Scientific teaching that follows laws of nature promises to resolve all misbehavior to ultimately reveal the child’s true nature of perfect, peace, order, and harmony. This is the “normalized” child that Dr. Montessori discovered and reported in her first Children’s House in Rome, Italy in 1907. While this approach of scientific education is primarily a type of “observation” with children, this doesn’t mean to passively stand and watch as misbehavior and disorder unfolds and expands among the children. Rather, the technology of scientific education provides vital tools to sometimes quite actively engage to resolve misbehavior. In fact, the main lesson presentation in this technique, is called resolving misbehavior to denote its specific function and purpose.
The resolving misbehavior lesson presentation is the type of experimental interaction that aims to remove the cause of misbehavior, which is the disorder around a particular “hub” child in the scenario you are observing at that time. So, begin resolving misbehavior when you analyze a scenario, by finding and removing the disorder in the physical objects, other children, or adult personality around the central “hub” child in question. In a group situation, following the protocol well-being of the total environment, you first address the scenario that shows the most serious type of violent, harmful disorder, such as physical harm to a child.
Removing the Obstacles
If the misbehavior is a child mishandling a physical object, move towards him, using the technique proximity, get this attention with the distraction technique, and then give him a clear direction, such as “Watch” to show him how to use that material in a proper, safe manner. In fact, resolving misbehavior involving a physical object is often the best place to begin to assure an effective, easy solution.
If the cause of misbehavior comes from “other children”, for example, get the attention of one of these, and then use a clear direction safe word phrase like ‘Come over here. Let me show you something.’ Then, point the child to some simple piece of work away from the “hub” (misbehaving) child.
Work
The final step in most resolving misbehavior interactions is to guide the child to focus on some positive exercise with a physical object. As children around the “hub” child begin to concentrate on their own self-directed “work”, the misbehavior of the “hub” child begins to diminish and finally disappear all by itself, since you have removed the cause of the misbehavior in the child’s environment. Resolving misbehavior in this way then leaves the hub child to freely follow his own true natural perfect inner guidance for self-directed development.