The Child’s Power of Love

by Paul Epstein, PhD | Communication, Empowerment, Maria Montessori, Mixed Ages, Montessori Education, Montessori Family Life, Montessori Parenting, Practical Life, The International Montessori Council

The experience of authentic, unconditional love differs from romantic and other types of love. Unconditional love is not based on possessing or acquiring. When we know this love, we experience personal and universal peace. And while this love is observed and discussed repeatedly by the world’s great teachers, we seldom consider how this love also emanates from children. The smallest of babies cause us to smile. They and older children awaken us, and we engage in peaceful action.

Parents know unconditional love. A parent may be overwhelmed by tremendous joy and happiness when holding her or his child for the first time. We remember the sweetness of our newborn child, and we remember the love that overwhelms us. I recall saying a prayer. Not a formal, religious prayer, but a prayer nevertheless. Actually, I do not recall my words, but I do recall how I felt: whole, peaceful, and unimaginably happy. I prayed for my child’s lifelong health, safety, and happiness. I also felt too small to hold the amount of love that was wanting to burst from me. I still feel that kind of too small.

I also recall that I did not speak words like these: “Watch over my child, and make sure she has the best test scores for entrance to the top university.” Those words came later.

Unconditional love involves acceptance, but not always agreement. I accept you 100 percent the way you are, and I accept you 100 percent the way you are not. This kind of love involves self-love too. I accept myself 100 percent the way I am, and 100 percent the way I am not. Unconditional love may be transformative. However, reading the words of great teachers is not enough. Transformation involves a commitment to practicing a way of living. A life with children can bring forth this kind of love. In the presence of children, adults may aspire to spiritual growth.

Dr. Maria Montessori wrote, “[The] child is the true maker of our spirituality. He teaches us the plan of nature for giving form to our conduct and character.” One form of conduct with children is to learn to how to serve and not be their servants. Specifically, we learn to guide children to become independent and self-reliant. Then children become normalized; they fulfill more of their unique potential. When we observe and accept children, we also experience the assistance they give to us as we learn how to guide. They assist us through love.

If we want to produce harmony in the world, it is clear that we ought to think more about this … The child is the only point on which there converges from everyone a feeling of gentleness and love. People’s souls soften and sweeten when one speaks of children; the whole of mankind shares in the deep emotions which they awaken.

The child is a well-spring of love. Whenever we touch the child, we touch love. It is a difficult love to define; we all feel it, but no one can describe its roots or evaluate the immense consequences which flow from it …. In the vicinity of children, mistrust melts away; we become sweet and kindly, because, when we are gathered about them, we feel warmed by that flame of life which is there, where life originates.

“Mistrust melts away; we become sweet and kindly.” To become receptive to the child’s power of love, we must, Montessori wrote, “remove the accretions of years that prevent us from really understanding children and acquiring an intuitive knowledge of their souls.” We must learn enlightenment; we need to learn to truly see.

“Our social mentality,” wrote Montessori, has not grasped the idea that we can receive help from the child, that the child can give us a light and a lesson, a new vision and a solution for inextricable problems. The child, Montessori asserted, can “help adults solve their own individual and social problems.”

Accepting children’s influence as our teachers, Montessori championed, will help us create a peaceful society. Montessori spoke these words to the graduates of her 1937 training course:

You and I have been, as it were, seduced by something attractive and deep in the child …. We began with the methods of education and culture for the child, and we end by acknowledging that he is our teacher … one who can reveal to us, as no other, our own nature and its possibilities. Therefore we are drawn towards the child, as individuals, as members of society, and for the good of the human race as
a whole.

“For the good of the human race as a whole,” Montessori spoke to world leaders about world peace. The Sixth International Montessori Congress took place in Copenhagen in 1937. Representatives from twenty nations were in attendance. Montessori declared in her keynote speech the child’s power to unify adults in peace.

The adult must understand the meaning of the moral defense of humanity, not the armed defense of nations. He must realize that the child will be the creator of the new world peace. In a suitable environment the child reveals unsuspected social characteristics. The qualities he shows will be the salvation of the world, showing us all the road to peace.

The child’s power of love can bring adults to “the road to peace.” This congress took place thirty years after the first Montessori school had opened in 1907. Since then, children enrolled in Montessori schools show ‘unsuspected social characteristics’ including a tremendous ability to concentrate when they engage with Montessori learning activities. Montessori understand concentration as a foundation for children’s spiritual growth.

We tend to describe children’s physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. Montessori advocated for a fifth development, spirituality. Accordingly, to become a Montessori classroom guide, an adult engages in a transformative preparation. This preparation, wrote Montessori, “is something far more than the learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit. This begins, Montessori taught, with humility. “If we touch children, she wrote, “we touch humanity. We must educate adults to realize that we can only better humanity through the child. We must realize that the child is the builder of man.”

There is a special relationship: As adults transform, we notice changes taking place within children. Children progress through a series of spiritual growths that bring them to normalization. Montessori wrote that with normalization, “A unique type of child appears, a ‘new child’; but really it is the child’s true ‘personality’ allowed to construct itself normally ….” For Montessori, normalization was “the most important single result of our whole work.”

Children who are not normalized may tire from academic study, and they cannot concentrate for long periods of time. They may be timid, anxious, possessive, depressed, unable to focus, and dependent upon others. These children have grown up in an educational system in which teachers dispense knowledge according to external standards. These teachers manage the learning process, including schedules, types of activities, and assessments without regard for children’s individual needs and learning differences. And, the teachers manage children’s behavior through external praise and reward. The design of this educational system is to render children compliant and also ignorant about their own potential.

Children enrolled in Montessori schools learn to think, create, communicate, and solve problems. These children demonstrate tremendous self-discipline, resilience, and grit. Normalized children display a deep love of order, work, profound concentration, silence, sharing, obedience, self-discipline, independence, and joy. Normalized children are not interested in external rewards; they learn for the joy derived from understanding. Normalized children are cooperative, creative, innovative, and empathetic.

Montessori classroom guides show children how to become independent. The guides also model for children how to respect themselves, others, and the environment. Children normally develop self-acceptance which is a foundation for accepting others. Montessori children in primary and secondary programs study a wondrous, integrated curriculum called Cosmic Education. They may discover a personal calling called noble work. Children and adolescents do normally empathize, care for, and contribute to others. This is evident from the testimonies heard from Montessori graduates throughout the world. For example:

Students in Montessori schools are taught to ask the question, “How can I make the world a better place?” This is the fundamental difference in the Montessori curriculum; it teaches a higher purpose …. It has taught me to strive to do noble works.”

Another Montessori graduate summarized her education:

In order to gain a global perspective, you need to have a really strong foundation. That foundation, in our case, is local or even internal. So, if you know how to trust, and you know how to respect, and you know how to question – once you have those main principles, once you are unleashed into the world, you are a little more prepared and ready to take on what it has to offer.¹⁵

Adults typically awaken when surrounded by the child’s power of love. As we learn to guide children spiritually, so too do we learn about our true selves. Montessori described how a life with children can bring the adult to experience this new kind of love.

When the children show [an adult] their real natures, she understands, perhaps for the first time, what love really is. And this revelation transforms her also. It is a thing that touches the heart, and little by little it changes people. Once these facts have been seen … nothing can cancel the impression their spirits have made and the love they were able to awaken.

Montessori Leadership/ May 2018/Pg 24