About Me

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Rebecca L. Soffer, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist specialized in working with children three to five. She is a graduate of the Wright Institute and recently completed the University of Massachusetts Boston Infant-Parent Mental Health Post Graduate Certification. Dr. Soffer has worked with preschool aged children in various capacities: as Assistant Director of a large day care, as an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant, and as a Private Practitioner. She additionally has a great passion for and knowledge of different philosophies of early childhood education, such as Montessori and Reggio-Emilia inspired approaches. Dr. Soffer is an adjunct psychology professor at Berkeley City College and enjoys reading, writing and spending her free time with her own family and child.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Montessori and Ego Strength

My first year of work as an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant in a public Montessori preschool, I learned a lesson that would forever expand my thinking about the field of psychology. I was the individual therapist for a little boy in one of the classrooms. This boy, whom I will call Erik, was identified as a therapy candidate because of his low frustration tolerance, his outbursts of rage, his rigidity, and his declarations about hating himself and his life. I was learning that these symptoms were classic of children, especially little boys, who could find no reasonable explanation for why their fathers were not around except that they were fundamentally unlovable. This child was acting out his depression through his behavior in the classroom... and driving his teacher nuts in the meantime!

As a novice therapist and mental health consultant for preschool aged children, my heart broke for this child. I wanted him to feel good and to know that he was a lovable, worthy person even though his father had abandoned him. Seeing such a young child in so much pain is a difficult thing to manage. My immediate reaction was to be protective of Erik. Since my coping mechanisms for working with this age group were still developing, my feelings about him were raw.

At Erik's school, I had one and sometimes two other children I was working with in therapy. I was also acting in my role as mental health consultant for the teachers and administrators, helping them to support the children by supporting the whole school system. Needless to say, I was not only at the preschool to work with Erik. But that is not what he thought!

On Wednesdays, my day at his preschool, he would wait for my morning arrival at the school. As soon as he spotted me in the hallway rolling my yellow backpack stuffed with play therapy toys, he would pop out of the classroom and yell, "Hi Ms. Becka! When are you going to come and get me?!?" And every time, his teacher would come storming out after him, scolding him about leaving the confines of his classroom without her permission. Erik would watch me with curiosity and confusion, particularly if I was with another child. "I have work to do," I would tell him, tyring to adopt the Montessori concept of "work" but lacking the conviction. "I will come to the door to get you as soon as I am ready." With that, his teacher corraled him back in the classroom while he screamed, cried and dragged his feet.

The reality of the situation was that I wanted to hide from him that I was working one-on-one with some of his classmates. 'He couldn't handle it if he knew,' I would tell myself. I wanted him to feel special and not experience further rejection from the adults in his life. He needed to feel that he was my one and only.

The Montessori Implementor at the school soon caught sight of the awkward routine that had developed between me, Erik and his teacher. In her presence that particular morning, Erik had grown so upset when he ran into the hallway and saw me walking towards the play therapy room with another child that he screamed after me at the top of his lungs: "You are ugly! I never want to play with you ever again!" Upon his forced reentry into his classroom, he grabbed his classmates' chairs and threw them to the floor one by one.


"What was going on with Erik this morning?" she inquired of me a little later in the day. I explained to her that Erik had apparently grown really jealous when he saw me with another child in the hallway. "I try my best to hide it from him," I confessed, shrugging my shoulders.

She paused as she contemplated this in silence. "Why would you try to hide that from him, Rebecca? You need to explain to him that you work with him and other children when you are here, and that you will come to get him when it is his turn," she explained casually. "The reality is that he knows it already. He is probably really confused about why you aren't being more straightforward with him about it."

I was dumbstruck by this conversation. I had never even considered how, in trying to protect Erik from his own feelings, I had actually made the entire situation a confusing, intolerable mess for him. It instantly clicked for me that by "protecting" him I was depriving him of the opportunity to learn the skills he needed to handle his frustration. I could not believe my oversight, particularly in light of the fact that this was Erik's very issue! Erik not only had to cope with the abandonment of his father, but he had an older sister who spent a lot of time with her daddy over the weekends. He could not for the life of him understand why she got to see her father and he did not. If I did not become more clear to Erik in explaining my intentions, he might jump to the exact opposite conclusion of what I wanted him to take away: that people reject him because there is something fundamentally wrong with him.

The insight that I learned from the Montessori Implementor that day was a turning point for me. It marked the beginning of an expansion in my psychological conceptualizations of people, particularly young children. Schooled as a psychodynamic psychologist, I was taught to identify pathology in patients and to treat their symptoms by bringing unconscious conflict to light. I was also taught to hone in on patient's feelings and find meaning and patterns in their behavior.

In the Montessori school where I was working, there was less of a focus on children's feelings and more of a focus on building their skills. This was achieved through the thoughtful layout of their classroom environment, and by providing them with materials that were interesting, developmentally appropriate, and just challenging enough for children to establish independent mastery over them. Skill building in the Montessori classroom was also achieved by the prevailing Montessori philosophy that children are competent and strong if you give them the opportunity to be so.

The difference between Montessori philosophy and psychodynamic psychology is epitomized by the phrase coined by positive psychologist Martin Seligman. "Doing well in the world versus feeling good." (Seligman, M. The Optimistic Child, Harper Paperbacks, 1996). According to Seligman, you cannot achieve the state of feeling good without first achieving competency, or doing well. As a psychologist, I was skipping right over the mastery building in my effort to relieve Erik's pain (and perhaps my own), in the service of making him feel better.

I have not traded my psychodynamic lens for a Montessori (or positive psychology) one. In fact, a large piece of my work as an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant at the Montessori school has been in expanding the Montessori philosophy to include more of a psychological perspective in the classroom, given the large numbers of children experiencing mental health issues.

I still believe that psychodynamic psychology is greatly effective in alleviating people's pain and helping them understand how their early experiences shape the present relational patterns they find themselves stuck in. I find this approach particularly useful for parents of young children.

As for the children themselves, I am now very mindful about focusing on their feelings so that they feel nurtured and loved without trying to create a false sense of contingency (a world without pain) or unconsciously communicating that I do not believe they can handle things. Montessori has taught me that children are very resilient and have a great deal of ego-strength.

The very next time I saw Erik, I explained to him that it was my job to come to his school and take different children for "special play time" (e.g., therapy). "But," I continued, "I will always come to get you as soon as it is your turn." Erik showed no visible sign that this was a climactic moment of understanding for him. In fact, he continued to run out into the hallway to greet me when I arrived at his school, and to check if it was his turn yet. However, to our great relief, the hallway tantrums stopped. Erik was additionally more relaxed and secure in his classroom knowing what my intentions towards him, and the other children, were. Our "special play time" could now progress into deeper areas of psychological conflict.

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