When the child plays, he is doing his job: dedicating himself with commitment and attention to a task, in fact, develops and refines skills that will be useful to him throughout the course of life
“Dinner is ready, stop playing, please wash your hands and come to the table,” says Dad Lorenzo in Clara, 4 years old, intent on inserting a series of wooden rings in an auction, respecting the order of magnitude.
“Dad, but I’m working! Can I end up? » “Sorry, you’re right. Finish your job and then reach us with your hands clean ».
Work or game?
Why Maria Montessori called the activity of the child “work” rather than “game”? It is a complex theme to be addressed with parents, who often associate work on “duty”, “sacrifice” and “heaviness”, when in reality the meaning that the pedagogist gave it was very different. Maria Montessori, in fact, connected the term “work” to its inherent dimensions of commitment, importance and seriousness. The game, on the contrary, already contains the opposite concept in the name: it derives from the Latin Iŏcus, which means joke or burland.
For this reason, in an almost provocative way, the activities that are proposed to children, or that they organize independently, are definable as work, that is serious and important activities that allow the refinement or conquest of skills and skills.
So Clara does not play to insert rings in an auction, but works on the development of the eye coordination, to the improvement of her ability to complete a task and to improve the competence to discern and order objects from the largest to the smallest. Likewise, taking a bath or dressing a doll allow children to work on fine manual skills, empathy and autonomy in personal care; Pass the chickpeas from a bowl to a plate with a spoon will make them more skilled in eating alone (without being helped); Playing the market will allow them to develop moods, experiences and social roles.
Even for very young children the same reasoning applies: Pietro, 15 months, transports a series of objects from one place to another with commitment and seriousness. Although this action may appear to be without utility, meaning or importance, it is appropriate to welcome it with respect, because for Peter it represents a workout of its ability to act on the surrounding environment based on one’s will.
Respect the work of the child
Reading childhood actions as an act of self -construction makes it easier to imagine how the adult should place himself towards a child who plays or, better, who is working. Dad Lorenzo, offering Clara the opportunity to end his business before going to the table, did not support a whim or spoiled the girl, but recognized the importance of the activity that the daughter was carrying out. Maintain a low tone of entry, do not intervene if not on request, grant time, space of choice and autonomy of organization in activities They are educational actions that respect the work of children, accepting their importance and seriousness
How do you recognize a child at work? It is very simple: if it takes place an action any action in a relaxed way, moving in order and with serious and concentrated gaze, most likely it is working. If, on the other hand, it acts in a disordered way, mistreats objects and is easily distracted, perhaps it is not at work and needs to be helped in the search for a constructive activity in which to invest its energies. In this case, proposing another occupation can be an excellent initiative.
Promote concentration
Often children are asked, from 6 years of age, to focus on what they are doing, not to distract themselves, to be careful. This competence, however, like any other, needs to be exercised since the first years of life. A child of a couple of years that does not respond to our requests because it is absorbed in his activities, is experiencing concentration, attention and commitment, and so that this method of acting is maintained and consolidated over time should be protected and favored when it manifests itself spontaneously. Dad Lorenzo, covering the girl’s plate in order not to make the soup cool, allowed Clara to conclude a work that began, allowed her to strengthen her natural ability to concentrate and engage, and this competence will be acquired by Clara in an increasingly stable way.
It is not possible to teach to concentrate, but attention can be promoted when it arises authenticly: interest generates concentration, and learning takes place in a state of concentration.
It cannot always be, but almost always yes
At this point someone could object that It is not always possible to allow children to conclude what they are doing: For example when it’s time to go out or when it’s time to go to sleep. This is true, and in this case it is necessary to ask the child to collaborate, renouncing to complete their projects or at least accepting to interrupt them. But on many occasions this intervention can be avoided or postponed, and it is precisely in these circumstances that adults can choose to be on the side of the children and adapt to their rhythms and the deep needs of discovery and growth.
The children are very good at realizing the understanding of the parents, and if they perceive that, when possible, their work is not interrupted, they will be more willing to collaborate when they are requested. We must then evaluate, from time to time, the real need to intrude or disturb and, after choosing, act in one sense or another. Our intervention, in the event that it is essential to divert the child from his interest, should be delicate, including; We should underline how necessary (not free), serious and inevitable, remembering, remembering that the more children are the greater their difficulty to understand: it will be much more complex to convince a one and a half year old child, compared to one of 4, of the opportunity to start cleaning the table at the time of bed. In this case, it will be better to show us particularly persuasive and make the going to bed an equally attractive activity.
