The Absorbent Mind

Child’s learning in their early years is a natural yet unique process.

He is continuously, effortlessly and indiscriminately learning
everything from his environment without being formally taught.

Dr. Maria Montessori in her book ‘The Absorbent Mind’ made this
significant discovery that a child’s mind is different from the adult
mind. She compares a child’s effortless learning in first three years to
sixty years of hard work of an adult in order to achieve the same
results.
She shares her insightful observations; a child absorbs from
environment in such a manner that the environment becomes a part
of their personality. From birth to three years, child grasps anything
and everything from around them without biases, learning
intuitively. Skills like sitting, standing, walking, use of hands and
learning the language(s) spoken around them are mastered without
planned lessons. The child grasps language using all his senses and
teaches himself how to communicate. He is constructing memory and
self-consciousness at this stage.

From three to six years, the child realizes the environment by the
work of his hand. They now refine their control of movement,
balance and basic physical mechanism. Dr. Montessori calls this
stage as “ help me do it myself”. Child learns new things, explores and
uses senses to enrich acquired abilities.
Dr. Montessori writes that the child learns by merely living through
the properties of the absorbent mind. What is learned becomes part
of their personality, as it is stored in the implicit memory.

A little girl starts singing softly when she sees another child upset or
uncomfortable, although she is in a social setting for the first time
herself. Mommy sings to her and her younger sister to soothe them.
She has involuntarily learned to not only problem solve but is
confident enough to express empathy. It is a remarkable fact that we
can comprehend so much about parents and their parenting styles by
the instinctive responses of their three years olds.
Uzma Mazhar
Oct 7th, 2019