What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from The Montessori Toddler
A running coach spends her sessions asking athletes questions instead of handing them answers, letting them work out their own stride, trusting the process even when it is slow. At home, her two-year-old is trying to stack four blocks and keeps knocking them over, trying again without asking for help. She watches herself reach toward the blocks before catching her own hand mid-air. With an athlete, she would never grab the baton and demonstrate the technique herself to save ten minutes. With her own child, the urge to fix it fast is somehow stronger. Why does the coaching instinct she trusts completely at the track disappear the moment her toddler struggles in front of her?
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The environment does the coaching your voice does not have to
Davies's prepared environment, accessible shelves, tools sized for small hands, works like a well-designed training setup: it lets someone practice and fail safely without narrating every rep. A coach who sets up the right drill and goes quiet already uses this instinct. At home, that means arranging things so your toddler can attempt a task, pour water, stack blocks, without needing verbal coaching the whole time. The setup does some of the work your voice usually would.
Coaches used to verbal instruction may narrate too much at home, filling silence a toddler's own trial and error needs.
Pick one task and set it up for your toddler to attempt without verbal coaching.
Following interest is the same skill as reading what a client is actually ready for
You already know the difference between pushing your own plan for a session and reading what a client is genuinely ready to work on. Davies asks the same discipline at home: notice what your toddler is actually absorbed in, rather than the activity you had planned. A good coach adjusts the session to the athlete in front of them; the same adjustment, applied to a toddler's interest instead of your agenda, is not a lesser skill, just a smaller room.
Steering a client firmly toward a goal can make you redirect a toddler away from a genuinely useful, if messy, interest.
Before starting your planned activity, spend two minutes watching what your toddler chooses alone.
Real participation is the difference between a drill and the actual game
You know isolated drills only go so far; real competition builds something a drill cannot replicate. Davies argues a toddler's real task, wiping a table, carrying their bag, is the actual game, while a toy version is closer to a drill run in isolation. A coach who believes in live, real conditions should recognize this instinct quickly, even if applying it at home takes more patience than on the field.
Real tasks are slower and messier than a toy activity, and your limited time can make that trade feel costly.
Hand your toddler one real, supervised task instead of a toy version of it.
Patience is the coaching virtue you already have, just unevenly distributed
You already know, professionally, that growth requires letting someone struggle a little before stepping in, and that rescuing too soon stalls development rather than protecting it. Davies's mindset shift, staying steady through a toddler's mistakes and slow pace, is that same coaching patience, aimed at someone whose outcomes matter to you personally instead of professionally, which makes it harder to access on demand.
Some days you will not have the coaching patience left for your own toddler that you gave freely to clients all day, and that is a real cost of the job, not a personal failing. A coach who pushes an athlete past reasonable limits gets injuries, not growth; pushing your own patience produces something similar at home. Notice when you are simply out of the resource this approach requires, and let that be a reason to simplify tonight, not for guilt.
Name one thing, honestly
- Where do you extend patience to clients that has not yet reached your own toddler? - What changes if you treat one toddler task as the actual game, not a drill? - Which coaching instinct is available right now, and which is depleted today?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Hand your toddler one real, supervised task instead of a toy version of it.