25 years ago, the six-acre, forested floodplain behind my school held some 40-50 Eastern White Pines. Each tree measured three to four feet in diameter, rising arrow- straight, nearly 75 feet in the air, towering high above the canopy set by Aspen, Hickory and other hardwoods. Within a few years, another section of forest 500 yards uphill from us was cleared and converted into a strip mall and parking lot. We anticipated most of the changes it would bring, but there was one that I never saw coming. One-by-one, the White Pines began to fall.
In hindsight it all seems painfully, blatantly obvious. The old forest up the hill would have absorbed the rain. Instead, the new parking lot funnelled it all to a culvert, which passes through our forest on its way to a catchment pond a quarter mile away. This drastically changed the direction of waterflow through the floodplain, gradually saturating once dry land. Of course, in a construction project of this size, there were certainly environmental engineers and arborists who would have predicted this outcome. But at this point it doesn’t really matter whether anyone knew this would happen or not. The best we can do now is learn the lessons nature provides.
The roots of a White Pine run very shallow. I didn’t know that until I saw the first one go. When these massive monoliths fall, the entire root system is unearthed, leaving a crater 25 feet in diameter, but only a few feet deep. Standing upright in the forest, these trees appear so solid, formidable, even regal. Their hidden fragility is only revealed when they die. Now only five remain.
There was nothing we could have done. We had no choice in the matter. The trees grew according to a biological plan that has existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Ironically, they died because they were overwhelmed by too much of the one thing they needed to survive.

The last White Pines. It is only a matter of time…
When I watch our students playing among the trees, I see a connection to the forest. Like the pines, these children will grow according to nature’s laws. In their world outside of school, well-meaning parents and caregivers will build an environment which constricts or reinforces these laws. Water and sunlight are the priority. So they spend their time attending to that which will enable the child to rise to their full height, while doing their best to divert the rising water or prevailing winds for as long as they can. This prepares children for a predictable future, but may leave them vulnerable to the unforeseen.
Just like the strongest trees in the forest, what our children need is deeper roots. That all sounds nicely poetic, but what does it actually mean? To me, human roots are anchors; light enough to be carried easily, but solid enough to keep us safely moored when the floods come. They are internalized skills, knowledge and character traits, which not only allow us to figure out ourselves and the world around us, but also to find a way through the challenges we never saw coming.
These are the qualities held by the people you admire most. They are not just learned, they are earned, because not a single one of them comes quickly or easily. They may sometimes occur naturally, but will not grow without effort. As much as we might hope to, parents cannot artificially implant these anchors within the child. However, it is well within our abilities to prevent our children from acquiring them through experience. Sometimes, when we examine the roots of the people who fall the hardest, we find a fragile network, created and held together by parents, worn thin over time. In the worst cases, we find no roots at all.
The opportunities to strengthen a child’s foundation are there from the very beginning. However, parents must learn when to change direction along the way. When the wind blows constantly from the West, the tree will naturally build stronger roots on the windward side. In Northern Virginia, the rare storms which approach from the Southeast are usually the most violent. They come as a surprise and wreak havoc on trees, which have never experienced the unfamiliar stress. Larger trees that have lived a life without struggle will be uprooted or snap halfway up, exposing vulnerability on their usually leeward side. Meanwhile, young, thinner trees slip through mostly unscathed and better prepared for the next rogue storm.
Nature demonstrates that a young tree must feel the winds. White Pine saplings may not be as strong or tall as their 75 foot elders, but they are more resilient. Children are the same way. We underestimate their capacity to endure and adapt. So instead of helping to build upon strengths, we shield our children from anything which might leave a mark. What appears to us as weakness is the very thing which ensures the young tree will persevere.
For 25 years I have watched Montessori children put down the strongest roots in the forest. Our methods introduce every child to an environment and philosophy which directly leads to this process. Here, far earlier than parents might expect them to, children take hold of their own growth. They become so capable at addressing their own needs that they instinctively begin to seek out others who might need help. Sometimes, success comes to them easily. Other times, only through struggle. If we do it right, each child experiences a good helping of both, strengthening deeper roots according to their abilities, needs and interests.
In a child’s foundation, awareness is the taproot. The deeper it grows, the better. It is the one thing all children need in order to help themselves. New parents may misconstrue awareness as a function of accumulated knowledge, but knowing information is passive. The action occurs when acquiring it. We build stronger roots by attempting to know what we do not know, than by acting upon the knowledge we already possess. An inquisitive disposition is only sustainable when the process of question and answer is constantly refined. If we do not learn how to seek new sources, ask new questions, or to ask old ones differently, there will be no new answers.
