Audrey Tan | Exploration of Inquiry & Learning | PlayMoolah

So here I am back in the bay area. 8 months have zipped by and everything here does not seemed to have change very much. It’s possibly that my perspective and outlook to events and things have very well been shaped and sharpened.

All seems to be a matter of how one chooses to perceive the circumstances and trials around them. I was touched and inspired by a meeting with Mia, a Mom of two kids, 5 and 12. Mia spent some time over dinner to share how her experience of seeking the best for her very special child and how she turned her child’s learning around. Often some children do not quite fit into schools due to the traditions, systems, ways of teaching and learning found in schools. Does your child come home crying? Upset over what school has done? Feared going back to school day after day?

What do we do when these things happen? We let it slide by because we have no clue what to do next. Or do we simply settle for the simplest alternative – convenience? Unrelenting standards never to settle for less will some times help to push us through to get the best for our loved ones. Persistently striving to search for the best school around that fits her first born, then 6. From researching in magazines to forums, to speaking with countless people and going the lengths to convince the people around her that turning a blind eye to her child’s happiness in school was simply, not alright?

Mia taught and showed me the love a Mother has for her child, despite circumstances that one resides in, has many alternatives. It’s very much the same picture to begin with, it’s just painted in a different way, played out with workarounds in a different manner.

Today, the little one spends time at The Nueva School, for the gifted.

Cheers to all the Moms who fight every day for the best for their little ones – Thank you.

It’s interesting to peer back into our days of old. The memorable or maybe not so memorable times of our childhood?

Dr Maria Montessori has left an impressionable footprint in my view of child development and learning. Looking at the initial stages of child development, first three years of growth, Montessori calls the absorbent mind, ‘a special mechanisms exists for language.’ Not the possession of language itself, but the possession of this mechanism which enables men to make languages of their own, in what distinguishes human species[1].

As Mario M. Montessori explains in the Education for Human Development: Understanding Montessori, The absorbent stage where learning is mainly influenced by the result of unconscious mechanisms determined by the emotional development of the child and in turn is dependent on the adult who cares for it.

Introjections, imitation, and identification are of particular importance in the formation of behavior patterns and the acquisition of cultural attitudes.

This tells the story, Children See. Children Do.

I find myself almost as a replica of my mother’s way of being. She’d teach, “Others before Self.” And being in the company of children recently surfaced this point, I found myself teaching the little ones almost naturally the concept of sharing and giving before gratifying their needs. And reflecting on what Montessori mentioned, not only were the good results channelled this way, where imitation is concerned. Boy do I scream like my mother when I do

What about your version of replica? How has that changed the way you think about the world?