Everyone thinks they know what kids are like. Rowdy and messy. Zero attention span. Frivolous and fickle. Maria Montessori repeatedly found evidence of the exact opposite. In the end, she concluded we *don't know kids* at all:.

I think I’m genuinely good with children…. but sometimes I wonder how much of it is just being a ginger.

What do you want to know?.

when I wear braids, random children come to me and say I look like Anna from Frozen. when I wear my hair down, random children come to me and say I look like Merida from Brave. when I wear a bun, random children come to me and say I look like Lucy from Despicable Me.

Such a wonderful opportunity to learn about Montessori from an expert. If you’re in NYC, check it out!.

I looked up the modern version of this form. very interesting from an "explosion of standards for parenting/childrearing" pov. in 1996, this form had 6 items for the teacher to remark on. in 2025, there are *58* !!.

my younger brother still attended the pre-k after me so the decision was age-based too. like, ok, maybe at 4yo our kids can spend all day at the sandbox. hell, it's free. but at 5yo? when your kid can already read? and her artwork looks like a prisoner going insane?.

but I'm still impressed they made the call. all my dad's siblings sent their kids to the public schools. so did my mom's siblings (except for the one outlier catholic convert sibling). so, out of 14 total siblings, my parents were the only one to do something so strange.

the easiest explanation is just cultural. my parents were working class, blue collar, 1st generation removed from abject poverty in Appalachian hollers. so school was hallowed, a place where you go to actually learn.

but without the Montessori context, I don't think this form would leap out as terrible. it seems pretty normal tbh. I think that's what surprises me. My parents were dissatisfied and thought there was something better. How? Why?.

knowing what young children are capable of from my experience with Montessori obviously colors my interpretation. At 4yo, I can line up 3 shapes in order of size? that's. it?. In Montessori, we start at 2.5yo and with 10 cylinders. By 4 they could be doing memory games with 40.

I don't have a ton of memories of preschool. I remember recess. It was bedlam with the entire elementary school out on the blacktop and the playground. It was chaos and I loved it. plus, they had a tire swing >>>.

I could totally see my dad scoffing at what appears to be pretentious over-intellectualizing of normal play. "She is developing her fine and gross motor movement skills by manipulating a toy car" . So she's just like "toy-car-go-vroom"? At 4yo? And this is school?.

but even when they mention reading and language, they don't say much of anything about phonics or the alphabet. It's all like "she pays attention to story at circle time" or "she acts out stories in the dramatic corner" or "she answers questions about read-aloud stories".

The observation form has six categories of interest and the last two are reading and math. ok, maybe that doesn't mean learning is de-prioritized. if I were making a Montessori observation record, I would probably start with executive functioning and focus.

it seems accurate. I found some of the artwork they encouraged me to do. 90% of the page is me writing words that I knew over and over, and the other 10% is the most hastily drawn get-this-over-with-scribbles you've ever seen.

my dad always explained the reasoning for making the switch as "they said kindergarten would be more of the same and all you ever did was play". my mom always explained it as "you were ready to learn and they didn't want to teach".

found a "teacher observation record" from my preschool in 1996. learned that I pronounced 'triangles' as 'priangles' at 4yo. also gained new perspective and appreciation for my parents realizing the school was garbage and sending me to a private k8 (even for all its own flaws).

People will watch a movie like Gattaca and think the takeaway is: . “don’t invent tech to radically improve human life if it could also be abused” . instead of:. “every individual can be a self-authoring hero if they so choose”.

I have always been me.

I love finding and sharing music. 15 artists to get to know me:. U2.Penguin Cafe Orchestra.Our Lady Peace.Grimes.Smashing Pumpkins.Max Richter.Bon Iver.Whitney Houston.Daft Punk.Snow Patrol.Steve Miller Band.Sigur Rós.Eminem.They Might Be Giants.Billy Joel.

Atlas Shrugged has one of the most beautiful and inspiring depictions of childhood in all of literature. The “anti-family”criticism isn’t coming from the books. Rand believes one can have a happy, fulfilling life without children and that you have no duty to become a parent,.