A Child's World

Montessori and RIE's Opposed Visions || RIE Series 3/3 ||

I consider myself a Montessorian. I have read many books by her and her practitioners. I am convinced by the counterintuitive discoveries she made and the resulting educational approach she founded. I plan on homeschooling my children using the Montessori method. But five years ago, when I had just heard her name for the first time, I was also reading about Respectful Parenting, or RIE (pronounced rye). For the majority of the following five years, I was confused.

While I was enthused about their similarities– respect for the child, a focus on developing his independence, an elevation of the child’s role in his own learning etc.– the differences puzzled me. It seemed deeper than just a few diverging strategies. Nor was I alone, there are countless blogs, videos, and podcasts that boil down to the same question: are they compatible? Can you integrate both Montessori and RIE into the same home? (Ex: 1, 2, 3, 4)

The conclusion of most of these discussions goes something like this: ‘Though there are some differences– in recommendations for nursery setup or toy selection, for example– these differences are of an optional nature. This means that Montessori and RIE are essentially complimentary and can be integrated seamlessly into the same home with each family picking what works best for them on any given issue on which they differ.’

While this conclusion could be true, I wasn’t satisfied. I needed to look deeper. Rather than looking at the similarities and differences in isolation, I wanted to understand the fundamental ideas that would explain the contradictory recommendations of each so I could compare them. What I’ve uncovered has led me to conclude that the fundamental ideas of Montessori and RIE are opposed; they are not compatible. If you lean Montessorian, however, you can still integrate some of the concrete ideas from RIE into a Montessori home if you judge them carefully first.

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Respectful Parenting

When looking for the fundamental ideas underlying RIE, I was looking for the ideas that would logically explain and tie together all the discrete recommendations and strategies, both the ones I agreed with and the ones that I found puzzling or misguided. Not only would this make it easier to compare RIE to Montessori– because comparing a pair or small set of ideas is much easier than comparing dozens of recommendations– but it would also demystify RIE by showing the ideas that everything in the system relies on.

Of course, this implies that RIE is a coherent and consistent philosophy, and not just a random assortment of flying-by-the-seat-of-one’s-pants recommendations. This is justified, not only because I found such a set of consistent ideas, but because RIE practitioners self-consciously consider their ideas to be a cohesive philosophy with guiding principles.

There are three basic ideas that guide and shape RIE, or any parenting philosophy: beliefs about the child, a corresponding goal for his growth and time in childhood, and a standard to judge whether the parent is on the right path to help him meet this goal. Although the beliefs about the child and the goal for his growth and childhood are explicitly defined and discussed in RIE literature, the standard guiding the adoption or rejection of specific practices is not. It is implicit, and the full meaning of their beliefs and goals wasn’t clear until I had grasped this implicit standard.

To uncover this standard, it’s helpful to look at an assortment of encouraged and discouraged practices and ask what they each have in common, what driving force behind both determines the bucket that practices fall into. We’ll look at three distinct recommendations and then analyze what they have in common as their standard.

1. Preserving Focus

One of the most discouraged practices is interrupting the child. According to RIE, his developing focus is fragile and should be protected. More than that, though, it is considered disrespectful to disregard the child’s point of view and treat him like an object. When it is time for a diaper change, for example, parents are asked to avoid grabbing the child from behind or picking him up without warning. Instead, parents should wait for an opportune moment– a lull in the child’s concentration– and then announce their intentions to give him a diaper change and wait for a response of recognition before picking him up and proceeding.

2. Discipline as Escalation

A major focus of RIE is how to discipline a young child. There are many strategies that aim to prevent power struggles in the first place, either by providing acceptable avenues of choice or by setting up a completely safe space where the child is free to explore without constantly hearing ‘No!’ or ‘Don’t touch that!’ But when an actual conflict arises, whether the child is struggling with another toddler or he’s testing boundaries set by the parents, there is a general progression that parents are encouraged to follow.

As long as harm is not imminent, parents are encouraged to give children every opportunity to solve the problem on their own and to gradually increase support if needed. If a toddler is upset that another child is on a piece of play equipment, for example, the parent should begin with the minimum possible help, usually by offering a statement that acknowledges the situation objectively. Then it might progress from moving close to the child and getting on his level, to asking him if he can think of a solution, and finally to offering him options such as waiting until the other child leaves or finding something else to play with while he waits.

3. Toy Selection

The final example is RIE’s approach to toys, or ‘play objects’ as Magda Gerber referred to them. There is far more emphasis on what a parent shouldn’t incorporate, than on what they should. Since the goal is for the child to be active and the toys passive, complex toys that light up and sing are generally discouraged. Instead, simple objects such as balls, boxes, and small household objects are encouraged. 

