Children playing to their own strengths
A baby turns her head to stare at a cat; a toddler tentatively kicks a ball; a small child opens a box of bricks. These are fleeting moments in daily life, but they’re full of opportunity for communicating and learning if adults recognise them and respond appropriately, according to the renowned Dutch educator Maria Aarts. She developed the Marte Meo method of communication to support emotional and social development in everyday interactions between a child and their carer.
For example, a smile at the toddler affirms what he has just done. Then a verbal description in a warm tone of voice – “I see you kicking the ball” – not only helps language development but encourages him to do it again and, perhaps, to make a game out of it. Your interest and response to the child’s initiative builds his self-confidence.
That’s a brief, simplistic illustration of the Marte Meo approach, which is named after the Latin for “one’s own strengths” and is based on capabilities that parents and early childhood educators already have. But Aarts herself would be the first to say that, in essence, it is very simple and much of it is something most carers do naturally. After decades of working in child development, she says: “The more you think and analyse and study, the simpler it gets.”
Marte Meo was founded to help parents and carers of children with additional needs to develop skills for the extra challenges they face. But it is applicable to all children.
“We help people to read the developmental message behind the problem,” Aarts tells The Irish Times from her home in Eindhoven, ahead of a visit to Dublin next month to address the annual conference of Early Childhood Ireland (see panel).
The idea for Marte Meo arose through her work with autistic children in the Netherlands in the 1970s. A chance encounter with a mother visiting her son one Sunday afternoon at the residential centre for children with special needs, where Aarts was employed, was the turning point.“She saw I was able to make contact with him and then she started to cry and she said, ‘Maria, that’s my son, I am his mum. Why don’t you teach me how to do it?’ That changed my whole professional life.”
At the age of 24, it made her start to question why they, as state health professionals, took over 24-hour care of these children and did not show parents how to work with them.