What does it mean to be a child centered family
Early in my time as a parent, I was fortunate to have my son enrolled in a Montessori preschool. While I’m a believer in public education, I’m also a believer in Montessori techniques.
It was through being a Montessori parent that I learned what it means to be child centered.
It does not mean the child decides all things for a family. The child is not allowed to act as he or she sees fit. It does not mean there are no rules or that bad behavior goes unpunished. It just means that, once an activity is started it progresses at the child’s pace without interruption.
To me it means that family activities are timed at the child’s pace. A toddler / preschool child is constantly experimenting with the world around. They want to touch everything (in stores not possible.) They want to smell everything and they want to experiment with everything to see if it will open, if it is food (taste everything.) Obviously some of these activities need to be closely monitored.
But they also take time. A child doesn’t want his or her experimentation interrupted. They want to wait until all aspects of the new object are known. To be child centered means letting the child take their time to learn about the new things in their environment.
Why Epcot
The inspiration for this post came as I was scanning old photographs so my son would have them in digital form. Since he is an only child, that also means we have lots of pictures. When he was about 6 we took him to Orlando, visited the Magic Kingdom, Sea World, and the Epcot Center. The Epcot Center was our 3rd park in 3 days.
When I look back at the pictures of Epcot, I see something that I did not see at the time. In those pictures my son was tired or annoyed all day long.
I remember wanting to see the evening light show.
Before supper my son told us he was ready to leave. I’ve always said when our son was born we won the baby lottery. We never had a major problem with our son. Including our evening at Epcot.
We explained to him that we needed to have supper and that if after supper he still wanted to leave we would leave. He agreed. We ate at one of the foreign pavilions on the back side of the park. I remember it being a good meal, but I have no recollection of what it was.
After the meal, we started walking on the English pavilion side of the park. There was a Beatles knock off group which was quite good. We enjoyed the music for a while and continued to amble in the general direction of the entrance. My hope was that the light show would start and my son would be interested.
My son was still tired.
As it got dark, my son reminded us that he was ready to leave. He had kept his part of the bargain. It was now time for us to keep ours.
In a child centered family
You take things at the child’s pace. So we left. Went back to the motel where we were staying. Got a good nights sleep ready to start out the next day. I have still not seen the Epcot Light show.
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