Prepared Adult: A Love Letter to Learning

It’s time for a love letter to learning.

I spent much of this month with educators, supporting teachers in training at the incredible Montessori Institute of North Texas. All of these individuals were in the process of becoming intellectually and spiritually prepared adults.

It is a privilege to do this work, and, in seeing these teachers grow, in seeing my colleagues and myself expand through the sharing of knowledge and experience, I was taken by the critical importance of adult learning.

I want to encourage you to more consciously be a learner in your own life.

In learning, we are delighted, awed, interested, focused. And we are humbled and challenged, too. It is so easy to think that development is a simple and straightforward process for children. This is not the case.

We all have affinities and areas of ease as learners, and we all have areas where we must gain a lot of experience and apply considerable effort before becoming skillful.

You are no different.

In fact, your parenting may be just one of those areas where you are working hard to grow.

As you are able, make time for learning - be that in a YouTube tutorial or a podcast, in applying a new cooking technique or reading a book on machine learning, in trying a mindfulness practice or working one-on-one to develop any kind of skill with any kind of teacher, formal or informal.

You will come to appreciate your child’s efforts with greater care.

We are also entering February, a month for love.

The Montessori philosophy is infused with love (you may have thought we were simply focused on order and literacy and math, hushed classrooms and pretty materials? We are about much more).

Love is the source of our strength.

Love, and knowledge.

One of Maria Montessori’s students, himself a trainer of teachers around the globe, A.M. Joosten, described this intertwining:

“Love requires knowledge and knowledge love. Already St. Augustine wrote that we can know something only according to the measure of our love. We may say also that we can love something only in as much as we know something of it, although love can go far beyond that knowledge. Knowledge, however, must be there as a starting point.”

The knowledge we must have, to support children, is that of their fundamental and developmental needs, as well as of their individuality - and of our role as the adults in their lives. We must also develop self-knowledge.

Understanding these needs - seeing children and ourselves more accurately - takes attention and care. Skill comes with practice. Many parenting and educational resources confuse and overlook these needs completely.

The disharmony we can often see in young children - children at any age - is rooted in a lack of this knowledge.

Greater harmony is possible. Yet not with love alone.

Knowledge becomes a guide for love.

This is why I work with parents - because “in order to be able to help truly, we have to know, to recognize.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with not yet knowing, not yet recognizing. But from there, seek learning. Seek growth. Your child needs your effort. And your actions are what create change.

This Learning Journal is here for any individual who is a part of a child’s life, as a space of both love and knowledge. I hope you’ll share it with anyone who could benefit. And for those of you seeking personal guidance to better know, love, and support your child, learn more here, and be in touch.