Montessori mother - Kamelini Montessori

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for my inexperienced, unpedagogical mind to take in.
He was holding a light wooden frame about eighteen
inches square, on which were stretched two pieces of
cotton cloth, meeting down the middle like the joining
of a garment. On one of these edges was a row of
buttonholes and on the other a row of large bone
buttons. The child was absorbed in buttoning and
unbuttoning those two pieces of cloth.
He was new at the game, that was to be seen by the
clumsy, misdirected motions of his baby fingers, but
the process of his improvement was so apparent as,
his eyes shining with interest, he buttoned and un-
buttoned steadily, slowly, without an instant's inter-
ruption, that I watched him, almost as fascinated as
he. A child near us, apparently playing with blocks,
upset them with a loud noise, but my buttoning boy,
wrapped in his magic cloak of concentration, did not
so much as raise his eyes. I myself could not look
away, and as I gazed I thought of the many times a
little child of mine had tried to learn the secret of the
innumerable fastenings which hold her clothes to-
gether and how I, with the kindest impulse in the
world, had stopped her fumbling little fingers saying,
" No, dear, Mother can do that so much better. Let
Mother do it." It occurred to me now that the situa-
tion was very much as if, in the midst of a fascinat-
ing game of billiards, a professional player had
snatched the cue from my husband's hands, saying,
" You just stand and watch me do this. I can do it
much better than you."