Directed choices are an amazing way to include your baby or toddler in their daily routines! And what are directed choices you ask? Directed choices are limited choices that are guided by the adult and offered to children to encourage decision making within their daily experiences.
I’m going to jump in to why I use directed choices as a daily tool with my sweet babies and toddlers.
We are empowering the child by offering decision making throughout their day
I’ll tell you from experience, it’s not just empowering, but it’s actually incredibly exciting to a lot of our babies to have the opportunity to choose for themselves. And so a story time… when I was in the classroom setting running my Nido, I would offer these types of choices literally all day long.
For example, for their snack I would look into their basket in the fridge and see what types of food they had. And then I would offer them a choice, make sure they had a couple of food groups in there, of course. And then they were making a choice of what they wanted. And it was so exciting!
They got to eat what they chose based off the options they were given. And that entire process is just incredibly empowering. And we’re including them within their daily experiences by doing that, you know.
We are continuing to encourage that child led Montessori experience
The goal for Montessori is having that child, that experience to continue to fuel that innate inner will to learn about their world. So Dr. Montessori believed that every child is born with this innate inner will to learn about their world and to explore about their world and as they develop into higher levels of consciousness.
It’s amazing to offer these choices, to continue to fuel that. And if you think about it, everything is a learning experience for our babies and our toddlers.
Directed choices are guided by the adult
And so what I mean by this is that we would want to offer choices that are guided by us and ones that we would ideally want them to make. So, for example, if it’s 40 degrees outside, we wouldn’t necessarily offer a choice of which tank top they want to wear today. Right?
We would offer choices that we would want to encourage them to make and then empower them through those choices. And just little side note, that’s one of the reasons that many Montessorians called themselves guides, is because we’re there and we’re prepared, guiding them within their experiences!
Directed choices are amazing language opportunities
So if you think about it, if you’re holding up two things and you’re saying, do you want the red shirt or do you want the blue shirt? You’re holding them up and you’re waiting for your child to reach or tell you which one they want. And you clarify it again by saying, oh, you chose the red shirt. That’s such an amazing language moment for your baby!
You know, you’re offering the language to not just the physical item (the shirt), but also to the action that just happened (you chose the shirt).
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And these were just a few of the amazing benefits to directed choices offer your baby and your daily experiences! To discover more stories and information about directed choices, check out episode 21 of the Montessori Babies Podcast below!
Xoxo,
Bianca Your Baby Tour Guide