Two common guidelines in the Montessori pedagogy (and even gentle parenting) are (1) to choose slow shows, if you’re even allowing screen time and (2) to choose books and shows depicting real life, with scenes relating to daily life as much as possible. The belief is that children’s brains have a different relationship to their environment. In the first three years of life, they have an absorbent mind, which means that without intentionally trying to learn anything, they take it all in and unconsciously make all the data points they come in contact with a part of the network they’re building in their brain. So the best thing to do would be to expose young babies and toddlers to as much natural, and real life data while in this absorbent mind phase. Distracting shows with lots of colourful, zooming objects are not ideal. So are story books starring anthropomorphic animals, because you wouldn’t see that in the wild.
In the hazy, wild, but relatively calmer era of Iker’s babyhood, I had this ambitious goal to not expose him to any screen time until he is six.
DUDE. BRO. GIRL.
Now that I’m a year wiser, I have been leaning into that daily hour or so of TV like the respite it is. And because Mum Guilt™ is real, I have rationalised it with a theory: kids’ brains today have evolved to something where slow/real have less relevance.
What if they need to train their brains to get used to processing a lot of information all at once because that is simply going to be their reality?
Above: Iker at RealKids Early Learning Centre
How many of us can say they are immune to the siren call of our mobile phones? There’s so much in there, it’s addictive, and it’s hard to say no to. We can learn to manage how much noise we’re letting into our space, or how much information (available anywhere about everywhere all the time) we are intentionally giving our attention to. But all the lessons and journeying into mindfulness were born exactly from a need to filter the wealth of information that we’re drowning in. What if these future generations of kids can develop those skills earlier? Hasn’t it now become a necessity? Maybe they’ve become more adaptable beings able to filter all the noise vying for attention because they’ve never experienced any other life where no one has a tiny brick of entertainment in their hands 24/7.
But in the space of two months where we became increasingly lax with TV time, we noticed Iker’s patience get shorter and shorter as well. A song comes on and he’d recognise the first two notes and decides he doesn’t like it, he’ll repeatedly ask for you to change the show even if the song is only a few seconds long. A minor inconvenience like a toy car or the environment not behaving the way he wants them to would cause a mini breakdown. And meltdowns are becoming more frequent as well. Yesterday, I decided to make a change: no more TV until further notice. I want to see if there’ll be a change in how he processes the world manifested by miraculously developing more patience, appreciating slow.
Montessori – 1; Cruz – 0
That said, even though I try to stick to real-life-depicting books, sometimes, we’re gifted ones with talking animals. Which Iker LOVES. He recognises the cartoonish forms of animals, even those we don’t even point out on a page or cover of a new book. Even the most abstract blob with whiskers and eyes cannot escape his notice and exclamations of “oooooooh!”
Montessori – 1; Cruz – 1
Maria Montessori is a scientist. She shaped her methods based on her observations and change her conclusion sometimes if her data prove it incomplete or wrong. In observing Iker, my stance on “real-life scenes only” is that it shouldn’t be taken as an absolute. Of course, we should expose him to what all sorts of things look in real life. They need that as basis in interacting with their world. But also give them the chance to absorb different kinds of artists’ illustrations of those subjects. It’s amazing to see their brain work in action, translating an abstract figure into their real-life counterpart!