Lack of independence and inhibitory control, social immaturity, rigidity, poor emotional regulation, reduced critical thinking and executive functioning skills. These are the shallow roots so often held together by parent compensation and accommodation.
Just as I was surprised by the weakness of the White Pines, a child’s deficit (or growth, for that matter) may catch parents unaware. However, your child’s lack of awareness is easy to detect if you are looking for it. In the year following the COVID pandemic, the evidence was impossible to miss. As they returned to school from lockdown, many children seemed disconnected from their surroundings and the people within them. It wasn’t so much that they avoided eye contact, it was as if they sometimes truly did not see what was in front of them.
They were slow to recognize personal space or to pick up on the emotions of their friends. In a choice between the two, children more often approached adults than their peers. Conversations between children were more often one-sided, lacking mutual engagement. Even older children seemed to require assistance with things they had been able to manage independently a year ago. They struggled to sustain focus. Children spilled, forgot or gave up on work, sometimes without seeming to recognize it. When they did, they were disassociated with the act or how to fix the situation.
As drastic as they sound, these symptoms are not new. Such behaviors have been observed in children across all ages for as long as school has existed. All COVID did was to increase their frequency such that no one could miss the signs. Of course the virus itself did not cause these behaviors. Neither was it the social isolation alone. On top of it all, well-meaning, overwhelmed parents became the sole influence on their child as mother, father, teacher, playmate and protector. These are roles that no parent can or should fill alone.
Unfortunately, helicopter, tiger, lawnmower and snowplow parents will continue to prove the point (Did I forget any?). These stereotypes have been much maligned in recent years, rightfully so. Parenting books have been written. The outcomes have been studied; lack of independence and inhibitory control, social immaturity, rigidity, poor emotional regulation, reduced critical thinking and executive functioning skills. These are the shallow roots so often held together by parent compensation and accommodation. If you line them up side-by-side, you will surely find the taproot of awareness is the smallest root of them all.
Montessori is a deep, multi-faceted teaching method full of nuance and techniques which can take years of training to develop. Sometimes, I meet parents who feel intimidated by this complexity and presume our teachers hold unreasonable expectations for their parenting. But practicing Montessori at home does not have to look anything like what we do at school. It is more about considering basic desired outcomes and adopting a philosophy which balances responsibility for achieving them across the entire family.
This sharing of accountability is an important distinction of effective parenting. No matter what the family looks like, every child should be empowered and trusted enough to make their own contribution to the effort. Too often, whether one parent, two parents or a multi-generational home, the adults unnecessarily carry all of the weight, believing this is the easiest way. They let the sunlight and water through, but block everything else out, relying upon their own frayed root systems to bear the burden.
The obstacles parents face are sometimes more difficult to surmount than those of the classroom teacher. At home, none of us are trained in our craft and sometimes we practice without any support at all. We are all winging it. So we battle against our own upbringing and the flawed lessons life has taught us. We suffer from the unique worry borne of holding another’s life in our hands. And while the parents of past generations felt the glare of judgy neighbors, they could easily shut them out. Today, every parent is relentlessly pursued by millions of unavoidable internet “neighbors” whose social media posts prove they have nailed parenting, marriage and everything else.
Parents and parenting-expert authors seem to be pushing a new standard; the “good enough parent.” If you haven’t heard this term in its current iteration, I promise you will soon. Just a few months ago, the US Surgeon General shone a light on the stressed state of parenting. Based upon his account, accepting “good enough” certainly sounds like the cure for what ails us. However, I take issue with using the idea as an excuse for unintentional parenting.
By all means, change your way of thinking. Exhaustion need not be a foregone conclusion of good parenting. But if being good enough as a mother or father means doing less, and I wholeheartedly believe it does, parents need to take care not to throw out the baby with the bath water. Yes, stop solving all your child’s problems, but don’t stop helping them learn how they got there and how they might fix things themselves. Quit thinking you need to be present for every waking minute, but don’t quit thinking. Concern yourself less with how far they will go than with their ability to make a worthwhile journey of their own choosing. Set your parenting sights on deeper roots, awareness, and resilience on all sides and you’ll always be “good enough” for your child.