Castellanza 2019

Presenting

Follow the Child... 0-3 years

as taught by Maria Montessori and Adele Costa Gnocchi

The presentation of the latest book written by Grazia Honegger Fresco.

"This book was born from the idea of reconstructing the work of Adele Costa Gnocchi who was a faithful interpreter of Maria Montessori's ideas, and a meticulous and brilliant person in her own right. It brings together memories and rigorous descriptions of her creative efforts and it consciously focuses on the first three years of life, giving readers the opportunity to fully explore the concept of Education from Birth as a Help to Life, the meaning of which Adele Costa Gnocchi studied and experimented with in how she structured and advocated for the ideas of Maria Montessori. In this book, I assert that the child has a right to be “respected,” and as such not just in theory and with empty words, which is easy to do, but through a correct Montessori educational approach from the beginning of life, affirming Maria Montessori's ideas and bringing together research that is still under investigation today. This is a book for educators, parents, and teachers who are fascinated with the idea of a pedagogical project based on observation, who have faith in the natural forces of the child in an environment of freedom, without desks, without rewards, without grades, exactly as Montessori advocated." GHF

Today, we are all together in Castellanza, Italy, to welcome a newborn: a new book that Grazia has brought into the world. It is a gift to the world. With this book in hand, we must be missionaries in defense of the primal needs of every newborn, and their right to be free... from birth, as did Maria Montessori, Adele Costa Gnocchi

To begin this very important discourse on the sensitive care of the very young child, I begin by reading some of Maria Montessori's thoughts on the newborn from The Child in the Family.

“What is civilization? Is it a progressive help that eases man's adaptation to the environment? If this is so, who experiences a more sudden and radical change in environment than the child who is being born? And what kind of care has civilization created to help the newborn … this person who must undergo the most difficult adaptation, who passes suddenly from one existence to another, in being born?

Until this moment, she grew gently in a warm watery environment created especially for her, so she could rest, protecting her from physical impact and changes in temperature... where bright light and loud sounds could not even penetrate. Yet at birth she is ejected from this home to live in the air.

This change happens abruptly, without the possibility of the transition happening in stages, and she, who had been in perfect repose, is suddenly thrust into the exhausting effort of being born. Her body is squeezed, almost as if she is being crushed between two millstones, her joints pulled and tugged at, and she comes to us wounded, like a pilgrim who has journeyed from a distant land.

And she comes to us, exhausted, the terrible contrast between perfect rest and the enormous effort made. She is exhausted, wounded like a pilgrim who comes from a far away country. And what do we do to receive her, to help her?

While we think about creating a tranquil space for the mother who is exhausted, low light and silence, who thinks of letting the child stay in a darkened space and in silence, she who is tired as well, to allow for a gradual adaptation to the new environment?

No one sees in the newborn child a human being who suffers. No one appreciates the sensitivity of a little body that has never before been handled, or of her reactions to innumerable physical impressions ... to every unfamiliar touch.

Yet experience has revealed a terrible truth: we carry the wrongs of early infancy with us for the rest of our lives. The life of the embryo and the vicissitudes of childhood are decisive - for the health of the adult ... for the future of humanity.

Why, then - is birth - the most difficult moment that man has to overcome in life, is not taken into consideration? Why is it not thought that this is a terrible and difficult crisis not only for the mother but also for the newborn?

There is a strange void inside of us, a blindness we have built into our spirit, a blindness we have built into our civilization. It is something like the blind spot in the depths of the eye... a blind spot in the depths of life. We must come to a full understanding of who this newborn child really is. Only then will we realize the absolute necessity of easing him gently into life.”

Maria Montessori, 1923

Montessori pleads with us to study and to defend the newborn.

The astounding fact is that 99% of children are born in hospitals, where there is little Montessori thinking, rather protocols, interventions, medicalization and separation. Newborns are treated as patients and birth is treated as a medical emergency. Newborns are not treated as a spiritual embryo, the most delicate aspect of our human existence.

I have observed in the hospitals in Abruzzo, Italy that during the first two days of life the newborn undergoes about twenty procedures, many are a violent in relation to the level of sensitivity. The child is separated from the mother immediately following birth for a first bath, done in a hurry, and and exam on the exam table under lights and heat lamps, and an hour after birth they are again separated, this time for an extended electronic observation, placed in a warmed up plastic box to see if his heart rate is regular and his oxygen absorption adaquate.

Each day - for the first two or three days of life - there are separations that last for hours, for the doctor's visits, and to show off for the family behind a glass window. At best, the babies are kept in the secure nursery for 12 out of 24 hours, so that doctors can visit them, nurses can feed them artificial milk, and procedures and protocols can be followed. At worst, never with mom because the child is being kept in the plastic box.

