Raising Children – is Parental Influence Important?

Parenting does not come naturally to everybody. It is a learning process with lots of struggles and hair-pulling along the way. Of course, there will be lots of joy as well when you watch your child grow up healthily and happily. During the times when your older child refuses to listen to you or talks back to you, do you wonder if your child was under the bad influence of his peers? Or could it be parental influence actually? Have you ever argued with your spouse over trivial issues in front of your young children? When your child refuses to read, did you stop to ask yourself do you read with them at night from young? Or was the television turned on full blast while shouting to your children to complete their homework? This article will look at the importance of parental influence through Maria Montessori’s point of view. 

Montessori believed that every child has the ability to incarnate or self-construct. This is necessary in order for the child to grow and develop normally and healthily. Man differs from animals in that we have to develop our human intelligence first, so the natural instincts that are present in animals do not show themselves immediately in a child. The child has to go through the sensitive periods in order to allow for the development of his personality as Montessori has written in her book that “the child has a special, unique capacity for profiting … in order to grow, for it is during the sensitive period that he acquires certain psychological faculties, like that of orienting himself in his outer environment, and becomes able to bring his motor organs to life in all their intimate and delicate particulars”. (Secret of Childhood, p.39)

It is during this period, when the child is young, that he will absorb everything that is happening around him. Therefore, if the parents are constantly arguing, or use vulgarities unknowing in front of the child, he will absorb it in his unconscious mind. When the time is ‘ripe’, this piece of knowledge that is in him will surface and what he says, how he behaves are actually clear reflections of his parents’ behaviour before him each day.

It is a misconception to believe that a child is simply an empty being, incapable of doing anything for himself or of leaning things on his own. To best teach the child, it is important for parents to understand that a child will go through several different sensitive periods and such sensitive periods are important because during each period, only that particular characteristic is developed, and not others as the “child (is) sensitive only towards certain things, leaving him indifferent  towards others”. (Secret of Childhood, p.39) In fact, this period will disappear once the skill is learnt as “every characteristic is established by the help of an impulse, of a transient sensibility which lasts over a limited period”. (Secret of Childhood, p.36) Therefore, if the child was unable to learn that particular skill during the relevant sensitive period, he will lose his chance of ever learning it naturally. He might be able to pick it up much later in life but it will be at the expanse of a great struggle.

Montessori mentioned that a child goes through six sensitive periods namely, ‘sensitivity to order’, ‘learning through their five senses’, ‘sensitivity to small objects’, ‘sensitivity to or-ordination of movement’, ‘sensitivity to language’ and sensitivity to social aspect of life’. All these different periods will take place at different point of the child’s life and thus it is important for the adult to observe the child carefully to find out what interest and stimulates him at each particular period in order to teach him as the child “must be observed rather than analyzed”. (Secret of Childhood, p.7)

The child can be first discovered to be sensitive to order even at a very young age. As the young child does not have a good memory, he remembers by absorbing the things around him. So, he needs to ‘memorize’ his environment to help him find his way around and to get familiar with the place. Thus, should there be any slight changes to what is normally done, the child will be able to identify it right away and will get very upset by the change. I personally have such an experience with my son when he was around six months old. I had hung a napkin above his head to block out excessive light and to prevent the air-conditioner from blowing at him directly. However, when he woke up in the middle of the night, he started crying incessantly which is something very unusual of him. I tried a few different attempts to pacify him such as giving him the pacifier, singing to him and patting him but nothing worked. As a final resort, I removed the napkin which was the only new addition to his environment and immediately, he stopped crying and fell asleep again!

As a child does not have any experience of the world around him, he needs to learn about his surrounding through his five senses. By touching the different materials and objects around him, the child gets to explore and this will help to develop his neurological system. As such, it is the adults’ responsibility to provide a safe environment and lots of encouragement for the child to build up his confidence and desire to explore. The child must have lots of suitable objects around him in which he can hear, see, touch, taste and smell. If the parents are not open to new things such as trying out new food or show their dislike at classical music, the child will also not develop an interest in these areas.

A child will start to talk very early in his life, around the age of 1.5 years. During this period, he will astonish the adults with his ability in uttering the sounds that he had heard. From birth to now, the child has been internalizing all the human sounds that he heard all around him and now, he will start to imitate the speaking sounds. In fact, a child will start to make sounds like that of syllabus very early in life but the pronunciation will be much clearly during this sensitive to language period. Thus, it does not mean that so long as ‘perfect language’ is used before the child when he is learning to talk, he will not pick up any ‘imperfect language’. The parents must also be careful what is said or done when the child is young as such unacceptable words will be uttered by the child when he can talk as he would have absorbed them when he was much younger. Thus, parents – beware of what you say or do in front of your infants! Parental influence is definitely the greatest in a child’s life!