, but please do not climb up the dresser the way you did. These handles could bend and potentially break."
You know, and I said it just like that to super chill, relaxing, and as if he could understand every word I was saying, which I think he can, but, you know, even if he couldn't understand every single thing, I'm talking to him as if he could understand. Then I showed him what I meant, you know, with the handles pressing down a little so he could see that If you put a lot of weight on it, they probably would bend or break.
So he's following along, listening, watching me. And at this point, I, I mean, I got to tell you, I had some real deep empathy for him. I was putting myself in his shoes. I, it just happened naturally, cause I was just thinking of myself in this situation as a child, like it's so exciting for this accomplishment.
And then your dad, the person you really love is telling you basically. "Hey, you messed up," you know, if I had said that, um, so anyways, I said, "You know, Ragnar, I know I just said that about climbing up the dresser. We cannot have you doing that. Um, but I can tell that I think you probably still want to do it, you know, to see what's at the top?
And he's looking at me like, Uh, yeah! So I just asked super casually, like, "Do you want me to pick you up and show you everything that's up there?" And he was pumped. He's like, "Yeah, yeah!" And so I did that. And I described everything that he was seeing. So I'm lifting him up and being like, Hey, this is that.
And there were only a few things up there and most of them he already knew, but he had never seen them from that angle. So for us, it's just, Oh, yeah, this is all this stuff is up here. But imagine being in his shoes. He had never seen it from that top viewpoint. These kids are curious, you know? Then I set him down.
And, just a thought came to me. It wasn't just seeing these things that he wanted. Like, he also liked that he was the one who got himself up there to see them. It's one thing to, to get up to the top of Mount Everest. It would be another thing if somebody just plopped you right down there.
That's, that's a big difference. I'm not saying this is the equivalent here of his scaling the, the dresser, but hopefully you get my point.
So he didn't need me to pick him up; he got up there himself. So it actually all reminded me of that classic line of Maria Montessori. You might know it if you're familiar with her.
But of what a child says: 'Help me to do it by myself.' So no doubt I had that or something similar in mind when this thought came to me. I was like, "Hey, Ragnar, walk with me for a second." So we both walked out of his room to my wife and my room next door. And I, I brought him over to this container box I'd gotten for him a while back.
It's like a big Lego. It looks like a Lego, but it's a box, you know, the cube shape, maybe like a foot wide, foot tall, that type of thing. And you can store things inside of it, but it also can serve for a super simple stool. So I pointed at this Lego box and told him that if he ever wants to look up Uh, you know, top of the dresser he could use this box as a stool to do it; again instead of climbing the dresser on the handles. Then I placed this Lego box right in front of the dresser so he could see what I meant. He immediately came over, stepped up on it, and checked out everything on top of the dresser. And this time, again, for himself without any aid from me.
And he was so stoked. Then I'm like, "You know, you can also use this Lego stool box thing to look out the window and see the cows, too." Our neighbor has grazing cows, wild enough, and Ragnar loves them. I mean, we're close to the city, like five minutes to the city, but we're a little ways out where the neighbor can have cows.
Anyhow, he loves them. He loves looking at them. So Ragnar picks up this stool Lego thing and puts it on top of his bed (he has a floor bed), and he looks out the window. And now he is beyond excited. Uh, then I tell him he can put the stool anywhere he wants, if he ever wants to get a little higher to see things.
So he looks at me in that moment. I can't, with just such satisfaction. It was like, I'd helped him solve one of like the world's biggest problems. And then he just goes back to looking at the cows. And I mean, like, as if I didn't even exist. And that was it. It was such an awesome experience. And that's, I mean, both for my son Ragnar and for me, which I love moments like that as a dad.
Now I got to say, I'm not telling you this to pat myself on the back for this amazing thing I did, for in reality, my emotion, my immediate emotion was like, I want to I'm going to lose my cool on this kid. That's how I felt. And this is how I felt after like I've been in this work for 20 years. I was a teacher myself for 10 years. I was a head of school for infants through eighth graders. I was trained by Association Montessori Internationale - the association that Montessori herself, Maria Montessori began. I run MontessoriEducation.com, like this is my work, and I, I like to believe that I'm very good with children and definitely with adults, but I still can lose it, or at least emotionally feel like I'm about to lose it.
Um, and so that's the work that I believe I have to do. And I think that's the work that we all have to do.
When Maria Montessori talks about reforming the reformers, that's what she's getting at. We need to start looking within, working on ourselves so that we can aid the children in our lives and just enjoy being together.
So I generally do believe that politics, going back to the beginning, is somewhat of a distraction. We spend so much time thinking, talking, arguing, debating, losing our cool about a political candidate. How much time in comparison do we spend thinking about who the child is in front of us. And then ultimately, who is the person looking out at the child?
So, at root, know thyself, Socrates ancient Greek teachings. All right. That's what I got for you guys. I'm sorry if it got a little heavy, I didn't want it to get too heavy. It's funny, actually, last weekend, this past weekend, I was in Canada and I decided to get a little edgy and I opened the talk, like 200 people, by, you know, what does freedom mean to you guys?
Um, and they start yelling different things out, you know, independence, all this stuff. Somebody said, "George Michael!" being silly. And I said, well, down South, you know, in America, this is what freedom means to us. And I had this Trump superhero image fly down on the screen, you know, and they're like, what? And then I had Kamala fly in as this super woman.
So, you know, I'm trying to make, make light and chill out a little bit in politics and then get to what's really important for all of us is, the work that we do with our children as parents and the work that we do with the children in our classrooms. And we can all be united on that. If anybody out there is saying, 'Oh, I don't have any work to do in understanding children more', or 'I don't have any work to do and understanding myself more. I'm perfectly fine.' Well, you know what? That would be a problem for sure. Um, and hopefully we can all agree on that.
All right. I'm Jesse McCarthy with MontessoriEducation.com. I hope you enjoyed this. Uh, if you like the podcast, please share with your friends, colleagues, person you think is a jerk and needs to change the way they are, whoever, um. And I hope you just enjoy this generally.
I'm having fun here. Um, even though I've lost my voice. I think I've been speaking too many times in a row. Oh, and if you happen to be in, let's say, North America, anywhere in America, and you want to go to Michigan, I am speaking at the Michigan Montessori Society next, next weekend. So not this weekend, next weekend.
Um for more information, feel free to reach out. You can always reach me at Jesse, jesse@montessorieducation.com. All right, everybody. Take care. Adios for now. Oh, my son is just entering so it is time to go. Adios...