Natural Talent

I remember a boy named Doug who entered the Montessori school when he was three. In every respect but one Doug was very age-appropriate and typical. He loved the Practical Life and Sensorial materials. His keen interests in math and reading would come a little later. He was a pretty laid back kid and fit right in quickly.

One day Doug laid out a floor rug and started working with the small geometric plane figures, the colored squares, triangles, and hexagons that the kids used for creating large mosaics of shapes. Doug, however, did something unexpected.

He started out building two flowers that came from a single stem. As he built each flower back and forth, he used the exact same pattern of blocks on each. Even as the stems curved away from each other and he built a flower on each end, the exact matching of shapes and colors on each flower continued. When he was done, he had built two very large flowers, each having at least 30-50 shapes of various colors in it, and each identical in every way. We could not believe it!

Another day, Doug started a drawing of the street in front of his house. When he was finished, he had created a complete street view with the street, parked cars, houses and yards, and people, all drawn in correct perspective! It was the same view you would have with your eyes. The street converged in the distance, everything got smaller as it got farther away, etc. Again, we were floored. Doug, as I mentioned, was three.

As I recall, Nancy encouraged Doug’s Mom to enroll him in a local art school – good idea! Where does talent like this come from? Is it a gift from God, reincarnation, genes, DNA luck? All I know is that if you work with preschoolers long enough, you will see children who exhibit unusual skills in one area or another.

This always seemed to me another confirmation of Montessori’s prime observation: children are born with an inner guide and motivator and spend their childhood following it – or should. If we get on board and help them; all the better. When we divert them and throw them off the track, we not only might prevent kids like Doug and others from finding their gift; we can turn out adults who have this gnawing dissatisfaction with their life choices that they can’t quite put a finger on, like maybe some of us?

Montessori’s view of Cosmic Education outlined her beliefs and vision. Take a look.