To think perfect parents with Montessori blogs and 2 year olds who cook supper then do the dishes are shameless liars?

[DieAntword]

I see them and I look at my 2 year old and I am honestly thinking how are these kids real? They cook food, lay the table, serve it in tiny little dishes and then wash up and somehow live in immaculate homes? It's all fake right? Please tell me its fake?

Ah yes, I’m a Montessori teacher and my does this with me every mealtime. It’s lovely. What you don’t see is her screaming for more egg, lobbing a shell at the cat, pouring the hand washing bowl onto the sofa then taking a shit in the bath. But I could make a beautiful video of the food prep, cooking and laying the table, interspersed with a hundred videos detailing the rest.

@inthekitchensink ah yes that sounds more like it. How do the people on these things have time to manage all this and keep their homes so clean? Or do they only clean just prior to shooting videos?

I imagine they don't work and their toddlers go to Montessori nursery at least 3 days a week?

Aww, they are so sweet. I have no problems believing this - there are 2 parents helping (even if one is behind the camera) and they both seem patient. And having kids who help with tidying & laundry certainly helps with keeping the house looking decent. I don't like the commercialised, expensive version of Montessori but think that lots of the basic principles are spot-on. These kids aren't throwing their food on the floor and they are using real china. Love it.

My four, nearly five year old likes to help me cook, sets the table and takes the dishes to the sink to be washed after we've eaten. He puts some of them away sometimes too.

But there's a massive difference between nearly five and two.

At two he was more likely to throw the plate on the floor than wash it.

I would bet my house on it being at least staged.

My house is also still a midden.

I reckon on a good day and with some editing software I could get my 2 year old to replicate the videos. But It would need to be timed perfectly and would not reperesent the other 95% of our lives. My little girl has always wanted to be very independent and it is generally us that gets in the way of her doing things for herself because we don’t want the mess, need something doing properly or need to get out of the house. I reckon if you had a child like mine and fully embraced montessori + didn’t work you could have an amazingly helpful toddler. We don’t have that! What we tend to get is strops of ‘I do it’ I when I’m trying to cut her nails or do something she just can’t do.

My eldest could sort of do this stuff if I could be bothered to let her, tbh my heart would sink a bit when she came over ‘to help with the washing’.

Also what you can't see is all the shell left in the eggs and all of the egg goop all over the floor

My 2 year old can crack an egg into the bowl when we are baking cakes, then sort of waves the spoon in the direction of the bowl and claims that's stirring, and tries to eat as much cake mix as he can before I spoon it into the tin.

My 2 and 4 year olds can clear their plates from the table onto the side, but sometimes often forget that the leftovers are supposed to stay on the plate.

And my husband dreads hearing me yelling for him while the kids are in the bath, as he knows he will come upstairs to find me hastily pulling them out and saying "there's poo! I'll do the kids, you clean the bath!".

Yeah mine loves to put his plate on the kitchen counter when he is done. Shame about the leftovers all over the floor!

I trained as a Montessori teacher & my DCs went to Montessori nursery. As inthekitchensink said a fair bit of it could be replicated on a good day, when I was feeling very patient and the DCs weren't high on too many craisins or other high sugar but 'healthy' fruit snack! What wouldn't be captured was the monumental tantrum just before about the itchy t-shirt or the one afterwards about not touching the oven door so you don't get an owie!

Mine are nearly grown up now & to get either of them near the kitchen is a rare feat. Maybe I should video them reluctantly emptying the dishwasher on the billionth time of being asked and post that, showing how much all that toddler nurturing achieved!

Kids that age can be very capable. One of mine could ride a bike at that age!

However blogs/videos like this are just a heavily edited snapshot of their lives.

This thread has reminded me of a blog that was linked to on MN years ago. The room was all set up for elimination communication etc. I wonder how that turned out 🤔

My kid's reception class have open access to baking - they can choose to go into the area, follow a recipe left out for them with them measuring out the quantities (think it's done in terms of "one cup... one spoon" and the like) and mix it and pour it into cake cases ready for an adult to put in the oven for them to have later in the day.

Sounds delightful - in reality my kid comes out looking like a snowman with all the flour all over her.

Meanwhile, I have two teenagers who can just about roll out of bed and dress themselfs 🙈

I do a little internal shudder when I'm cooking and my 2 year old arrives at my knees and announces "I want to help mummy" She helps by eating the vegetables I'm cutting, trying to throw anything she can get her paws on into the saucepan and wailing that she wants to make toast.

Oh stop watching bollocks like this op! I shudder when my 19 year old twin dds cook. They make enough bloody mess.

My 2 year old grandson shat on the rocker yesterday and the dog started to lick it up!

That would have rivalled any life style blog.

My kids go to a Montessori and they help me unload dishwasher, take their empty plates to the sink and tidy up the dining table after each meal . They put away their toys after play time and put their clothes in the wash basket each night before bath time. They pick out their clothes in the morning and brush their teeth as best as they can, moisturise and brush their hair.

They teach them at the Montessori and it's very useful for me when my partner works long hours.

They're both under 4.

My youngest also occasionally rips his nappy off and wees on the floor. Constantly throws his toys down the stairs. Shoves food down the back of the sofa. Hides my phone and keys. Pours porridge oats all over the kitchen floor. Smears yogurt all over the doors. Broke my washing machine by pressing all the buttons so it became confused.

When you're watching things like that, I think they focus or film the positive achievements which doesn't give you a clear idea of what real life parenting is like. Or they're just focusing on the positives and ignoring the not so great behaviour which most parents face.

All my family videos are of nice positive experiences. Usually when they're running wild the last thing on my mind is, 'hey let me whip my phone out so I can film this'. The thought process in those moments is, 'I need to get this under control before I lose my shit'.

Yeah mine is actually genuinely helpful with unloading the dishwasher. But I’d never trust him to cook. He can’t even eat his food without half of it ending up either on the floor or smeared into the table.

Meanwhile, I have two teenagers who can just about roll out of bed and dress themselfs

Don't worry that happens to even the most helpful of toddlers

They are amateurs.

I bet they can't destroy a room like what my 15 month old can. That takes real skills.

Another person who's worked in a Montessori school, and yes it's possible. My 2 year old can do all sorts that I suppose would be classed as advanced for his age when he's in the mood to. He can also pick his nose and eat it, throw a royal tantrum in a very public place, and crayon on the walls with a turd.
We do bake and cook together, but I generally do a lot of the prep in his absence so he's mainly pouring and mixing things rather than anything which requires too much supervision. We also do a lot of 'educational' activities, but my career pre-DS was either working in Early Years, or training up others to work in Early Years, so it's more force of habit than anything.
That being said, I really don't know why I bother. I've done all kinds of bells and whistles activities with DS around colours/numbers/animals etc (think building swamps in the back yard and other such wanky things) and not a sniff of him learning any of it. Bunged him in front of a YouTube video last week (30 minutes of dumper trucks tossing coloured footballs about the place), and he can suddenly identify red, green, purple, yellow and blue. What a complete waste of hours of my life when I could have just plonked the little bugger in front of the TV and saved myself the bother!

I'm sure you were building the foundations purple
I spent ages reinforcing colours with DD, gave up, magically she got them shortly after.