Shockingly, I observed the staff leaving babies to cry for long periods, 10 minutes, which must feel like an eternity, during which feelings of deep fear must arise, unsure about what a new life on the outside, ... without water, without a mother's heartbeat continually audible, without the comfort of a small womb, all of the environmental sensations you known since conception. And then when they did decide to do something to calm the babies trapped in a nursery far from a mother, they gave them a pacifier. They used a sweet tasting medicine to distract from the suffering of medical procedures, the first bribe of their lives using 'candy'. Often, they gave the babies artificial milk, forcing a non-natural growth ... from the very first days.

They took blood samples, how difficult it is to find the vein on a newborn's tiny arm, sometimes having to pierce over and over, searching for access to blood. What feelings must arise in a person who is new to life and having to undergo such procedures: anger, fear, despair, and possibly, the baby drops into a state of shutdown, a survival defense, trying to survive this moment. The babies are attached to dozens of wires, punctured yet again to measure blood sugar at the one hour mark, and to monitor the PCR levels, to see if there is jaundice, and prior to being sent home, for a complete neonatal screening.

Instead, these first days should be according to mother nature, not medical culture, a creation of civilization ...

If newborns are placed on the mother's belly, skin to skin, immediately after birth, they are going to search for the breast, all by themselves, pushing with their feet, an innate reflex, instinctively. "Help me do it myself," the newborn says silently with his movements.

Grazia says this about our potential to find our own way from birth:

"The human newborn, like any other mammalian young, has within itself great self-constructive forces. He needs to receive the right protection from interference, discontinuity, sudden frights, from lights, sounds, loud voices, a hurried manner of being touched or carried, and constant changes in position, location or in the person who is caring after his needs. But a newborn, in the silence of those first delicate months, cannot ask us for all of this."

These fundamental points should become the real protocols in the hospital:

• skin to skin for at least 2 hours immediately after birth
• do not separate the baby from its mother in the first few days
• offer a return into water that is relaxing and pleasant for the tiny creature
• only breast milk and the arms of the mother
• all medical procedures should be performed on the newborn in the arms of the mother if possible
• and the baby must be protected from all overwhelming stimuli in order to have a gradual adaptation to life outside the womb

Following in the footsteps of the two great figures of Maria Montessori and Adele Costa Gnocchi, I decided to study the newborn. They both had envisioned a new training for the beginning of life and in 1947 met together to plan for the Scuola Assistants to Infancy Montessori (AIM). After the death of her colleague and mentor, Adele Costa Gnocchi founded the Montessori Birth Center in 1960 to continue the work begun at the Scuola.

From 2017-2019 I had the opportunity to work with twenty midwives and maternity nurses, in the hospital and in the clinics, in the classroom and in the field, to learn together to observe the signals and communications of newborns. I met over 500 babies and their parents.

Together we created a new activity in the clinics for small groups of mothers, observation groups for 0-6 months. We created the materials we needed with our own hands and I observed in them a reawakening of a sensitivity towards the littlest ones and a transformation of behaviors and attitudes.

As you can see for yourselves, ... if the child finds a suitable environment for the exact stage of his development, he calmly observes and concentrates on the people and objects he needs to absorb for a natural and individualized journey of discovery... he is able to move freely, if he is not hindered, and in a crescendo of exploration of movement he realizes he is master of this body and learns to control it.

Maria Montessori said that "any unnecessary help is an obstacle to development". Today, you might say "every container is an obstacle to development". Look around and you will see children, not free children, but children in every type of container, prevented from developing according to their nature, children in little tiny prisons.

We carried this same the message to Prague in September 2017, with a breakout session at the Montessori International Congress, and with great success. The public appreciated us for the originality of this Montessori work, not that of the "Montessori method", but what Montessori called the scientific pedagogy. The environments and the research practices that you will see with the next talks by Elisa Pozzi (Cassano Magnago) and Sabrina Ricci (Cardano al Campo), are the results of folowing the scientific pedagogy as applied in these public 0-3 childcare program.

Presentation by Karin Slabaugh. She has a degree in sociology and anthropology, a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education and a diploma from the Association Montessori International for 0-3.

As an independent American researcher, she has conducted observations in more than 50 Montessori environments around the world. In 2010 she came to Rome to research the roots of the Montessori project for the littlest ones. Through the Montessori Birth Center she met and studied with Grazia Honegger Fresco in 2012, 2014 and 2016 and observed the Nidos (0-3) where she was the pedagogical guide.

In April of 2017, Karin started a project in Abruzzo studying the sensitivity of the newborn and working with hospital midwives and nurses to recognize the needs of the newborn and her mother from a Montessori perspective.