The most revealing recommendation concerning toys, however, is the antagonism toward any that have a clear purpose or educational goal. The objective of a toy should be creative experimentation, rather than successfully performing an adult-designed task. Gerber often complains of how parents have been duped by unscrupulous marketers who think babies need to be taught. She complains, for example,

"Rattles are an adult idea: you pick up something, and it makes noise. Why does it make noise? Because some adult put something into something. Mobiles are intrusive– the infant has no choice. Who chose the mobile? An adult."¹

This antagonism goes beyond toy manufacturers to the whole idea of education for young children. Associates of RIE insist it is impossible for infants or toddlers to be under-stimulated or bored unless they are conditioned by the environment and their parents’ actions. The whole world is new to them, and by that very fact, it is interesting and sufficient for his mental needs. In addition, it is preposterous to think the parent can know what the child’s interests are at any given moment. Since this is impossible, any introduction of a toy to the child is an imposition and he should be left free to explore the environment on his own.

The whole project of education for young children, then, is viewed with suspicion, as inherently manipulative and useless at best, and psychologically damaging at worst. In one of her most critical statements, Gerber says the result of parents thinking their young child needs education is,

“…more and more babies will be tossed up in the air, taught irrelevant information, treated like objects, and fed data like computers. It is like force feeding the child with food he or she cannot digest. …

Infants learn to perform, like elephants in the circus– not appreciated for just being themselves, but for doing tricks.”²

And the end result of this focus on early education and “hurrying up” development? Gerber alludes to the idea that this stressful early training may be connected to a range of issues, from:

“…sleeping and eating disorders to nervous and self-destructive behaviors (hair-pulling, nail-biting, stuttering, nervous tics, or anorexia); from disinterested, bored, unmotivated students to early school dropouts and drug abusers.”³

The Standard: Minimizing Adult Intervention

What common thread unites each of these recommendations? What can explain the call to not interrupt a child, to start with the minimum amount of support when there is conflict, and to avoid toys with an educational purpose (not to mention the many other recommendations)?

The standard by which each of these practices are judged is the minimizing of adult intervention. It’s acknowledged, of course, that a child needs hygienic care, food, and shelter from the adult. It is also recognized that a child should be protected from harm and prevented from harming others. Even for these, while it’s recognized parents must intervene, their intervention is minimized. They are entreated to perform these necessary tasks in the lightest and most unobtrusive way possible. For the unnecessary interventions, however, the goal is maximum reduction, up to and including elimination.

The reason why it is good to not interrupt the child, for example, is not because focus is good for the child and his development, but because non-intervention from the adult is paramount. One way to see that the child’s need for focus is not the standard is that this exhortation only applies to adults.

RIE highly encourages child-to-child interactions. During these interactions, infants and toddlers are expected to crawl into each other’s personal space, to grab toys out of each other’s hands, and to experiment with touching faces and pulling hair. As long as there is no harm, this contact is celebrated and adult interference is discouraged. Though the child is being distracted from focusing on what he chose to focus on, this is not seen as problematic or even worthy of note.

Similarly, when children are in conflict, RIE says they should be given the opportunity to resolve the conflict on their own with minimum adult intervention. It’s not the specific skills that they might be learning that is foremost, because RIE advocates acknowledge that the child may be learning non-optimal things such as how having power to make others cry is fun or how giving up in the face of force from others is easiest. Once these problematic lessons become chronic, then the adult should intervene. This is seen as preferable to adults setting limits and imposing their perspective on justice, on who is right or wrong, from the outset.

Antagonism toward the adult is clearest in the area of cognitive pursuits. Toys designed to help a child learn specific skills are inherently problematic because it’s an imposition of the adult’s goals on the child. For the same reason, adults shouldn’t hand toys to a child, put him in a position such as tummy time before he is able to roll there from his back, or place him in front of a mirror or under a mobile because each of these is seen as an improper intervention by the adult.

It is clear that the focus here is on the adult’s intervention of his goal or purpose for the activity and not just the adult action per se. Obviously, the adult must choose some position to place the baby in, and does choose some particular play objects like cloths or balls for the child to engage with. It is fine and even encouraged to take the infant outside and lay him underneath a tree to stare at the leaves and branches. Though the adult is choosing something for the child to gaze at, a tree is not an object designed by the adult for an educational purpose like a mobile or mirror are, so it is not seen as an imposition. The other play objects are similarly not designed by the adult for any specific educational end and are accordingly deemed acceptable.

For each recommended or discouraged practice, the standard of minimizing adult intervention is operative, including the countless ones not mentioned here. Baby wearing is discouraged because the adult is forcing the child to spend his time trapped in the parent’s rhythm of chores. Taking the baby on errands, talking to the baby incessantly especially with an educational purpose in mind by naming objects, showing a child how to complete a project like a painting, drawing, or building with blocks etc. are all discouraged. The common thread uniting all of the recommendations is a standard of minimizing the adult: himself, his perspective, and his goals.

