Help Me to Help Myself

267 Words2 Pages
The phrase ‘Help me to help myself’ portrays the child’s sensitivity to do things him/herself with the help of his/her carers, peers and people with whom s/he comes in contact with. Maria Montessori was the one to first recognize this need of the child and went further to research on it. “As a rule, however, we do not respect children. We try to force them to follow us without regard to their special needs. We are overbearing with them, and above all, rude; and then we expect them to be submissive and well-behaved, knowing all the time how strong is their instinct of imitation and how touching their faith in and admiration of us. They will imitate us in any case. Let us treat them, therefore, with all the kindness, which we would wish to help to develop in them”. -(Montessori, 1965) Due to time and social constraints, we adults often ignore our children’s individuality and abilities. We need to help the child to help him/herself to become more independent. A child learns from the time s/he is born. The more the experiences the more the child learns and it is the adult’s duty to provide the means for these experiences. The child's real challenge for independence starts at about age of one, when s/he starts walking. The child will just walk up and down with no motive in his/her mind but to just master the new achievement. The primary carer helps the child just by providing a safer and stimulating environment for him/her without any
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