As a mom of three grown-up children, who have children of their own, memories of their birth and growing years are stored in my mind like the mature oak tree with branches reaching out. Every mother knows how precious those memories are.

Years ago as a new mom,

I learned very quickly that my child’s first and best teacher was Me.

That thought put a lot of pressure on me trying to do my best and doing the right thing. This led me to find the kind of books and search for people who had experience and expertise to guide me on the path that I felt was genuine and not driven by unproven ideas or old writings that may be misinterpreted.

One of the books I came across was titled “How to Raise a Brighter Child” written by Joan Beck. This photo is of my book, which was published in

1967. As you can see it’s been used for a few decades. There are many versions of this book on Amazon.

You Can Raise a Brighter Child

For over a century, early childhood learning has gone through a series of serious research and studies by several prominent scientists and doctors. One pioneer physician who is acclaimed for her educational method was Maria Montessori. Her method was built on the way children learn naturally.

On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first Montessori school, Casa dei

Bambini, in Rome. She wrote extensively about her approach to education sharing her teaching methods, which attracted many devotees from all over the world. Today there are now in 2024 thousands of Montessori schools worldwide.

She claimed that…

1. Your child does not have a fixed intelligence or predetermined rate of intellectual growth, contrary to such widespread opinion in the past.
2. Your child’s level of intelligence can be changed, either for better or worse, by the child’s environment, especially during the earliest years of the child’s life. Early stimulation can produce changes in the size and chemical functioning of the brain which are the greatest during the period when the brain is growing most rapidly and when the brain cells can be activated easily.
3. Heredity does put an upper limit on your child’s intellectual capacity, but this ceiling is so high that many scientists believe that no human has yet even approached it.

You have to ask yourself…

Did my child inherit my family’s intelligence or did my interests rub on my child? Was my child born to be great or did her genius flower because she was given lessons at the age of three and was surrounded by stimulating and encouraging adults?

There are specific sensitive periods…

1. The sensitive period for helping children develop a sense of order is when they are between the ages of 2.5 and 3.5 years old.
2. The sensitive period for learning to read and to understand numbers is between the ages of four and five.
3. Children between the ages of 3.5 and 4.5 years old can learn to write more easily than they can at six or seven.

“The most damaging consequence of the “traditional early childhood education philosophy” has been the ruling idea that reading should not be taught to a very young child and should be delayed until the age of six and older. This notion has been one of the most disastrous blunders in the history of education.

Maria Montessori