Valentine’s Day Tip for Parents: Become Your Toddler’s Secret Admirer

Last updated on: February 9, 2016 at 3:34 pm by Suzanne Ross

Valentine’s Day Tip for Parents: Become Your Toddler’s Secret Admirer 2016-02-09T15:34:45-05:00 Suzanne Ross

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Photo: Suzanne Ross, Screenshot from YouTube, Valentine’s Tips for Parents, The Montessori Project

This video is my way of saying Happy Valentine’s Day to the parents and grandparents of young children. You know, at Teaching Nonviolent Atonement, and our sibling website, the Raven Foundation, we often talk about how we can lose touch with our best selves when we get caught up in rivalry. And parents know that the worst form rivalry can take is the dreaded power struggle with our children. How is it that we can become so adversarial with the very ones we love with all our hearts?

Maria Montessori had an explanation for this dynamic and a way to get the love back. She observed, “Yes, of course, we all love children, we love them a great deal, but… we do not understand them. We do not do what we should for them, because we have no idea what it is we should do.” Too often, she cautioned, when we are caught up in power struggles, we act like a dictator who “wants others to obey his will and refuses to take their personalities into account. The principal [parenting] problem as the adult sees it is: How can the child be made to obey? Should he be dealt with tenderly or severely?”

When our chief parenting concern is obedience or good behavior, we have quite unintentionally become our child’s rival! We have accidentally stumbled into a battle of wills with each side going to extremes to come out on top. We see inconsolable temper tantrums on the one side and the desperate use of more and more extreme punishments on the other. Caught in this spiral, we wonder: Where did the love go? In this video, I explain Montessori’s solution: Learn that your toddler has a secret he cannot help but keep from you. Learning to understand and admire that secret is the key to avoiding power struggles because we begin to see our children’s behavior in a new light. Rather than acts of disobedience, we realize that they are following an inner drive that is too powerful to resist. When you become your child’s secret admirer, you will feel the love flow again – I promise! Happy Valentine’s Day!

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