How to ignite the child’s obedience spontaneously

I guess many of you will find it incredulous if I say that children love silence. Find out for yourself. Play the Game of Silence with a group of three- to five-year-old children.

Silence game

Start the Silence Game by making them sit together. Then sit in front of them and say “Let us make SILENCE; that means — stop moving. Silence with your mouth. Silence with your hands. Silence with your feet.”

All movements will be arrested for five minutes or so. Let the children close their eyes. The result is SILENCE. Small children enjoy the sound of silence. If you do this everyday, it will also help develop their obedience.

Authentic Montessori preschools all over the world have been playing the Silence Game for almost a century. Respecting the nature of preschoolers, they are taught how to control themselves by disciplining their body movements with simple exercises, which inhibit their restless movement. Traditional parents and teachers resort to forcing small children, who are restless or just very active, to stop talking and moving, to the point of tyrannizing them. Be quiet, silence, shut up or else... This results in breaking their will.

Making silence while working

A more demanding Silence Game activity maybe exercised in the middle of the school year. It is “making silence while working.” The command is not given by the teacher instead a hand bell is rung in the middle of the activity period each day. This signal tells the class of 30 children to suspend their activities. Except perhaps the young three-year-old, everyone OBEYS the command of the bell. Note that children are now capable of OBEYING what is proper. No longer does the adult dictates to them. They have established routine habits. The paint brushes are returned to their respective color bottles; the counting of beads are momentarily stopped, while writing and drawing are discontinued as pencils and crayons are laid aside in their boxes. A child laundering a small rug would pause midway in rinsing the soapy rug, etc.

The silence of a three-year-old

As for the three-year-old whom we shall call Julie, the class would overlook her skipping around because she is still too young. Since children may be enrolled any time of the year, Julie could be admitted in a good Montessori preschool, where the youngest child accepted is a three-year-old. The teacher would challenge Julie “Oh Julie is still small. She can’t do the Silence Game. Perhaps when she’s big enough then she’ll be able to.” This remark pricks the pride of the very young threes who hate to be referred to as small or not big enough. On the second or third day, Julie will meet the challenge and promptly control her own movements.

Silencing strong-willed children would break their will

For many adults these age groups of children are considered disobedient, disorderly, lazy, noisy and quarrelsome. Thus they snap at them to shut up or if they are “hyperactive” or malikot, they would be isolated in a room and punished. When we fail to understand the true nature of preschoolers, we usually end up breaking their will instead of cultivating it. Too many don’ts can frustrate and eventually destroy the character of the very young children. “Don’t touch, you’ll fall. Don’t touch, that’s heavy. Don’t touch, that’s dirty. Don’t touch, it will break. Be good. Keep still. Be quiet.”

Take the case of Rossana. When she was just a few months old, she lost her mother. At one year and three months, she was adopted by an unmarried teacher, Diana. In the toddler stage, Rossana proved to be restless and temperamental. Her high pitched voice woke up the whole household as she shrieked early in the morning. Apparently after her natural mother died, several impatient guardians mishandled her. Instead of tender loving care, she may have been roughly handled, pinched or shouted at. Her will had been practically broken. But fortunately, being a strong child she remained “a fighter on the verge of being vanquished.” Her new mama, being intuitive, patient and especially loving, cultivated her will.

Repetition of work is the expression of the ‘secret teacher’ within a preschooler to obey

How does one cultivate the will of very young children? Since she would frequently run all over the place and possibly hurt herself, Diana got her a tiny broom and regular plastic dustpan from the kitchen. With a few scraps of paper scattered on a meter spot on the floor, she showed her how to sweep them together and scoop them into the dustpan. Fascinated, she kept repeating the activity, especially since she wanted to master gathering all the scraps of paper, even the tiny pieces into the dustpan. Diana had to prepare a large basket of crumpled paper for Rossana, who continuously swept for 1 1/2 hours.

Repetition is the tendency of the “inner teacher” within very young one- to four-year-old children. This urge to repeat one piece of work at a time develops a child’s concentration. This is the start of character transformation when the child will begin to obey spontaneously. The more activities she taught, she would learn to do things properly, for the basis of obedience is not dependent on the pressure adults wield on small children, but in guiding the child to do what is right and how to work properly. Although she enjoyed climbing up an adult’s chair, Diana provided instead with a small chair which she could use easily, or move it around where she needs it. Unusual for her age, this little girl began to drink from a glass doing away with her milk bottle earlier.

Today, at the age of two, she is more trusting of others. Thrice a week, she attends a Montessori preschool, where she works easily with all types of children. Her concentration is phenomenal. Instructions are carefully followed by her. Her joy over her work and love for people beams from her fair and pretty face. No one would suspect that once upon a time she was scared and unhappy.

Three levels of obedience

OBEDIENCE is dependent on the child’s development. Adults are confused between the child’s caprice (mood) and true obedience. Consider the fact that there are three levels of obedience. TRUE OBEDIENCE is when the child comprehends instruction and follows it step by step. The very young twos and threes are usually on the first level. Sometimes they obey, other times they don’t. The second level is observed among the disciplined fours and fives who regularly obey. The third level of obedience is turned towards an adult, whose superiority, the children feel and believe that “she acts inside me.” The children become anxious and impatient to do her bidding like the instinct of a dog who loves her master. These adults are the very democratic and understanding parents or teachers. One such teacher has to be very cautious in giving her directions to her class. Usually, even before she finishes her instruction, the whole class obeys ahead of time.

The ideal teacher must not force obedience. To break the student’s will and substitute her own, is a grave mistake.

Actually, the child can more easily acquire a strong character in the preschool years if the materials in class have the so called “three rings of discipline.” One such intriguing material is the Geometric Solids. This is a set of wooden prisms and pyramids (the flat family), sphere, ovoid and ellipsoid resting on wooden stands to prevent their rolling (the round family) and the cone and cylinder (the flat and round family). Being good material provides the first ring or lasso of discipline. When the teacher presents correctly by taking the nine objects out carefully from a flannel bag, she shows the child how to classify them into three groups. Then she lets him slide or roll all the objects over the flattened flannel bag. Lastly, she shows him how to pack the Geometric Solids so the child could repeat the exercise on his own whenever he could. This would be the third ring of discipline. The child is repeating and learning the process by himself. This wraps up the ideal lesson wherein the child OBEYS the proper moves. The child would easily remember their names, as if they were the names of “new friends.”

Spontaneous obedience of God’s creatures

Mother Nature has energy of OBEDIENCE. Everywhere and all throughout time, there are fixed laws of life. All rabbits hop, snakes slither on the ground or trees, fishes swim, babies crawl and cry. The cosmic force is a universal force that follows the laws of beautiful, dependable and harmonious pattern of life. Thus, every morning, when the sun rises, she says “Lord I OBEY!” in the afternoon when she sets she says “Lord I OBEY!” Every time the wind blows and cools your cheeks she says “Lord I OBEY.” With all these things, the Superior Invisible Being reminds us that life is dependable. He is always with us.