The question then becomes: what belief about the child drives this to be the standard as opposed to anything else?

The Belief: The Child as a Whole Person

Advocates of RIE assert that we should see the child as a whole person which they typically define as a unique individual with his own thoughts, feelings, perspective, and ability to communicate. They contend that the child is not a cute blob who is empty headed, a toy for the parent’s entertainment, but a full human who deserves respect.

As a Montessorian, I agree wholeheartedly. But this belief takes on a deeper meaning in the context of the standard used to evaluate parenting decisions. It means they view the child as essentially complete from birth. There are things the child will learn as he grows, to be sure– language, coordination, social skills etc.– but the child’s personality, character, intelligence, the essentials of his mind, are basically set at birth.

What the child needs then is to be given the time and space to develop into the person he is destined to be. He is fragile, though, and can easily be distorted by the intervention of adults. A toy with a purpose, for example, diverts the child’s energies away from his own creative solution and toward copying adults in the ‘right way’ of doing something. 

This underlying belief is summed up beautifully in the following passage from Deborah Solomon, author of Baby Knows Best,

“As Henry David Thoreau said, “What does education often do? It makes a straight ditch of a free, meandering brook.” While Thoreau might have been talking about education, what does that have to do with young babies? A lot, I think. Many well-intentioned adults believe they need to begin teaching babies from birth. … But teaching a baby or toddler isn’t necessary.”⁴

The child, therefore, is seen as a fully-formed “meandering brook,” whose perspective, insight, and creative impulses can be perniciously distorted and destroyed by well-meaning adults who intervene in the path of his predestined development.

The Goal: An Authentic Child with His Own World

The goal for the child and the time he spends in childhood is described as ‘authenticity.’ This is usually defined as the child feeling free to “just be,” to not have to perform for adults, to not have to pretend to have emotions he doesn’t have, to not have to complete things a certain way. It is often exclaimed that he needs his own world, a child’s life, not an adult’s life.

This means he needs a life free from the schedule, pace, perspective, and goals that adults have. He needs to be free to be himself with other infants who share his language and perspective. The child who is given his own world, isolated from the intervention of adults, will become the self-confident adult who knows who he is and feels comfortable sharing that with others.

A child who is deprived of this opportunity and encouragement to be authentic will become the adult who needs therapy and struggles to know who they are or what they want in life. For this reason, Gerber often describes her parenting classes as preventative therapy.

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A Montessorian Perspective

The Standard: What Optimal Development Requires

Montessori’s standard, in contrast to RIE, is not minimizing adult intervention but, instead, is the requirements of the child’s optimal development as governed by natural laws.

This often appears similar to RIE, because minimizing adult intervention is often the right thing to do according to the standard of optimal child development. It is right, for example, to allow the child to focus by not interrupting him needlessly. Montessori would agree with RIE on this point and many others.

But adult intervention is not bad as such. It is only bad when it hinders the child’s development. Adult intervention is necessary and encouraged in many instances, and especially over the materials in the environment and their presentation to the child. 

The infant gazing intently at the octahedron mobile is attracted by the primary colors just as he is developmentally ready to perceive them. He is given an object permanence box just when this concept is becoming real to him. He is given objects that attract his interest, invite him to focus for long periods of time, and encourage development.

This encouragement is not intended to force a child to ‘hurry up’ or develop earlier than he is ready, but to capitalize on his readiness immediately in the best way possible. This is because the child has temporary developmental interests. Though he can still learn (some of ) these skills later on, they will never be as easy or as intrinsically interesting as during this brief, intense period of readiness. The clearest example– that parallels all other skills the young child is learning– is his transitory ability to effortlessly learn multiple languages. While an older child or adult can still learn another language if they so desire, it is far from effortless, automatically motivating, or as competently acquired.

The problem facing parents, then, is how to discover when the child is ready so that he can be given exactly what he needs to meet his intellectual needs exactly when he needs it. The child’s readiness is not self-evident or determined a priori. The revolutionary approach Montessori championed was a systematic method of presenting materials to the child and testing for readiness by gauging his interest and focus. If he doesn’t understand how to properly use a material or loses interest quickly, he is not ready and the material can be presented again later. It is through this method that Montessori discovered that 3 and 4-year-olds could effortlessly learn to read and write without tiresome drills or direct instruction.

If the child is not presented the material in the first place, parents have no way of knowing whether he is ready except through chance observations. If he is not given the opportunity to learn to read at 3-years-old, for example, he will not learn to read then regardless of whether he is at the optimum moment of intense interest or not. The fact that a 3-year-old doesn’t automatically learn to read is not proof that he isn’t ready.

Without intensive observation and sensitive testing of materials, these moments of readiness will pass the child by. He will still learn to read by 6, 7, or 8-years-old, but it is very likely that it becomes a miserable slog that is the equivalent of trudging through feet of snow instead of what it could be, the mental equivalent of gliding smoothly over a sheet of ice.

This principle applies to all of the skills that a toddler or infant is learning, not just reading. His readiness can’t be ascertained by observation alone, but necessitates trial and error with materials designed to engage his interest. This entire process requires comprehensive intervention by an adult, not opposed to the child, but in tandem with his interests and serving the requirements of his development.

The Belief: The Child as a Self-Creator

This standard, like the standard in RIE, is based on a belief about the child. In this case, the belief that he is essentially incomplete. Although the child is an individual with his own experience and deserves to be treated with respect, he is fundamentally incomplete at birth.

According to Montessori, the child’s mind under 3 is undeveloped. It is not just content that the child must add. His personality, character, and intelligence all need to be built. The child, not the adult, is the active agent who does this act of creation. He uses both his genetic potential and what he finds in the environment in order to assimilate the content and create the basic structure of his mind.

The environment, then, and what it offers the child are of the utmost importance. The adults make up a crucial aspect of the environment and they do have the power to distort the child’s development through improper actions. However, they don’t distort the child by introducing specific materials that cater to his developmental needs.

The child needs mental food as desperately and of as high of quality as he needs physical food. Perhaps, as RIE says, a young child is not capable of boredom, especially in the modern world where environments are rich in interesting things for him to explore. But this does not imply that all environments, even all those devoid of TVs or flashy toys, are equally ideal for the child. The pursuit of more-more-more stimulation may not be what is needed, but the pursuit of the best stimulation is.

The Goal: The Adult World Made Accessible to the Child

The goal for the child is to maximize his potential. Of course, authenticity is important. The goal is not to become inauthentic and to perform for adults like an elephant in the circus. The goal is to give him the opportunity to craft his own character and intelligence with the best materials possible at the most opportune time. The goal is to not let any of those precious moments of readiness and interest pass by unnoticed and unheeded, lost in the void of the could-have-been.

Instead of providing a child his own world, isolated from the pressures, perspectives, and goals of adulthood, the child is given the adult world at a suitable scale and in a manageable dose.

He is given work to do with the right way to do it, not because creativity is unimportant, but because the base of creativity is understanding how the world works and what is possible in it. He is given the opportunity to expend effort and focus because this is how he creates in himself a character of perseverance and a love for work that will carry him all through his working years.

Adults intervene from a young age and entice the child directly with objects in the environment, because the child who is attracted to the environment is the child who can focus and work. The child who can focus and work becomes the adult who is not alienated from his own mind, his own inner discipline, and the trajectory of his life. He is in charge of creating the character that will enable him to determine his life path while knowing he has the resolve to make it happen.

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It is understandable why Montessorians would be confused about whether or not RIE is a complimentary parenting philosophy. High-minded ideas like respect and reverence for the child, the pursuit of his active participation in his own learning, and a cautionary word to parents about the unintended effects of their disruptions on the child’s development sound nearly identical to the ideas of Montessori. The similarity, unfortunately, is only on the surface.

At the deepest level, Montessori and RIE have antithetical beliefs about the child, goals for his childhood, and standards to evaluate parenting practices. It’s impossible to reconcile the idea that the child is essentially complete and essentially incomplete, that he he needs his own world untainted by adults and that he needs the adult world at a scale he can manage, and that the way to judge a practice is by whether the adult has been minimized and by whether the requirements of the child’s development have been met. Montessori and RIE, at bottom, are incompatible. This is an invitation for all to think carefully about what is true about the child, what goals are fundamental for childhood, and what standard is proper for parents to use to judge their actions.

Does this mean that a Montessorian should throw out any ideas from RIE? No, but it does mean that it is necessary to judge the recommendations carefully by the standard of the requirements of the child’s development. It would be gambling at best, and disastrous at worst, to take the ideas of RIE at face value and implement them un-analyzed in a Montessori home. What RIE gets right, from a Montessorian perspective, it gets right by accident, not by means of adhering to true principles.

So, by all means, implement strategies and recommendations from RIE that are proper from the Montessori standard. I, for one, am impressed by the approach to caregiving routines and think it, on the whole, is a complimentary addition to a Montessori home. But, as a Montessorian, I recommend caution and careful analysis before buying into any practices sight-unseen.

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Stay tuned for upcoming articles where I’ll be delving into Positive Discipline.

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1. Gerber, Magda. Dear Parent Caring for Infants with Respect. (RIE) (p. 161)

2. Gerber, Magda. Dear Parent Caring for Infants with Respect. (RIE) (p. 152-153)

3. Gerber, Magda. Dear Parent Caring for Infants with Respect. (RIE) (p. 153)

4. Solomon, Deborah Carlisle. Baby Knows Best (p. 139). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.